Thomas 1st (first) edition [Hardcover(2009)] - Inherent Vice by Pynchon

OK, OK, I agree this is "joyous romp throught he 60's," but after the first 100 pages it becomes a bit tiresome. Yes, I too get a kick out of both the 60's references and the So Cal references - I was part of them both - but the same effect could have been had in a short story.

This is a great book in much the same way that "Ulysses" was a great book - both are a pain in the ass to read. Maybe a flashback to that windowpane I took in '71 would help. If "Inherent Vice" is random, at least it's shallow.

If you want to laugh, and don't mind laughing at the same gags for 369 pages, this one is for you. Personally, I'll take my need for high smart-ass dialogue balanced by a well crafted plot, complex characterizations and a confrontation with social dilemmas. Pynchon couldn't carry James Lee Burke's typewriter (or laptop, or whatever.)

Larry "Doc" Sportello is a pot head... acid freak... P.I. (Private Investigator) in Los Angeles during the drug drenched sixties. When his ex-girl friend Shasta shows up after being incommunicado for over a year... a chain of events unfolds... that simultaneously... and non-concurrently... spews forth in different... and parallel directions... on so many levels... that the protagonist Doc... and the author... at times leave the reader scratching their head... as to what the heck is going on... and who the heck is actually saying and thinking... what is being thought... and what acts are actually occurring. Embellishing that very ambiance is the fact that Doc continually says... or thinks... that he really doesn't know whether he actually saw what he saw... or he was simply having an acid flashback.

The name of Doc's business is LSD... which stands for "Location, Surveillance, Detection"... and he smokes more weed than the combined inhalation of one-hundred cloned "Snoop-Dogs". Doc's multi-faceted investigations regarding a missing real estate mogul and reportedly dead musician... mushrooms (not meant in a drug sense here... but certainly is throughout the book) into a haze of crooked cops... heroine dealers... hit men... sleazy women... and enough paranoia... to spook the entire population of China... in addition to the people that are looking over your shoulder whenever you turn around to read this review. The author does a nice job of recreating the minutiae of sixties Los Angeles including out of business retail chains... TV series and old movies. The constant use of off-the-wall names such as Riggs Warbling... Special Agent Flatweed... Special Agent Borderline... Clancy Charlock... Puck Beaverton... and Trillium Fortnight... are a nice little residual touch. But there are numerous portions of the book that are "scattered"... where it's extremely difficult to know who's saying or thinking what... and so at times it became a little laborious for the reader... thus affecting the flow of the story.

V by Pynchon is one of my all-time favorites. He went out of genre to write this: felt like he needed the money. instead go get Chandler or, even better Hammet. this was awful. so bad I destroyed my copy, so it could go no further than my eyes. Uugghh.

I have read Pynchon since the early 1970s. The complexity and irony overlaying thorough research on a tightly twisted story is what I came to expect. It is not what I got. It was more like Picasso being short of cash and throughing together some lines on a canvas for a pay day. If this was a normal hack writer, I would have given it three or four stars. There is a reference to a disappearing island in the Pacific, Lemuria, which in Tom's other books would have been fully developed and played some material role in the story. In this book, it pops in and out, like a bobber on a fish line, but you can't reel it in.

Tom, I'm lightly entertained but disappointed.

When the store recommends a book, I take notice. I should have taken more notice of what the reviews had to say. My bad. It seems that readers either love it or hate it. I fall in the later category. It is not a 'fun ride through the 1960's". As I remember the 60's, if someone was using as much dope as this character, he'd end up being the guy sleeping on the sidewalk that everyone had to walk over.

I got through about 20% of the book and then gave myself permission to erase it off my Kindle. Seriously, what garbage. It scares me that so many people loved it.

Given the number of good to great books out there - pass on this one. Even a mediocre read is 100 times better.

