Downey on Inherent Vice

[Michael Bailey]

 Joseph Tracy  wrote:
> Of course I disagree on this one. Part of the point of digressions with P is that they aren't disconnected  side trips but the only way to understand the world. In IV all the digressions circle around the interconnected power relations that led to the killing  of Glenn Charlock. I see no dead ends but an accumulation of clues that clearly point beyond  the hired killers Puck and Adrian Prussia, just as Taguba's report  pointed far beyond the low level torturers in Abu Graibh. The point is partly that  getting away with murder is just a matter of  leverage and connections.  I think another point that IV makes  is that America's  intolerance for complexity makes understanding or reforming the spread of criminal behavior impossible.  This is terrain the Shakespeare explored in his better tragedies.  I seem to be among the few who thought IV was a kick -ass  post modern detective story and left reasonably intact, will make a long wacky kick-ass movie. I wish it was the Coens, which is what I have always argued P had in mind, but hey, there's a lot to work with here, let's hope they don't fuck it up. Still it will be hard to compress into a movie. It should be a TV maxi-series, with commentary by p-listers, Lisa Simpson, police investigators and college professors  all wearing paper bags.
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wow, great idea!  nice post.
I think, too, that Doc's accommodation to the power structure bears
teasing out the possible connections - even as far as to bring the
preterite-elect notions from the other thread and the other books...
binary organizing principle
trust or not to trust, Doc's going to trust them...on his terms...sort of...

I was going to pick out some poetic passages in IV, I can't believe I
don't have a copy of GR or IV in the house, I've given them as
presents or something...
must to bookstore, avaunt and aroint me thence and thither...