Back from the beach

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Hi foax,
 
just back from two weeks vacation in a secluded (and webless) beach cottage with my family and my review copy of Inherent Vice (courtesy of the good people at Cape), only to find that the pynchon-list is gradually turning into the james-list....
 
Anyway, a couple of more or less unspoilerish first impressions of IV:
 
I more or less agree with other p-listers take on Inherent Vice: I loved it - LOVED it - but it is also clearly Pynchon's lightest effort yet. Those p-listers who have never forgiven Pynchon for Vineland, and who still wait for him to surpass the unsurpassable GR, will probably hate it (and won't hesitate to tell us so), but I'm willing to bet that a lot of listers will consider it an enjoyable romp. 
 
Comparisons with Elmore Leonard are way off the mark, IMO: Even though it is a much more relaxed work than his dense historical masterpieces, no one but Pynchon could have written this. I love the prose this time around: fluid and effortless with occasional flashes of brilliance, and much more consistent than AtD's motley of different styles. I find Doc Sportello more likeable than any of AtD's characters, and I love the novel's portrait of the LA scene around 1970 - a scene where, as Janos has pointed out, Pynchon wrote most of GR. Together with Vineland, this is probably the closest we'll get to an autobiography by Pynchon.
 
Despite its lightness, we ARE dealing with Pynchon, who as usual weaves a complex web of allusions and historical references. Skillful googlists willing to track down obscure allusions and esoteric arcana won't be disappointed, but this time around the story seems more important - or at least more visible - than the allusive web, and one can easily breeze through this novel without a research library at hand. 
 
Theory of the day: The presence/absence of a member of the Bodine family in a Pynchon novel is a marker of the level of ambition in that novel. I won't tell you whether there are any Bodines in IV, though...
 
I can't wait to hear what the rest of you think of the novel.
 
Tore
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