I wanted to like this story because of the time frame. The seventies were a time of sex, drugs and rock and roll. It was okay to protest war, have long hair and be cool. What's not cool is this book. The dialogue felt forced and artificial from the very beginning. An early scene with the lead character and a past girlfriend felt like the same person was in the room. I could write a hippie chick way better. It's like the author was trying so hard to be cool which isn't cool. Was he even there? Hopefully, the movie is better .

If you view completing a difficult-to-read book as an achievement, as appears to be the case for many of the positive reviewers on this site, then you should buy this book.

However, if you value well-written dialogue, where you can follow who is saying what, and where you are not left scratching your head about some arcane pop culture reference, then you will probably be frustrated by this book. I put it down and picked it up again twice in an ill-conceived attempt to prove I could get through it. I finally gave up for good two-thirds of the way through. Why should I work so hard to follow an unremarkable murder mystery, when there are thousands of other unremarkable murder mysteries that don't require so much effort.

The funny thing is, I really wanted to like this book. I lived in the story's LA beach towns a few years after the story is set. It could have been great fun. It wasn't.

Again, if effort appeals to you, then you will love this book. However, if you already work hard all day long, and want a book to create a pleasant diversion, this one ain't it.

I read this because I had seen it had been made into a movie. As a fan of the director of the film, I assumed that story would interesting and I would have no problem finishing this book quite quickly. It took me much longer to complete than I anticipated. The dialogue is so difficult to follow, that I had to read whole pages twice or even three times to try and keep up with who was saying what. This is my first encounter with a book about drug usage and I learned quickly that story telling with drugs and hallucinations are better left to movies or television. The book likes to go off on tangents about something someone might think about when they are under the influence of drugs, but reading it with a sober mind only leads to confusion and disinterest. I eventually powered through this and decided to not read any pages twice, the author did a terrible job of making it clear who was talking, so I just went with it and stopped caring.

Stay away from this book. It did nothing but irritate me and make me really look forward to reading anything else afterwards.

I am a fan of detective stories and have not read any of this author's works when I came across a Time Mag review. It had called this a light summer read with less confusing characters and convoluted story line than most of his works. Well I found the story line novel and somewhat engaging but the pseudo Hippy speak was most grading and by the mid point I was almost wishing it would end. But it did pick up toward the end and finished with a satisfactory conclusion. Would I read another? Well I'd most likely pick up a Connelly book 1st.

This book was really disappointing. I'm a fan of mystery noir, but this novel had so many flaws! I admit, Pynchon has great writing style. He also has some hilarious bits. So for the first chapter, I thought this book might be great. But he has absolutely no characterization, no morality, no substance, no depth. The plot wanders around nonsensically and was very difficult to follow. The main character, Doc, is shallow and undeveloped. Much of the time, Doc is stoned or on an acid trip; it feels like the author was in a similarly altered state when writing this book.

Some people do say that this text should be in the literary canon, building on The Maltese Falcon and Double Indemnity. Some call it "stoner noir." However, I hated this book and would not have finished it if it had not been assigned for class. Doc, the protagonist, is in a drug-induced haze for the majority of the novel, making it so he only pays attention to certain details. It's written in a way to make the reader zone out, rather than to contemplate on the narrative style. Some may comment that it brings up the divided self, paranoia, and questions about why the hippie era ended. I don't feel that this novel builds on any of those themes; it just employs them. The women are all interchangeable and they are mere sex objects. This perspective of women may be to make readers feel like they are in the 1970s, but there could be at least one strong woman, especially since it was published in the 21st century.

Author is an Elmore Leonard Want-a-be. Way too thin a story line, Far, far too much 60's slang to the point of being ridiculous. Main protagonist is an interesting character, but I wouldn't bother with this one at all.

If this were not a Pynchon novel, no publisher would have printed it. It is filled with anachronisms and prescient references that no one would have made at the time. Police use computers -- admittedly antique ones -- to get information in a way that didn't become common for decades -- and at the urging of the protagonist.
ARPAnet, forerunner of the internet, is discussed as if everyone knows about it and it didn't even make an appearance in real life until 1969. It was an unlikely contender for survival but pynchon's characters ballyhoo it.

