Back from the beach

[tbeshear]

I finished reading IV last night. The Elmore Leonard comparisons hold up for 
a few chapters (as Tibor Fischer noted), but they fall apart as the story 
unwinds and the novel becomes more and more, er, Pynchonesque. I plan to buy 
the audio version, as I think it will read aloud very well.
It's a lot of fun to read, and even though the tone is light, it will still 
reward re-reading, because the mystery plot is very knotty -- plus, of 
course, Pynchon throws out lines that bear giving more attention after one 
knows the story.
Penguin can sell a boatload of copies if it will market IV aggressively.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tore Rye Andersen" <torerye at hotmail.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 26, 2009 6:13 AM
Subject: Back from the beach


>
> Hi foax,
>
> just back from two weeks vacation in a secluded (and webless) beach 
> cottage with my family and my review copy of Inherent Vice (courtesy of 
> the good people at Cape), only to find that the pynchon-list is gradually 
> turning into the james-list....
>
> Anyway, a couple of more or less unspoilerish first impressions of IV:
>
> I more or less agree with other p-listers take on Inherent Vice: I loved 
> it - LOVED it - but it is also clearly Pynchon's lightest effort yet. 
> Those p-listers who have never forgiven Pynchon for Vineland, and who 
> still wait for him to surpass the unsurpassable GR, will probably hate it 
> (and won't hesitate to tell us so), but I'm willing to bet that a lot of 
> listers will consider it an enjoyable romp.
>
> Comparisons with Elmore Leonard are way off the mark, IMO: Even though it 
> is a much more relaxed work than his dense historical masterpieces, no one 
> but Pynchon could have written this. I love the prose this time around: 
> fluid and effortless with occasional flashes of brilliance, and much more 
> consistent than AtD's motley of different styles. I find Doc Sportello 
> more likeable than any of AtD's characters, and I love the novel's 
> portrait of the LA scene around 1970 - a scene where, as Janos has pointed 
> out, Pynchon wrote most of GR. Together with Vineland, this is probably 
> the closest we'll get to an autobiography by Pynchon.
>
> Despite its lightness, we ARE dealing with Pynchon, who as usual weaves a 
> complex web of allusions and historical references. Skillful googlists 
> willing to track down obscure allusions and esoteric arcana won't be 
> disappointed, but this time around the story seems more important - or at 
> least more visible - than the allusive web, and one can easily breeze 
> through this novel without a research library at hand.
>
> Theory of the day: The presence/absence of a member of the Bodine family 
> in a Pynchon novel is a marker of the level of ambition in that novel. I 
> won't tell you whether there are any Bodines in IV, though...
>
> I can't wait to hear what the rest of you think of the novel.
>
> Tore
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