Re: Thomas Pynchon: ‘Inherent Vice’

[Mark Kohut]

I think there is some Sobchak in Bigfoot and an allusion or two in IV. But since so much else is so different, and you've firmed the Chandler connection so well, it stopped there with me.......

--- On Mon, 11/30/09, Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: Thomas Pynchon: ‘Inherent Vice’
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Monday, November 30, 2009, 7:31 PM
> 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
>