There are unsexy sex scenes and characters who make brief appearances but don't have any resolution of their reason for being there.

Save your time and money because pynchon has wasted his.

Slowest book I have EVER read. Would never have finished it if I hadn't paid for it.
Do not recommend to anyone under the age of 65 and then only if they were into the drug scene in California.
This is only for the "been there, done that" reader.

The beginning strikes me as labored writing (oftentimes difficult to understand and licentious in conventional grammatical construction and meter) serving as a pretense for the authors' desire to visit the genre. I am an avid fiction reader. The volumes I have read , sadly, occupy a large footprint on the planet. Every once in a while, though, a fiction work will serve as a catalyst to flip my switch; making me realize all fiction is made up. Once my switch is flipped, I cant justify reading fiction and then switch to non-fiction, for a while, in pursuit of "useful" information. This novel has directly caused the feeling that fiction is useless; and the feeling has crept up upon me on little cat feet. My extremities are tingling with the feeling that Socrates had after drinking a cup of hemlock. I am 120 pages in now. Other reviewers say TP is an acquired taste. After enduring songs, bad acid trips and a caricature of a plot; I unequivocally state INHERENT VICE tastes sour. I hold little hope of redemption and soldier on to the finish line with as much relish as I have when I must use a plunger on a feces- impacted toilet bowl. The problem here is that form has trumped substance. The whole novel is one long inside joke. The plot is nonsensical and lacks urgency and direction. The characters are flat at best and absurd Rowan & Martin pop-up cameos at worst. The whole experience feels as if seen through a glass, darkly. For the finest example of the genre today readers are urged to spend their hard earned coin on Steven M. Thomas CRIMINAL KARMA. Steven M. Thomas is a poet and philosopher expounding on SoCal. He has something worthwhile to say and he knows how to say it. Steven M. Thomas is the finest talent laboring in this space. I am 200 pages in and have 160 pages to go. Reading this book feels like a sentence in a frozen Soviet gulag. It is hard time. In conclusion, it's not me it's YOU. This book is unreadable. It is the worst book I have read since Randy Wayne White HUNTERS MOON. Over the last 50 pages I glimpsed a penumbra of good writing; on the whole though, I re-iterate that any literary merit is obscured by a psychedelic kalaidescope of hazy plot lines, characters and sentence structure. AVOID.

I never put books down, but had to make an exception. I like Pynchon, but this was just a mess. Every chapter was another empty character, a plot stuck in neutral and no sign that the tangle would ever come together. If the last quarter makes it all worthwhile, then so be it... I'll have to live in ignorance.

My initiation into Pynchon, if you can believe it. Overall: He's not just a good writer but a great writer. Guess I'll take a stab at Gravity's Rainbow.

What I like: the voice (some reviewers call it atmosphere; I'd say Pynchon has a perfect ear or more accurately perfect imagined ear for the CA beach scene of that era), the characters (deftly drawn, if sometimes getting lost only to turn up later here and there), the humor (sometimes laugh out loud, more often deeply wry), the marvelous descriptions including metaphors that knock my socks off. He's one of the finest writers I've encountered in my 72 years. He brings crime fiction to a new level-- as good as (while entirely different than) Scott Turow.

What I don't like: IV is basically your long, belabored wet dream. Replete with snatches of pure, gratuitous, adolescent fantasy. Real men when stoned have a hard time getting hardons. Real women not your mother aunt or tragic female client don't, to a woman, offer you their asses upon saying hello. 'Sixties CA wasn't all that free wheeling. I only read about 30 of the the store reviews, but of those 30 not one has commented on IV's sleaze aspect. Pynchon isn't a good writer but a great writer. He doesn't have to wallow. This is the kind of slumming that explains our society of sex addiction and pervasive harassment. This is the stuff my father used to read, then take out his fantasies on his children. And yet... and yet... Pynchon's such a craftsman that I'll probably try one more book.

