Pynchon fans will find themselves in familiar territory

[Dave Monroe]

Pynchon fans will find themselves in familiar territory
By GREG LANGLEY
Books editor
Published: Nov 15, 2009

INHERENT VICE
By Thomas Pynchon
Penguin Press, $27.95


The reclusive Pynchon, author of V., Gravity’s Rainbow, The Crying of
Lot 49, Mason & Dixon, Vineland and others, is practically a cult
figure.

Whenever he publishes a book, and he does so every few years, his
legion of fans make it an instant best-seller. They know what to
expect from Pynchon: quirky plots, dense dialog peppered with arcane
references to pop culture, philosophy, religion and history, and,
always, heroes who seem to be part of the establishment but really
aren’t. They’re anti-heroes. His latest creation is Doc Sportello, a
Southern California private investigator who is a hippy surfer dope
head at heart.

Pynchon seems to be channeling Raymond Chandler — but not imitating
him. Sportello is no Philip Marlowe. It’s the hardboiled tone that is
familiar: “As if auditioning for widowhood, Sloane Wolfmann strolled
in from poolside wearing black spike-heeled sandals, a headband with a
sheer black veil, and a black bikini if negligible size made of the
same material as the veil. She wasn’t exactly an English rose, maybe
more like an English daffodil, very pale, blond, reedy, probably
bruised easily, overdid the makeup like everybody else. Miniskirts
were invented for young women like her.”

The time is the ’60s, and Doc is involved in a complex case that
involves his old girlfriend, Shasta, who has gone missing along with
Sloane’s husband, Mickey Wolfmann. Before Doc can make any headway on
the case, he gets drawn into another mystery involving an ex-con
looking for an old associate who owes him a debt. He wants Doc to find
the associate. Doc does, right about the time the guy is killed.
Pretty soon Doc mixes it up with some bikers, a cop appropriately
named “Bigfoot” Bjornsen and a mysterious organization called “The
Golden Fang,” which owns a big ocean-going schooner and might be up to
no good but may actually be just a fraternal order of dentists. Lot of
other characters with unusual names (Fritz Drybeam, Japonica, Rudy
Blatnoyd, Arthur Tweedle, Puck Beaverton) populate Pynchon’s tale.
Much marijuana is smoked and some sex occurs, neither of which leads
Doc to the solution of his cases — which are, of course, one case.

Pynchon leads readers into and out of complex and confusing cultural
references (his fans love this).  When one of his characters,
saxophone player Coy Harlingen, goes undercover at a political rally,
Pynchon needs a villian so he resurrects Richard Nixon.

Watching a television news report, Doc sees “Nixon had indeed dropped
in, as if on a whim, at the palatial Westside hotel to address a rally
of GOP activists who called themselves Vigilant California. In
cutaways to individuals in the audience, some seemed a little out of
control, like you’d expect to find at gathering like this, but others
were less demonstrative and, to Doc at least, scarier. Strategically
posted among the crowd, wearing identical suits and ties, you’d have
to call on the unhip side, none of them seemed to be paying much
attention to Nixon himself.”

Pynchon evokes the misplaced innocence of the ’60s well. The streets
are full of muscle cars with big engines and custom paint jobs,
beautiful young women practice a free love philosophy, dope is benign
and available, the big threats to happiness are Vietnam and the
fascist police state that wants to keep free-spirited “heads” from
enjoying rock music and psychedelic drugs.

Doc visits a party at the communal residence of a band called The
Boards — “for a week or so now, the Boards’ houseguest had included
Spotted Dick, a visiting British band who were getting some local
airplay on those stations where the pulse was less hectic, being
themselves often so laid back that people had been known to call an
ambulance, mistaking the band’s idea of a General Pause for some kind
of collective seizure. Today they were wearing wide-wale corduroy
suits in strangely luminous brownish gold and sporting precision
geometric haircuts form Cohen’s Beauty and Barber Shop in East London,
where Vidal Sassoon had once apprenticed and where every week the lads
were piled onto a small bus, given their weekly cannabis allowance and
brought out to sit in a row giggling over back issues of Tatler and
Queen and getting scissor-cut asymmetric bobs.”

That’s the gist of what Pynchon is doing: waxing nostalgic for a more
innocent time before AIDS, the energy crisis, global warming, Sept.
11, the war on terrorism, Katrina and the Internet. The detective
story is just a device to make commentary on a lost era.

Thomas Pychon’s writing can be difficult, oblique and filled with odd
references. But sometimes it’s clear and luminous, poetic: “They stood
in the street light through the kitchen window there’d never been much
point putting curtains over and listened to the thumping of the surf
from down the hill. Some nights, when the wind was right, you could
hear the surf all over town.” Both these tendencies keep Pynchon’s
fans reading this book and anticipating his next.

http://www.2theadvocate.com/entertainment/arts/69994637.html