Re: IVIV: chapter seven—Eel Trovatore

[Robin Landseadel]

	Really to read Pynchon properly you would have to be
	astonishingly learned not only about literature but about a
	vast number of other subjects belonging to the disciplines
	and to popular culture, learned to the point where learning
	is almost a sensuous pleasure, something to play around
	with, to feel totally relaxed about, so that you can take in
	stride every dizzying transition from one allusive mode to
	another.
	Richard Poirier

On Sep 23, 2009, at 7:44 AM, David Morris wrote:

> I think these criticisms are snarky at best.

. . . and they are coming from folks predisposed to dump on post GR  
Pynchon.

> They're all attacking
> what is IV's attitude/voice which is supposed to be laid-back
> stoner-LA.  It's purposefully sloppy diction.  I don't think it's bad
> writing.  It IS cartoonish, purposefully so.  If there is any depth
> going on here (and I don't know that there is), it's hidden
> underneath.

While there is a "there" there, it's not the same place as GR and for  
many people that disqualifies this book from their serious  
consideration. Some of these folks claim they are Lit teachers,  even  
though their tangled rants don't even bother to use spellcheck, fer  
Christ's sake. They might be teachers of literature, but  
intellectually they're no match for Pynchon. Seeing that the author is  
continuing to change [and in my opinion grow] those kinds of snarky  
comments disqualify their critical comments from serious  
consideration. There's no reason for Pynchon to re-write Gravity's  
Rainbow but there's plenty of reason for him to continue to write  
satire about where we are now. That "now" isn't the same "now" that  
produced GR or CoL49. There's no reason for Pynchon to attempt to  
please James Woods either—he's earned the right to break any rule of  
'good writing' he chooses to. What appalls me about these critics is  
that they are placing themselves above the author—instead of asking  
why Pynchon chose to change style and content and judge these post GR  
books on their own terms, they choose instead to savage writing they  
can't connect with and might not even comprehend.

	. . .I have to scratch my head when I read reviews describing
	Inherent Vice as “a beach read,” a “page-turner,” a “breezy work
	of genre fiction,” an “amusing snapshot.” This convoluted jeu de
	cannibas is less a page-turner than a mind-twister, and just as
	marijuana can make a minute feel like an hour, Pynchon can
	make his novel’s 369 pages feel like 800. The California setting
	and counterculture ambience recall his most accessible novel,
	Vineland (1990), but that one’s a lark by comparison. To
	properly apprehend Inherent Vice you have to access, inhabit,
	and more or less disappear into the pot-befogged brain of its
	private eye protagonist, Larry “Doc” Sportello. As you trace your
	way through the holes and fissures, nooks and crannies of
	narrative, it’s like trying to make sense of fragments laid out on
	a sheet of paper resembling the one Doc inserts in his Olivetti
	that “appeared to have been used repeatedly for some strange
	compulsive origami.” Things begin to make sense only when
	you realize that Pynchon is creating his own stoned aesthetic;
	he wants to disorient you. . .

	In and Out of the Fog:
	Inhaling Thomas Pynchon’s “Inherent Vice”
	Stuart Mitchner
	http://www.towntopics.com/sep0209/book.php

> On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 9:32 AM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I think these are all fair criticisms.

I think these are knee-jerk reactions.

>> On 9/22/09, malignd at aol.com <malignd at aol.com> wrote:
>>> Let's look at this again.
>>>
>>>   ''I'm Chlorinda, what'll it be," A waitress in a combination  
>>> Nehru jacket and Hawaiian-print shirt, just long enough to qualify  
>>> as a minidress, and with a set of vibes that didn't help sharpen  
>>> anybody's appetite.
>>>
>>> [What is a "set" of vibes?]

"A set of vibes" is your typical Pynchonian pun, and anyone who is too  
dense to make that leap has already turned off their critical  
facilities. Like most Pynchon puns they work on more than the simple  
level of inducing groans.

On Sep 23, 2009, at 8:35 AM, Keith wrote:

> It's surferspeak for the bad vibes she sends out. To a surfer
> those vibrations are like waves....a set of waves.....a set of vibes.

Remember that Coy Harlingen is a Jazz musician who wandered into Surf  
music as a paying gig. Doc ran into the theoretically deceased Coy  
just six pages back. So the cross-reference to a vibraphone—a Jazz  
instrument if ever there was—is apt and perfectly Pynchonian.

One thing the author points out and repeats in IV is the old Hippie  
game of playing stupid, an intellectual form of "Playing Possum." If  
you've ever been in that neck of the woods you've seen that behavior.  
It's certainly relevant to this book.