Where was the plot? Where was the suspense? If u wanted a history lesson of how much drugs and sex happened in the era he writes about, go right ahead. Just terrible. Completely wasted a portion of my life because I can't stop reading what I started. No true developing story at all!!!

“Inherent Vice” has a loose and baggy detective plot, seemingly created not so much to drive the story but for the author to nudge it along as one would push a toy sailboat across a rippling pond. It is mainly about meeting dozens of quirky characters and living a heavy sense of atmosphere a la Gordita (supposedly based on Manhattan) Beach, California, in 1970. Main character Doc Sportello describes the term inherent vice as "a glittering mosaic of doubt." Life is not cut and dried. It's messy, like this novel. Pynchon’s approach in writing here does not seem to be accuracy so much as to sling various colors of paint at the wall to see what sticks and to give readers a general feeling as to what hanging with Doc might be at this point in time. Pynchon hangs a frame askew on it and all it’s messy, sloppy glory, and we willingly disregard the splatters and blank spots around the edges. It’s gorgeously layered, it doesn’t have to make complete sense, and it’s a heck of a lot of fun.

Part of the fun is reading about some obscure song on the radio or in the background and then looking it up on iTunes to hear it in real life. Fapardokly's Super Market is one example. All of the music is good, even the songs that are made up. One imaginary hit playing on Pynchon’s radio of the imagination, “Soul Gidget” by Meatball Flag, is one I would dearly love to hear for real. The same goes for the fictional TV movie Doc is watching called “Godzilligan's Island,” sure to be a cult classic if it ever actually existed.

There are several anachronisms in the plot, and spotting them is part of the entertainment. One is where Doc engages a friend to use a primitive Internet (the ARPANET) to do detective research in 1970. Although technically possible, I think that it is pretty unlikely. ARPANET was brand new in 1970, and many probably don't know that, so maybe this mention can be chalked up to reader education. Another involves the name of basketball Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who was still known as Lew Alcindor in 1970 - he changed his name in 1971. Two more off the top of my head: I'm pretty sure Mavericks was not a known surf spot in 1970, and hundred-channel cable TV in 1970 in a low rent hotel out in the middle of the Nevada desert is rather questionable.

I think the book “Inherent Vice” works much better than the movie, which usually seems to be the case with books (but not always – see “American Sniper.”) I felt that one of the problems with the film was that it needed to show, and not tell so much with extended exposition. This is where the book shines from lack of such constraint. It seems to know that the plot doesn’t matter so much, where the film is much more diligent in this regard. One thing that the movie has to leave out due to time constraints is Doc’s side trip to Las Vegas, which I feel is a highlight of the story.

If I have problem with the book it is that it has too many characters. It seems that another goofy character pops up on every page, and it’s hard to keep them all straight, especially when a few disappear after our introduction to them and then reappear much later in the novel, sending us scrambling to figure out who they are.

Yes “Inherent Vice” is a bit of a shaggy dog story, but the whole point of it all, I think, is to immerse the reader in the clothes of a uniquely colorful time and place and to allow them to wear them around for a while. This Pynchon does very well here. The question then becomes, “Is this approach enough to carry an entire book?” I think so, to a certain extent. Just don’t go in expecting a tight plot-driven narrative. Go in to explore and to hang with Doc for a while, and you’ll have a lot of fun.

I loved this book. And like Doc Sportello after a particularly groovy joint, I may have a hard time of fully expressing why. First and foremost, it was one of the funniest books I've ever read. Beyond that it had to do with the overall feeling of the book.

