The Electric Mayhem: Notes on Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

[Dave Monroe]

What is on full display is Pynchon’s ability to bruise a comma with
detail-laden, paragraph-long sentences like few others can. This and
this alone will probably be what people dislike about the book. For
me, I love these descriptions and the details they present and the
full range of senses they reach. One paragraph like this can, in some
ways, paint a picture of a place and time better then something 10
times longer. It’s condensed and it’s concentrated but not diluted.

[...]

Every person and every object has its own history and story, and the
whole of them are in this together and zooming off into the horizon.
Every object and every person is infused with time, place and history,
reaching a culminating effect.

[...]

What strikes me about Doc is that he is a goof. Everything about him
strikes me, maybe not as false, but as an affectation. Ornaments on a
costume. Maybe he is meant to be a kind of dazzle camouflage , a
collection of garish traits that prevent you from seeing the person.
The white-guy afro and all that stuff about him…I dunno, something
doesn’t smell right. Is the “Doc” persona something adopted, how old
is Doc, and what is the “real” him? I can’t put my figure on it yet,
but he feels like an impostor. Like a caricature of someone from the
60’s rather then someone more dully representative of the era.

[...]

Well, that’s interesting, wearing “normal” clothes Doc recognizes
himself. Much like the hippy costume that the cop Bigfoot uses for his
car commercial part, maybe Doc’s is more of a disguise then let on.

Everyone seems so sure of what the book’s themes are, primarily the
death of the 60’s and the looming shadow of the Mansons, but what if
the biggest theme of all turns out to be a subtle exploration of
identity?  Who is Doc could be the biggest mystery of all in Inherent
Vice.

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 8:15 AM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://www.bscreview.com/2009/10/the-electric-mayhem-notes-on-inherent-vice-by-thomas-pynchon/