Thomas Pynchon to release new novel in August

[Dave Monroe]

Inside Examiner.com
Fringe Culture Examiner
Thomas Pynchon to release new novel in August
July 11, 5:02 PM


Thomas Pynchon has been called many things – Pulitzer Prize contender,
anarchist sympathizer, iconoclast, and America’s best-known literary
recluse next to JD Salinger – but prolific is typically not one of
them.  That may be changing now that the author will be releasing a
new novel entitled Inherent Vice via Penguin Press on August 4th.

Pynchon fanatics (who also count fellow “fringe culture auteurs” Don
DeLillo, David Cronenberg, Alan Moore, William Gibson and the entire
writing staff of “The Simpsons” among their ranks) previously had to
wait 17 years for a new release between 1973's National Book
Award-winning Gravity's Rainbow and Vineland, released in 1990.  Mason
& Dixon followed seven years later.

Then, in 2006, Pynchon dropped Against the Day on his unsuspecting
readership - a 1,085 page (in hardcover!) multi-generational saga set
against a backdrop of a fantastical, steampunk, turn-of-the-century
America.

Inherent Vice will not only mark Pynchon’s fastest turnaround on a
project in forty years, but also represents his first very foray into
the world of crime fiction (hell, the dust jacket even looks like a
Elmore Leonard book just waiting to happen).  Here’s an official
synopsis from the folks at Penguin:

It’s been awhile since Doc Sportello has seen his ex-girlfriend.
Suddenly out of nowhere she shows up with a story about a plot to
kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in
love with. Easy for her to say. It’s the tail end of the psychedelic
sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that “love” is another of those words
going around at the moment, like “trip” or “groovy,” except that this
one usually leads to trouble. Despite which he soon finds himself
drawn into a bizarre tangle of motives and passions whose cast of
characters includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a murderous
loan shark, a tenor sax player working undercover, an ex-con with a
swastika tattoo and a fondness for Ethel Merman, and a mysterious
entity known as the Golden Fang, which may only be a tax dodge set up
by some dentists.

In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre,
provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can
remember the sixties, you weren’t there…or…if you were there, then
you…or, wait, is it…

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