Inherent Vice: Times Online Review

[Robin Landseadel]

On Jul 25, 2009, at 3:29 AM, Carvill John wrote:

> Yikes - just before I go, one more banality from me (plus an  
> elipsis)...
>
> Historical Note to Dugdale: Charles Manson was quite a hot topic  
> around teh time IV is set.

Like Janis Ian sez: "I guess you had to be there." I was and surely  
the events of August 4th, 1969 deflated just about everybody's ballon  
in L.A., creating an aura of paranoia that set up shop on the Sunset  
Strip and never left town.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=52746

> This is a cheap shot, maybe, but also an irrefutable truth: these  
> writers such as John Dugdale, whatever they have to say about  
> Pynchon, they are deluding themselves if they don't realise that  
> they are not fit to carry his shoes, so.....

Cheap shot or no, it reads like the author had his mind made up before  
he even read "Inherent Vice.":

Dugdale—" I thought [or someone told me to think] that "Against the  
Day" sucks, so let's compare the two instead reading "Inherent Vice"  
as if it  can stand on its own two."

> "Excess is the recurring failure here. There’s also too much  
> druggyhumour, too many nubile women throwing themselves at men, too  
> manymentions of the cult-leader killer Charles Manson, and too  
> manysentences ending in ellipses."
>
> Could be said about GR, too. Except for Manson, but . . . but . . .  
> János

Yup.