Pynchon writes with a descriptive beauty that I have only come across a handful of times in my reading. I actually experienced somewhat of a learning curve when I started Inherent Vice -- not only did I have to get used to Pynchon's stylish prose, but also the stoned meanderings of Doc himself. This book is a little unorthodox in its storytelling in that it isn't always extremely straight-forward (in fact, it hardly ever is). Doc may be meeting with some key player in a case he's working on, but instead of getting a good section of plot-advancing dialogue, Doc may spend a few pages describing the way someone's pants remind him of an old lover. Or how the wallpaper in a room is giving him an acid flashback. After the initial shock of this, I sort of fell in love with Pynchon's prose and let the story carry me along. I left my expectations at the door.

Pynchon also has a habit (at least in this book, I've yet to read his others though I'll soon remedy that) of switching viewpoints in the middle of a dialogue. One character will be relaying some information to Doc, and the next thing you know you are experiencing the conversation as it happened from that initial character's viewpoint. Only to be brought back into the conversation between said character and Doc again when Doc pays attention enough to fire a question back. I've never seen that done before, but the thing is it fits so well with Doc's character and mind-state that it just works.

Beyond the writing itself it was just very easy to get sucked into a late 60's, early 70's Los Angeles. Especially from Doc's viewpoint -- hippie private eye with friends on both sides of the law. He's incredibly charismatic and despite lighting up every ten minutes, an efficient investigator. My only regret when it comes to Inherent Vice is that it wasn't longer. Now, time to check out the movie and see how Joaquin Phoenix pulls off Larry Sportello.

I had trouble staying with this one, and I can understand why the other reviews here are rather polarizing. I went into it not knowing much of anything other than that P.T. Anderson has adapted it into a film, and I wanted to read it before I saw the movie. I have also never read Pynchon before, and this may have been an odd book to start with as it is apparently outside of his usual style.

The plot was tricky to follow in the sense that it begins as a fairly straight-forward mystery, but things get complicated when character upon character are introduced and it's not immediately apparent if they are important to the story or merely colorful distractions. While things eventually tie together and you come to learn who is really connected to the plot and what details are important, there are also plenty of stories from various characters that are ultimately pointless other than that they represent the culture and attitude of the 1970's and are often funny in their absurdity. The book is funny, without a doubt, and has enough pop culture references to keep things interesting most of the time, but following the mystery can get muddled when Doc Sportello is frequently stopping to get high and there are long passages of drug-addled existential gibberish. I finally realized I had to stop trying to keep track of every detail and just go along for the ride, which eventually paid off.

I can see the pure talent of the author in this book, and I do believe that technically it is a good piece of work, it just felt a little high-brow for me (somehow absurd humor and satire can also be too literary for its own good). While it started as a fun and very funny book, it ultimately became tedious and tangled. High-profile critics who raved about the book would probably just say I was too daft to understand it, and perhaps they're right.

I hope this book is not your typical Thomas Pynchon novel, because, frankly, I do not feel that I have consumed a great piece of literature. It is sort of a cross between an Elmore Leonard novel and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road but lacking the virtues of either. It’s 1970, and Los Angeles (or thereabouts) private eye Doc Sportello never turns down an opportunity to smoke some weed or drop some acid. How he manages to make a living in this line of work in his state of consciousness is somewhat of a mystery, but he is amazingly resourceful and does manage to keep his wits about him somehow, most of the time. The storyline, though, is so convoluted that I couldn’t quite follow it, much less describe it here. Basically, Doc’s former girlfriend Shasta Fay has taken up with married real estate mogul Mickey Wolfmann and has come to Doc for help in keeping Mickey from being committed to a mental institution. Then both Mickey and Shasta Fay disappear, possibly kidnapped by a sinister syndicate called the Golden Fang. As a counterpoint to their disappearance, a musician/informant who supposedly overdosed seems to have resurfaced but fears for his life and the well-being of his family. Meanwhile, Doc’s longtime nemesis, LAPD’s own “Bigfoot” Bjornsen, has pegged Doc as a possible murderer, so that wherever Doc goes, Bigfoot is lurking somewhere nearby. This kind of craziness is not really my thing, and sometimes it’s hard to distinguish reality from Doc’s hallucinations. The names of the characters (Vincent Indelicato, for example) alone are enough to dilute the seriousness, if any, of the subject matter. So if you’re in the mood for a detective story with a bit of silliness and a 60s/70s vibe, this just might be the ticket.

