IVIV: The Future of the Novel as Crap

[Robin Landseadel]

Whatever else one might say about Inherent Vice, Pynchon's most recent  
novel is his most accessible.  The bulk of its sentences are easily  
comprehended, the plot threads through Noir conventions to more or  
less Noir-ish conclusions, lines are singled up, more or less, and  
order is restored, or at least as much order as can be conjured up in  
a Pynchon novel. Inherent Vice is a half-honest attempt to produce a  
coherent and compact story—this from an author noted for misdirected  
plots, character bloat, funny names and crazy conspiracies. "It's  
like, it's what he does, man? Like you can't expect apples from an Oak  
tree?" Be that as it may, Inherent Vice is a comparatively honest  
attempt at a genre fiction, singular case. The genre deployed is  
"Mystery," usually one of the bigger sub-sections in chain bookstores  
like Barnes & Noble or Borders. Their little outposts in the airports  
are thick with Mysteries, usually among the first objects to assault  
your senses as you enter one of these mini-bookstores. Pynchon  
offering up a peculiar beach-read mystery—after the sustained mash-up  
of genre fictions [plural] in Against the Day—can easily be  
interpreted as a middle finger raised against the academy or at the  
very least as a few snide, whispered comments from the back of the  
Contemporary Lit. class by one of its best students.

The Mystery genre always defined the core of "Pulp Fiction"—stuff  
printed on cheaper paper, junk writing, not intended to last. I've got  
a semi-spectacular example here. In 1971, Ballantine books started up  
a re-issue series of Raymond Chandler's books in the mass-market  
"pocket fiction" form factor. I've got four examples from that series.  
1939's "The Big Sleep" was the oldest, or at least the oldest in my  
collection. It was reissued in April of 1971, along with "The High  
Window", originally issued in 1942. The covers are exceptionally  
garish, the paper in all four books yellowing at an alarming rate,  
"The Big Sleep" already devolving into three separate chunks. Strange  
to contemplate L.A. getting back to its usual noir self after a decade  
in the sun, from 1960 to 1970, from the Beach Boys to Manson. "But how  
strange the change from major to minor," as Ella always sez. Though  
altogether too many reviewers refer to the novel's "60's nostalgia,"  
Inherent Vice is a novel of the seventies, not so much nostalgic as  
feeling hurt and betrayed.

In part, Inherent Vice the novel is an appreciation and historical  
revision of the work of Raymond Chandler, an author cited in ways  
roundabout [The Crying of Lot 49] and not so [Gravity's Rainbow] in  
Pynchon's other novels. In Inherent Vice, Chandler and his works are  
mentioned early and often—along with that coke-head Sherlock Holmes  
and Jazzy Johnny Staccato, the "shamus of shamuses." Much as Chandler  
attempted to create literary "Pulp" with "The Long Goodbye," Pynchon  
deliberately chooses to blur genres in his genre exercise, this self- 
consciously preterite fiction. The Long Goodbye is a great point of  
reference to Inherent Vice, as are Farewell My Lovely and The Big  
Sleep. In fact, correlations between Pynchon and Chandler are rife  
throughout the author's books and I see no end in sight of  
correspondences cute and sometimes not so between Marlowe and Doc. But  
in the special case of The Long Goodbye we have a punch-drunk P.I. who  
gets caught up in the case of a burnt-out author. Chandler gets to  
underscore his cultural pretensions by virtue of a lot of name- 
dropping while also working out a lot of inner hurt and dropping a  
number of clues as to an author's method of putting various plots  
together. In the process characters multiply, more sub-plots dribble  
out and everybody's motives get good and confused—sound familiar?  
Robert Altman's film version underscores The Long Goodbye's literary  
aspects by placing greater emphasis on author Roger Wade and adds a  
pomo touch or two in Elliot Gould's spaced-out Marlowe.

