Inherent Vice (4 stars)

[kelber at mindspring.com]

I'm still plugging my ears and humming loudly whenever these reviews are posted.  I like to read reviews after the fact.  I suspect, though, that the book's length crops up in most of the reviews.  Accessible vs. Lightweight.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
>Sent: Jul 9, 2009 9:34 AM
>To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Inherent Vice (4 stars)
>
>Thomas Pynchon: Inherent Vice (4 stars)
>
>    * Source: The List (Issue 633)
>    * Date: 9 July 2009
>    * Written by: Miles Fielder
>
>Less than half the length of his last 1000-page tome and riffing on
>the relatively straightforward hardboiled crime genre as opposed to
>the exhausting literary mash-up of Against the Day, Thomas Pynchon’s
>seventh novel is the reclusive author’s most accessible to date.
>Essentially a detective tale set in southern California at the butt
>end of the 60s, it features a hippie PI named Doc Sportello who
>emerges from a marijuana high to investigate the disappearance of a
>millionaire property magnate.
>
>The similarities to the Coen brothers’ stoner noir The Big Lebowski
>are inescapable, but we’re nevertheless firmly in Pynchon territory. A
>number of characters from the northern California-set Vineland pop up
>here and there, but what makes this hilarious wise-ass yarn so
>Pynchon-esque is the preoccupation with counter-pop-culture, corporate
>imperialism and conspiracy theories. And it’s so effortlessly
>evocative of its psychedelic milieu, it puts paid to the notion that
>if one remembers the 60s one wasn’t there. Pynchon clearly was.
>
>http://www.list.co.uk/article/18756-thomas-pynchon-inherent-vice/
>