IV panned by Kirkus

[rich]

p.s. the roach end of the 60s?--the PW review noted the early 70s time frame
which is it people?

On 7/7/09, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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...
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  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.
>>
>