Inherent Vice review in The Salon

[Robin Landseadel]

Laura Miller shows grudging admiration:

	What ultimately delivers "Inherent Vice" from this futility are the
	stubbornly individualistic imperatives of its borrowed genre. The
	detective story must resolve around a central character -- in this
	case, Doc -- and Pynchon has no choice but to make something
	of him. Because his creator is fundamentally sweet (unlike, say,
	Philip Marlowe's), Doc turns out all right, and in negotiating his
	fatally compromised moral environment, even attains a
	paradoxical sort of wisdom. "What, I should only trust good
	people?" he says to a friend who questions the deal he cuts at
	the novel's end, a rash yet generous act of faith. "Man, good
	people get bought and sold every day. Might as well trust
	somebody evil once in a while, it makes no more or less sense.
	I mean, I wouldn't give odds either way." When driving in the
	fog, you sometimes have to take whichever exit presents itself,
	and hope against hope for the best.

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2009/07/31/pynchon/index.html