Re: Thomas Pynchon: ‘Inherent Vice’

[Robin Landseadel]

Know I'm all alone out on this limb here, but see a Dude/Walter  
Sobchak relationship between Doc and Bigfoot. Also see some co- 
ordination in the art department, the set design & some of the  
punchlines, vide Joseph. And then's there's Jesus Quintana and we all  
know what you don't do with the Jesus. Elliot Gould in Robert  
Altman's  "The Long Goodbye" also comes to mind. As I recall one of  
the writers who's given a description of the reclusive author said  
that Pynchon looked a bit like Elliot Gould. I've mentioned "Nick  
Danger" too many times already and if "Big Shot" comes to my mind—and  
I think it should be in yours . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYULQT2ObkU

  . . . remember that the Bonzo Dog band is mentioned twice in  
Inherent Vice, both times in the most absurd and apt settings one  
could devise while still maintaining a perfectly Chanderian pretext  
for the odd goings on.

	" 'Darling? I've been beaten up again!'
	 Let's face it, she's credulous as hell."

I'm detecting a deep affection for the work of Vivian Stanshall on  
display in "Against the Day" and—in particular—in Gravity's Rainbow's  
songs and dances. Some folks will never find certain of Pynchon's  
jokes funny. Something like "The President's name IS Schicklgruber."  
or the guitar solo in "The Canyons of Your Mind" would just fall flat  
with this crowd.

Whatever else Thomas R. Pynchon Jr. may or not be, he's got a penchant  
for making jokes in the styles of the aforementioned Hazy Dicks and  
Spotted Edwardians. There's a certain affinity, an admixture of  
surrealism and black humor. As Joseph said—a shared sense of humor, a  
shared awareness of the moral calculus of karma.

One more thing: what Doc 'n the Dude & Gould's Marlowe and Bachelor  
Johnny Cool all have in common is that they're all Chandler parodies.

On Nov 30, 2009, at 3:36 PM, Joseph Tracy wrote:

> On Nov 27, 2009, at 11:40 PM, Joseph Tracy wrote:
> I agree, I don't see that.. But there is some affinity of style  
> between the Coen Brothers work and Pynchon's work.  Something about  
> moving from wry satire to dark violence and tragedy , something  
> about karma.
>
>> On Nov 27, 2009, at 7:02 PM, Robert Mahnke wrote:
>>
>>> Am I the only person who just doesn't see the Sportello/Lebowski
>>> thing?  I mean, I get why people are more likely to see Lebowski in
>>> Sportello than, say, Mao Tse-tung or Nadia Comenici, but they're  
>>> just
>>> not all that similar, are they?
>>>
>>> On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 3:30 AM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com 
>>> > wrote:
>>>> http://www.nzbc.net.nz/2009/11/thomas-pynchon-inherent-vice.html