IVIV: Inherent Vice WIKI/Raymond Chandler

[David Meyer]

Is Doc cynical? I found him unimpeachably optimistic and good humored.



-- Sent from my Palm Pixi
Robin Landseadel wrote:

	Page 97



	Philip Marlowe



	Raymond Chandler's famous detective, featured in Chandler's

	many novels set in LA, including The Big Sleep(1939; his first

	appearance), Farewell My Lovely, and The Long Goodbye. [2]

	There are many important parallels between Pynchon's Doc

	and Chandler's Marlowe, especially his world-weariness, his

	fondness for certain drugs of choice, and a penchant for

	cracking wise and getting beaten up and worse. (John D.

	MacDonald's fictional detective Travis McGee is also an

	important predecessor; see below). Of all Chandler's fiction,

	Farewell My Lovely (1940), which many think is Chandler's

	best, may be most relevant for the plot and themes of Inherent

	Vice. For instance, in that novel Marlowe stays in a hotel in

	Venice Beach before going out to Laird Brunette's offshore

	gambling boat, the Montecino. Farewell My Lovely also has

	"rehab" centers that serve as a front for torture and murder;

	characters with hidden identities; an impossibly convoluted plot;

	and a literary style that features striking metaphors, similes, and

	literary allusions. Marlowe is, like Doc, a dark mixture of

	cynicism, doggedness, and indifference--yet his goodness and

	inherent virtues can't be killed. To trace the parallels with

	Chandler's Marlowe, though, is to see how fully Pynchon has

	transformed and deepened the generic conventions of 1930s

	and '40s detective fiction (and film noir inspired by it) even as

	he pays homage to these.



http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_7



	". . .  Cause PIs are doomed, man," Doc continuing his earlier

	thought, "you could've seen it coming for years, in the movies,

	on the tube. Once there was all these great old PIs-Philip

	Marlowe, Sam Spade, the shamus of shamuses Johnny

	Staccato, always smarter and more professional than the cops,

	always end up solvin the crime while the cops are followin

	wrong leads and gettin in the way."



	"Coming in at the end to put the cuffs on."



	"Yeah, but nowadays it's all you see anymore is cops, the tube

	is saturated with fuckin cop shows, just being regular guys, only

	tryin to do their job, folks, no more threat to nobody's freedom

	than some dad in a sitcom. Right. Get the viewer population so

	cop-happy they're beggin to be run in. Good-bye Johnny

	Staccato, welcome and while you're at it please kick my door

	down, Steve McGarrett. Meantime out here in the real world

	most of us private flatfoots can't even make the rent."



	"So why do you stay in the business? Why not get a houseboat

	up in the Sacramento Delta-smoke, drink, fish, fuck, you know,

	what old guys do. "



	"Don't forget piss and moan."

	IV: 97


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