IVIV: (14) Dope & Longing in Las Vegas

[Robin Landseadel]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSfk6nKSCcI&feature=related

Okay—everybody else has been having altogether too much fun exercising  
their freedom of speech, 24/7 access to the P-List and the  
availability  of various online free thesauri while inventing new and  
ever more baroque modes of saying "Inherent Vice is a stinking,  
putrid, foul and depraved piece of shit." Thank you all so very much  
for your efforts, you'll be receiving your paperwork at #14 and have a  
nice day.

I believe it's my turn to get on the soapbox and let it all hang out.

Inherent Vice is an autobiographical novel and the primary subtext—and  
a whole lot of this is in the text too, floating on it like oil on  
velvet—is dope. The trailer helps. That voice? Doc's voice? The one we  
already knew and loved when we all were startled by "Diatribe of a Mad  
Housewife?" The voice now modulated into an entirely plausible Tommy  
Chong impersonation? That one? The Author's Voice? Stoned? Man?

It is an autobiographical book because the author is telling us what  
he knows about life in Manhattan Beach, Ca. during the time he [the  
author] was writing "Gravity's Rainbow." He's writing about what he  
knows and remembers of those times, the parts he thought we should  
know about . . .

	He was trying to pass on what he thought was most important,
	when he had a minute, though there never was the time . . .

And it's perfectly obvious that this man knows his dope and like the  
Dude—our Dude, not the other Dude—always sez,:

			"Those that know, Know."

He did it in the form of a Detective Spoof because, well, he always  
was always intending to come up with this one, he's been sneakin' up  
on this subject for years, what with his love of thrillers and all  
that Mafia shit. He needed a place to put all that stuff. And Inherent  
Vice is the place he put it.

I guess he also wanted to remind us all of Hunter S. Thompson, a  
bonified literary badass—and gathering from such fictional locales as  
"Der Platz", an inspiration for Gravity's Rainbow. There were a whole  
lot of things you were not supposed to do in books until Hunter  
S.Thompson got away with it, like take certain drugs in certain  
quantities and frequencies and not receive a wisp of a reprimand from  
the Authorities for it. It was like you'd be violating the Hayes Code  
or something. Pynchon understood the humor of That joke—so he had to  
take a big slab of The Duke's psychochemical stew and plant it in his  
Vegas of Fear, Loathing & really good, really cheap Mexican  
restaurants. In case you were wondering why we're here in the Kismet  
and all that. I'd point in particular to chapter eight of Hunter S.  
Thompson's "Scorching, Epochal Sensation!" for more details.

Off the top of my head, I recall reading somewhere of Howard Hughes  
threatening to put Mini-Casinos on the Strip, "Quicky-Mart" flavored  
Casinos—one wheel, a handful of slots, in and out and by the time ten  
minutes have moseyed along you've been pants-ed  by the house odds to  
the tune of more than enough sawbucks to keep the place in business  
for a long time to come.  But what Howard was really doing was  
negotiating a 600% profit over investment on a prime stretch of the  
Strip. Eventually, Howard Hughes had a controlling interest in the  
whole fuckin' Strip and that's when the Mormon Mob hauled Hughes' ass  
down to the Bahamas—Thanksgiving 1970, four years to the day after he  
moved into the Desert Inn. The "Nurses" who kept Hughes good and  
stoned on Smack and Codine  ended up eventually running "Las Fuckin'  
VegasLand" which I suppose now has its own corporate logo, ad  
campaign, tourist organization and website. The Vegas turning into  
"Las Fuckin' VegasLand"  is the Vegas of both Inherent Vice and Fear  
and Loathing in Las Vegas. And I guess that's what happens when you  
have your affairs all tethered to a CIA slimeball like Bob Matheu. See  
"Howard Hughes; Power, Paranoia & Palace Intrigue" by Geoff Schumacher  
for more details.

So, like I said before, this book's about dope—Marijuana, Ganja, The  
Chornic, Mary Jane, Reefer, Muggles, "The Herb" if you're not into  
that whole brevity thing, man. And you can see this theme developing  
slowly in Pynchon's writing, making a welcome guest shot with the  
Paranoids in "The Crying of Lot 49", having a featurette set at the  
Potsdam Conference involving a Russian Spy & co-starring Mickey Rooney  
in "Gravity's Rainbow", then featured in a starring Role in that big- 
budget made for TV Movie Drug Epic "Vineland", found later standing on  
the sidelines for most of "Mason & Dixon" but given a good cameo co- 
starring George Washington and Clevon Little doing his best Jackie  
Mason impersonation,  handed a lot more lines and facetime in "Against  
the Day", and then finally reappearing as the star of "Inherent Vice"— 
and with a Vice like that, is it any wonder the author sometimes  
forgets his lines or forgets he's already forgotten that he's already  
used those lines and could you stop doing that to the rug, man?

Where was I?

Doc Sportello manages to be about as good a Private Dick as Philip  
Marlowe and what he lacks in A-gression he makes up for in Ob-session— 
Doc makes paranoia work for him and what better way to stoke that  
paranoia than by smokin' way too much reefer? I know what your asking  
and all I can say is, refer to the Dude's remark—OUR Dude, not the  
other Dude. So Doc's a bit like the Detective he always had as a role  
model—Sherlock Holmes, P.I. as stoned intellectual—& you can just  
imagine his shock when he found out that the ol' Cokefeind was  
fictional—nearly broke his little heart. Now Marlowe was quite the  
boozer—and closet intellectual—and by the time Raymond Chandler  
produced his "Long Goodbye," alcohol is featured in a starring role  
similar—relative to its placement in Chandler's little cautionary tale— 
to Loco Weed in Inherent Vice.

In any case, there you are. This is what it is, and that's what he's  
doing and—don't you think he's hyperaware of shifting drug laws circa  
2009 and don't you think that's the meaning of Doc turning on his  
parents as an act of kindness towards the end of the book? 'Cause I  
sure think that's what he's thinking. And if you don't find that  
interesting enough or inspiring enough or poetic enough—I'm sorry,   
but I do.