Greil Marcus: IV & "L.A. Women"

[Paul Nightingale]

"... the instant Doc turned thirty, which would be any minute now ..."
(199).

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Bekah
Sent: 12 December 2011 19:48
To: rich; Robert Mahnke
Cc: "pynchon-l at waste.org"
Subject: Re: Greil Marcus: IV & "L.A. Women"

Can I agree with both of you?   

L.A. Woman has the whole darkening, Manson era  LA scene circa 1970 (because
that's who they were!).   And yes,  I feel that same spirit, ambiance,
mood,  in Inherent Vice.  This is a compliment to Pynchon imo -  he got it
right.  

But like Rich,   I thought Doc was a bit older - he tended to wander off and
visit the jazz bars,  he was certainly no teen-ager,  no young wanna-be rock
star.   Doc seemed like an older brother to the actual L.A. nights
participants like Shasta,  Coy Harlingen and Japonica Fenway (others) ,  and
maybe a year or two younger than Bigfoot and Mickey Wolfmann,  while quite a
bit younger than Crocker Fenway.   Pynchon was 33 years old when he lived in
the area in 1970 -  I'd put Doc at about 29 - (never trust anyone over 30.) 

I had to stir some Door juices  with:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=eOTwcrQFjuw&feature=endscreen

and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo6Es-itLg0&feature=related
(better music and with some cars and a bit of the city but a few parts of it
are pretty stupid) 

Bekah



On Dec 12, 2011, at 10:58 AM, rich wrote:

> is Sportello that young? thought he was a bit older than that. I could be
wrong
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 11:55 AM, Robert Mahnke <rpmahnke at gmail.com>
wrote:
> You write that you can hear "L.A. Woman" being played "between every
> other line" of Thomas Pynchon's 2009 Los Angeles detective novel
> Inherent Vice. Could you talk about why you made the correlation
> between Pynchon's work and that song?
> 
> "L.A. Woman" is recorded in 1970 and comes out in 1971. Inherent Vice
> is set in 1970, just as the Manson trial is about to begin. And
> both-the book explicitly and the song not explicitly-is really
> shadowed by Charles Manson, by the crimes he and his family committed,
> and the specter of more crimes of death and destruction and revenge
> whether for real reasons or completely random, is just hanging over
> Los Angeles and a lot of the country at that moment. And both
> Pynchon's book and "L.A. Woman" seem to capture both that sense of
> dread and fear, but also a sense of the absurd, the ridiculousness,
> the craziness of that moment too, and to laugh at it. "L.A. Woman" is
> a very funny, loose, free, open piece of music, and Pynchon's novel is
> hilarious and scary and upsetting and confusing. And its hero is an
> almost 30-year-old private eye named Doc Sportello, and he's part of
> the atmosphere in the song "L.A. Woman." He's the kind of person whose
> radio plays Doors songs. And maybe he's too cool to be a fan of the
> band. Who knows? That's not the point. Both Pynchon and The Doors are
> drawing maps of L.A., one in a song and one in a detective story.
> 
>
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/12/greil-marcus-on-why
-the-doors-still-matter/249697/
>