In large part, Inherent Vice the Physical Object, Ad campaign,  
attempted movie deal and viral video constitutes a comment on the  
publishing industry as it currently operates, offering up even more  
snide remarks from a class clown who doesn't give much cause for hope  
in the future of literacy in America. It starts with the joltingly  
garish cover and slithers on into the inner jacket, with the remainder  
spray printed right around the cover's corners over blurb and bio. It  
continues in the novel's decidedly un-literary dialog and pro-forma  
dramaturgy, akin to authors like James Patterson or Dan Brown*. The  
Inherent Vice of "Beach Reads" is that they inevitably find their way  
to remaindered tables and the author of this one simply spared the re- 
distributors the trouble. Odd little hints of marketing popped up in  
"Sally Forth" screaming across the sky and "The Colbert Report,"—where  
the show's host offered up a box of books to a youngster who was  
reading above his age, including a copy of "Gravity's Rainbow." The  
publicity machine was actually on call for this book.  ARCs were sent  
out early, compared to Mason & Dixon & Against the Day. And then there  
was that video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjWKPdDk0_U

The last time we heard this sound it was voicing a character named  
Thomas Pynchon who decided to present himself as a cartoon with a bag  
over his head. This time he says he's Doc Sportello, but it sure feels  
like it's still that dude with the bag over his head only this time  
he's more relaxed—"right now, in 1970 what it is is just high"—like  
he's got less to hide now. In a way he does:

http://www.theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html

http://tinyurl.com/ldxc3m

That tinyurl is a satellite photo of Pynchon's old residence. Look a  
little to the right of Doc's haunts and you'll find TRW, the firm  
responsible for making that satellite image possible. The fact that  
Pynchon, onetime employee of Boeing with "top secret" clearance  
chooses to—A: "move underground" sometime around the publication of  
"V.", rendering himself as invisible as possible to the public, press  
and all but a handful of friends and—B: soon thereafter moves to  
within walking distance of the center of the CIA's spy satellite  
projects—this all strikes me as a rather interesting mystery all by  
itself, one that doubtless is intimately tied to Gravity's Rainbow.

http://tinyurl.com/n52poo

In any case, like many other "Pulp" or "Genre" thrillers and  
mysteries, the CIA is all over Inherent Vice. While Pynchon manages to  
fold the CIA's activities circa 1970 into the larger—and more  
"literary"—plot of the Golden Fang, that doesn't change the fact that  
the CIA is more present in Inherent Vice than in any other book by  
Pynchon.

We're going to get to the birth of CIA's spy satellites in chapter  
four. Unlike Pynchon's other books, the CIA is mentioned in Inherent  
Vice early and often. Of course the CIA gets mentioned in plenty of  
fictions in the Mystery Section, from Margaret Truman to Patricia  
Cornwell—not to mention Tom Clancy, who also appeared to blurb "The  
Harpooned Heart" in "Diatribe of a Mad Housewife." While the CIA is  
not about to be called 'the good guys' in any of Pynchon's novels—"A  
Clear and Present Danger" is more like it—Pynchon's interests in the  
spy novel go all the way back to his childhood:

	I was also able to steal, or let us say "derive," in more subtle
	ways. I had grown up reading a lot of spy fiction, novels of
	intrigue, notably those of John Buchan. The only book of his
	that anyone remembers now is "The Thirty-Nine Steps," but he
	wrote half a dozen more just as good of better. They were all in
	my hometown library. So were E. Philip Oppenheim, Helen
	MacInnes, Geoffrey Household, and many others as well.
	"Slow Learner", page 13

. . . and elements of the "Mystery" &/or "Thriller" can be found in  
all of his books. Inherent Vice is a book that wants to jump off of  
Borders "Literature" wall & into the "Mystery" section, alongside Tom  
Clancy and J.D. Robb, Ross Macdonald and Patricia Highsmith.

*Parody? Self-Parody? You be the judge! Of course, Pynchon still  
rattles off amazing pages of prose. In an altogether different way  
that works out as a homage to Raymond Chandler as well.