This book is awful. The characters are so one dimensional that you can't get into them at all. The dialogue is so phony. Did every person in the late 60's really say "groovy" every third sentence? The plot is hard to follow with many characters drifting in and out of the story. Save your money and buy any other book.

larry spoleto, known as doc, is a private eye. in one scene, he is riding with a group with divergent personalities through the streets of hollywood, and as the car passes a record shop with listening booths in which the listeners face the street, one of doc’s crew, high on some drug, comments that the varied-dressed music listeners wearing headphones which must be named headphones since they are on the heads of heads. paranoid observations and dope dreams are a big part of this novel.

an anthropologist would be the suitable guide to the los angeles beach front community of the late 1960s and 1970s, settled by drifters, runaways, posers, surfers, ex-cons and drop-outs joined together to escape straight society. marijuana and drugs define a large demographic of the sub-culture, also bright colors and motion, dopers watch a lot of television in INHERENT VICE, and listen to a lot of music, which has pynchon sharing song lyrics written by him exclusively for the novel.

even doc, counter culture private investigator ingests what’s readily available, hashish, alcoholic concoctions with exotic names, while working a case, pro bono, for shasta, one of his ex-girlfriends. shasta is involved with a wealthy married man, when she’s approached by his wife and the wife’s lover, who want shasta to help them with a scheme to get the husband out of the way. the reluctant shasta contacts doc to help her with the situation certain to get out of hand.

the sleuth novel would seem ideal for pynchon, his characters in previous novels have always been dreamers, lost in other zones, on complex quests. in INHERENT VICE, he adds a unique spin, the drug culture and their interaction with the straight world for gravitas, but often doc is moving from one high scene to another, with each scene described for far out effects, which soon becomes tiring.

This book must have been written by a cute undergraduate student working under Pynchon's wing. The stoner jokes are not funny. The zeitgeist of the sixties is clearly contrived. This is an attempt to find the groove that Tom Wolfe, Tom Robbins and to a lesser extent Vonnegut so adeptly mined. Pychon's attempt however is a miserable failure. If this MS had been submitted by an unpublished writer it would have been universally rejected. I left my copy in hotel room trash can. Really pathetic.
P.S. I have read V, Gravity's Rainbow, The Crying of Lot 49 which are all vastly superior works.

I bought this book because it was my bookclub pick and I regret every penny I spent on it. No one in our entire bookclub could finish it and we are all avid readers. It was completely painful to try and slog through the contrived dialogue and nonsensical plot. Blech - it was worse than a really bad 1960's cop show, which I assume was what the author was modeling this story after in some way. This isn't even worth checking out from the library.

Inherent Vice continues Thomas Pynchon’s trope-drenched interrogation into California as American edge-site perpetually situated on the brink of catastrophe, metamorphosis, or redemption. This “cop-happy” state of excess, dread, corruption, and ecstasy functions as a crazed contact-zone where the novelist has long plotted, from The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) with its hyper-hermeneutic quest for decoding, to Vineland (1990)-- “paranoia strikes deep” warned the Buffalo Springfield—the hopes and fears for American-Becoming-Empire. Following upon embedded American Puritan figurations of binary election/depravity but giving it all a more post-Beat semiotic cast as some soul-hunger for transformation, Pynchon the Brilliant once again tracks this decades-long battle for the soul of America between what he calls the non-flatland Preterite (surfers, dopers, fun-seekers, rockers, hippie riff-raff, drifters, seekers, Indians, the poor multitudes, restless homemakers in little bars) versus the “straightworld” Elect (land developers, bankers, tax-dodging dentists, big shots, police within police, loan sharks or worse). The Roads of Excess may lead simply to the Machinations of Empire and dissolve this U.S. binary into a community of lost souls.

