IVIV: audio version

[Robin Landseadel]

On Nov 18, 2009, at 7:15 AM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:

> My husband's only read V and COL49, but I suggested he try IV, since  
> he lived in LA during the 70s.  He got the audio tape and said he  
> liked the descriptions of people and places, but he thought the plot  
> was weird and disjointed.  Oh well, that's Pynchon, he supposed.   
> After a while, it dawned on him:  his CD player was set to randomize  
> the tracks - he'd listened to the story completely out of order.
>
> Maybe it's worth reading that way?  Then people, places and  
> atmosphere would take precedence over the weak plot.

While Pynchon as cut-up art is perfectly viable—Gravity's Rainbow,  
anyone?—the plot of Inherent Vice hews closely to similar plots by  
Raymond Chandler. The Chandler plot Inherent Vice most closely  
resembles is "The Long Goodbye." There's the bookending of murders and  
the resolution of those murders. There's the way these acts of  
multiple mayhem intertwine, plotwise,  and there's the protagonists'  
mutual suspicions that they can no longer trust his senses due to  
constant abuse of their respective favorite intoxicants, not to  
mention witnessing the demise [or near demise] of characters in the  
novels thanks to overuse of their respective intoxicants.

Both The Long Goodbye and Inherent Vice are "Literary Noirs" where the  
central themes include the loss of trust, the long-term effects of  
systematic substance abuse and the inevitable decline that comes with  
aging. Inherent Vice is entropy personalized.