IV panned by Kirkus

[rich]

Booklist is pretty notorious for being snarky most of the time
written mostly by square librarians at the American Library Association
this is what tech service people at libraries read so they know what
to order so u can imagine the audience--those  who work in
acquisitions (and who hardly read at all)
(i had to read the thing while at library school)

rich

On 7/7/09, Henry Winkler <rushm0r3 at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Groovier than much of this erratic author's fiction, but a bummer compared
> with his best."
>
> Reviews by Booklist and Kirkus are posted at the BN website:
>
> http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Inherent-Vice/Thomas-Pynchon/e/9781594202247/?itm=1
>
> I cut and pasted them below but there are spoilers so caveat emptor...
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>  Donna Seaman - Booklist
>
> "Did I say that out loud?" Doc Sportello asks. It's hard to keep things
> straight when you're high. Unlike his hard-core L.A. noir compatriots, this
> private eye's primary vice is pot, not booze. It's the roach-end of the
> 1960s, and the sole proprietor and employee of LSD Investigations (Location,
> Surveillance, Detection) uses the flair of his bellbottoms to conceal his
> gun and muses, "A private eye didn't drop acid for years in this town
> without picking up some kind of extrasensory chops." And doesn't he milk his
> spaced-out pothead persona for everything it's worth as he searches for
> missing construction mogul Mickey Wolfmann. Doc's haphazard (or is it?)
> investigation is complicated by his nemesis, a cop called Bigfoot Bjornsen;
> Doc's persistent feelings for his ex and affair with a district attorney;
> memory lapses; and hallucinations. Pynchon is frolicking in this psychedelic
> mystery, featuring dopers, surfers, bikers, predators, and parasites, drugs
> and counterfeit money, setups and switchbacks, and the Golden Fang, a
> stealth ship. As Doc wiggles and smokes his way out of gnarly predicaments,
> Pynchon skewers urban renewal, television, government surveillance, and the
> looming computer age. A bit of a mystery himself, master writer Pynchon has
> created a bawdy, hilarious, and compassionate electric-acid-noir satire
> spiked with passages of startling beauty. Starred Review.
> Kirkus Reviews
>
> For better and worse, this is the closest Pynchon is likely to come to a
> beach book. A psychedelic beach book, of course: It's hippie-era Los
> Angeles, and our hero smokes marijuana the way others smoke cigarettes,
> which is something of an occupational hazard in a profession that requires
> deductive abilities. About a third the length of its predecessor (Against
> the Day, 2006, etc.) and as breezy as a detective novel by Tom Robbins, the
> book begins with a beautiful woman walking into the office of private
> investigator Larry "Doc" Sportello to ask for help. Formerly Doc's
> girlfriend, Shasta has been associating more recently with Mickey Wolfmann,
> a very rich and married developer whom Doc knows from the newspapers as "the
> real estate big shot." Mickey's wife and her lover apparently want him
> institutionalized, but as usual in a Pynchon novel, there are conspiracies
> atop conspiracies as Doc tries to get to the people who are running the
> people who seem to be running things. With Charlie Manson poisoning the
> free-love ethos and land-grab developers putting the soul of Southern
> California up for grabs, Doc finds himself enmeshed deeper in a plot that
> defies resolution. The mystery focuses on the Golden Fang, which may be a
> schooner, a heroin cartel, an enterprise of "vertical integration" or a vast
> international conspiracy. Maybe all of the above. The story will make the
> most sense to those as stoned as Doc, though it's hard to resist questions
> like, "Anybody understand why they call it ‘real' estate?" or a simile such
> as "the figure dropped like an acid tab into the mouth of Time"-highly
> appropriate for a protagonist who tends to divide the totality of experience
> into "groovy" and "bummer."Or, once, for emphasis, "Bumm. Er."Groovier than
> much of this erratic author's fiction, but a bummer compared with his best.
>