IVIV: My Lurid Youth

[Robin Landseadel]

Doc cruises to the Wolfmann Manor to the strains of what must sound  
like Stewie singing "Bang Bang." The song appropriately fades out as  
Doc parks his Dart in front of a house full of cops. After being  
greeted by "a presentable young Chicana in jeans and an old SC  
sweatshirt," Doc is informed that Mrs. Wolfmann is ". . .hanging by  
the pool with all the police and them." Looks like the cops set up  
their command post by the pool: " . . . getting in some last minute  
free catering before their federal overlords showed up."

"As if auditioning for widowhood" Mrs. Wolfmann appears in a sheer  
black veil and a bikini made of the same material. The house seems to  
be auditioning as well: Doc's scrying of objects on the walls". . .  
which seemed to extend infinitely in the direction of Pasadena"  
reveals that Sloane knows both economics and tantric yoga.

	She waved at a picture on the wall, which looked like a blowup
	of an eight-by-ten glossy from the lobby area of some nightclub.
	"Why, goodness," said Doc, "it's you, isn't it?"  Sloane made with
	the half-frown, half-smirk Doc had noticed among minor- and
	ex-showbiz people trying to be modest. "My lurid youth. I was
	one of those notorious Vegas showgirls, working at one of the
	casinos.
	IV, 57/58

Strikes me as worth noting this Vegas foreshadowing. Earlier Doc  
drives through the old Hughes Corporation holdings near TRW. Hughes  
provided the jobs for Ramo & Woolridge, who later split off to form  
TRW. During 1970, all those Mormons from Hughes Corp. are investing in  
Vegas. As I recall the Mormon Mob is mentioned in the context of the  
Golden Fang. Eventually we'll end up in "Fear & Loathing" country.  
Right now we're deep into period drama, just as Bi-Located as the  
cover question on the Nick Danger LP.

Sloan shows off her wedding ring—"Flashing a gigantic marquise-cut  
diamond up in the double digits someplace with respect to carats."

	Like an actress hitting her mark, she had come to a pause
	beneath a looming portrait of Mickey Wolfmann, shown with a
	distant stare, as if scanning the L.A. Basin to its farthest
	horizons for buildable lots. She whirled to face Doc and smiled
	sociably. "Here we are, then."

	Doc noticed a sort of fake chiseled stone frieze above the
	portrait, which read, ONCE YOU GET THAT FIRST STAKE
	DRIVEN, NOBODY CAN STOP YOU.-ROBERT MOSES.

	"A great American, and Michael's inspiration," said Sloane.
	"That's always been his motto."

	"I thought Dr. Van Helsing said that."
	IV, p. 57

Me too. [oops!]

When Sloan "hits her mark" a strange thing happens—we're transported  
to the realm of noir minutia, a shared obsession concerning James Wong  
Howe, famed cinematographer. In these seemingly parallel worlds that  
both Doc and Sloan inhabit the characters act out their lives using  
the scripts of old Garfield and Lupino movies, along with the lighting  
and props. Both characters take their roles to the point where they  
move into those worlds suggested by those films. A frequent theme in  
all of Pynchon's books shows how people are affected by mass media,  
developing fantasy lives, parallel worlds, alternate universes, based  
on the tube or the movies or whatever omnipresent source provides  
guidance on keeping up with the Jones [or Jameses, I guess]. Gravity's  
Rainbow requires a re-reading in the context of Inherent Vice. There  
are so many scenes in Gravity's Rainbow that show how much of a  
character's actions came out of a movie. Inherent Vice makes me ask  
how well that character would have fit into Manhattan Beach, circa 1970.

Spoiler—later on, though its location is diffuse at the moment.

In Inherent Vice the dreamscape of Loony Tunes characters, with their  
anarchic verve and surreal magic, are genuinely inspirational for Doc— 
when Doc's supernatural qualities as a Hippie shamus are revealed in  
their hot magenta and kelly green glory, it's the spirits of Tex  
Avery, Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett that are invoked. Violent or no,  
it's clear that these creatures from these seven minute-long comic  
epics are inspiring to Pynchon the writer. There's something in the  
way that everything connects in a Road-Runner cartoon.

So we are given a little aside of Pynchon the film critic, one of  
those lives that might have been for Pynchon, but didn't happen. A lot  
of what's going on in Inherent Vice points to lives that might have  
been, but aren't.  John Garfield could have been big, maybe bigger  
than Bogie. Except for that height thing, of course. Shasta could have  
been a star. Sloane could have been a star. Nobody really appreciates  
Ida Lupino. And so on. The Bonzos and the Boards are the might have  
beens of music.

In 1970, the Counterculture is the great might-have-been.