IV panned by Kirkus

[rich]

i meant Kirkus Reviews were snarky

just forget what I just said

total brain freeze
sorry

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