INHERENT VICE - Thomas Pynchon - Fiction

[Robin Landseadel]

On Jan 2, 2010, at 5:05 AM, alice wellintown wrote:

> I'd suggest any other P novel but IV. At least VL has Prairie and she
> is the "teen protagonist" sort of coming of age. Seems more
> appropriate. Can 13-year-old kids dig all that "strange sex" and
> parody in IV?

Pish & Tosh! Of course they can!—What is more ridiculous then Grampa  
Doper van Winkle's stoned adventures among the Acedia Squad? Strange  
sex is all over teen comedies, what is "American Pie", what is this  
whole "Vampire" teen meme anyway if not a parable about teen sex? And  
parody is all over teen comedy, it's one of the lower forms of humor  
after all.

> Doubt it. I'm still wondering if, since I read IV as
> having an unreliable narrator, is a work that, while ostensibly sold
> to the beach reader. . .

naaah, it was sold to nerdy lit-crit types who look down at beach  
readers, all part of an elaborate plan.

> , isn't an elaborate hoax in the tradition of Poe
> and Melville. Maybe it's both a poor parody of a potboiling beach read
> and a hoax.

Not at all. Like some reviewer said of CoL49, the real mystery is the  
writer. The real P.I. question inside of Inherent Vice is "How did a  
nice Cornell grad get caught up in a mess like this?" It's not like  
the author is being all that "Coy" about where he's been and what he's  
been doing down there.

> Maybe it's just what Melville called "cash" or a book that
> the author would rather not admit he pushed out on the world. Yeah,
> that's it.

"I like to call this case 'number Sick, Sick, Sick'." [sic.] And have  
no doubt that this sit-com noir was burbling in TRP's brain for the  
longest time of all of 'em. Nope, reads as fully developed, complete  
onto itself and clearly semi-autobiographical. Lot a kid could learn  
from that.

> So pushing it on a kid reader seems wrong. There are a
> million books that kid might better spend the time with. M&D is a fine
> read for a bright teen.

But too dense for adults. And it's not really for a "bright teen", T  
'n A, more like a prodigy simply based on language and vocabulary  
issues. Unless Cervantes is your idea of a beach read.

> At least she would learn something about
> America. IV has little of the depth and historical perspective that VL
> provides.

Are you kidding? Perhaps out of your friggin' mind? Oodles of lessons  
in American history. Maybe not the lessons you want to teach America's  
youth, but certainly lessons I want to teach America's youth. Of  
course it's easy enough to shake the history out from TRP's usual  
"literary"—as in "make it literary"—concerns. But the lessons in  
American history are all on the surface, like oil on velvet, like the  
arrows that point to 7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38, like the joint in  
the Tommy's Burger, like the black-light refulgence of "South Bay" in  
Gordita Beach.

> Even Lot49, P's second orphan anmd weakest work would be a
> better recommendation.

Well, it's clear that CoL49/VL & IV will be taught together as a  
trilogy in the very near future, seeing as they are all set in  
California and concerned with the C.I.A. to a greater degree than the  
other books. Sleuthing/Spying/"Intelligence" are central concerns of  
all of TRP's tales, but the CIA applies in a specific way to the  
California Trilogy, none moreso than Inherent Vice. I've no doubt  
there's plenty of veiled autobiography in all three and in part that's  
the reason the CIA has that big of a part to play in these three books,

> On Sat, Jan 2, 2010 at 1:48 AM, Otto <ottosell at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> "For any thirteen-year-olds out there who may be about to give  
>> Pynchon
>> a try, I'd recommend it."
>>
>>
>> 2010/1/2 Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>:
>>> http://bibliotomy.blogspot.com/2010/01/inherent-vice-thomas-pynchon-fiction.html