IVIV Hope Harlingen: a wacky theory (possible spoilers)

[Robin Landseadel]

On Sep 11, 2009, at 6:33 AM, David Morris wrote:

> Well, 1970 would be the first year after 1969, the year that finished
> off the 60's.  Wouldn't IV be set in 1969?

Inherent Vice is clearly set during the NBA playoffs of 1970. In lots  
of ways Inherent Vice is all about what made 1970 different. One of  
the biggest differences was the roaring resurgence of the Golden Fang  
during the Nixon ascension, the kind of obvious corruption of  
Blackwater played out on a somewhat smaller scale by Agnew, Nixon, G.  
Gordon Liddy and his crew, Haldeman and the rest of them fascists.

On Sep 11, 2009, at 6:33 AM, David Morris wrote:

> DQ was corrupted by Romances (thanks, MB), and Doc thinks Sherlock
> Holmes was a real person, one who's drug addiction justifies Doc's
> indulgences.  Everyone in VL and IV uses popular TV shows as a medium
> of communication.  And film in GR is called "pornography."  Fiction in
> all its forms is a corrupting distraction from real first-hand
> experience, like a drug.

Possible alternate reading of Fog in IV. The fact that TV shows were  
[and are] the lingua franca of this country is a constant in Pynchon.  
The confusion of that role-playing is also a given. Doc ends the book  
in a literal fog, hanging on by a slender thread of faith in whatever  
little red light is in front of him. But there is at the same time the  
suggestion of doper's haze, the inability to shake off the presence of  
that fog, the nervous felling that the fog might never go away. Kinda  
like our own Inherent Vice, the loss of memory, the possible loss of  
our minds that comes with aging.