I'm in a book club with 10 guys.... we actually read and finish every book we select; however, not a single member made it past page 100 of this dribble. This book is terrible. The dialogue blows, the author appears to be a wanna be stoner and the plot blows harder than a blow horn. I can't compare Inherent Vice to anything b/c I have never read anything as bad.

Thomas Pynchon is supposed to be a great author, but he clearly took a snoozer on this one and swung for hollywood vs. writing a good story.

In Thomas Pyncheon's sixties surfer noir novel INHERENT VICE, a laid-back private detective gets tangled up in a plot to kidnap a land developer when an ex-girlfriend comes to him for help.

When his ex-old lady, Shasta Fay Hepworth shows up at Doc Sportello's apartment on Gordita Beach, the pothead private eye thinks he might be hallucinating at first. In fact, she's really there and she's come to him for help because the guy she's sleeping with--a millionaire land developer--is being targeted by his wife and her lover in a scheme to put him in "the booby hatch" so they can steal his money. Before Doc knows what's happening, he's dealing with celebrity cops, construction projects that are gobbling up poor neighborhoods, a bogus rehab facility, and a man who may or may not have died from a heroin overdose. Not to mention a syndicate of dentists with their tax evasion scams.

It's all kind of complicated and convoluted but it's also a lot of fun and not at all what readers might expect from Pyncheon, whose other books include GRAVITY'S RAINBOW and THE CRYING OF LOT 49. Set in the tail end of the 60s, INHERENT VICE is a blast from the past that includes acutely observed social commentary and great, great characters that range from an angry young black man to Aryan biker gang members to Doc's friends and surrogate family who hang out at a local pizza place. His Aunt Reet is a woman ahead of her time, both in her embrace of technology and her disdain for the environmental exploitation represented by the missing millionaire.

Also a standout in the large cast of characters is a cop nicknamed "Bigfoot" who makes a good side living as an advertising pitchman. (His persona is clearly inspired by the legendary LA car salesman Cal Worthington, which is a nice little bit of local color for readers in Southern California.)

The book is filled with references to music and drugs and fashion (the women all wear print bikini bottoms and Country Joe and the Fish t-shirts) that really sell the period setting. Combine that setting with a story that involves unfaithful lovers and murderous intentions that's suffused with a purple haze of marijuana smoke and the result is a sunlit version of L.A. CONFIDENTIAL set a decade later with real estate rather than movies at its core.

Pyncheon is in a playful mood here and readers will enjoy playing along.

Groovy. From a glass half-full perspective, this book could have been entitled “Immanent Virtue”, the personification of which lies in Larry “Doc” Sportello, the main character. Doc provides the moral bedrock in the novel as he battles the competitive forces of power and wealth. He also is a truth seeker. Stepping aside a bit, I want to loosely define human morality. I see it as consisting of two parts: morals and ethics; both of which involve impacts to other humans, with morals concerned more with individuals, and ethics with a society of individuals. A person with good morals strives to treat others well; a person with good ethics strives to lead a fulfilling life within the constructs of society, whether that fulfillment comes from fellowship, family, accomplishment, accumulation of knowledge, optimization of natural talent, leadership, etc. Sometimes there is a conflict between individuals and society, between morals and ethics; prime historical examples include Socrates and Jesus: this is also Doc. As with most abstract distinctions, there is no black and white distinction between morals and ethics in the real world. The real world consists of an infinite complexity with immeasurable levels of nuance, overlap and shades of grey.

So, that is why we have a complex character like Doc, who acts as the moral center of the book, yet is a dope fiend, and a foil to law enforcement, seemingly weak in his contributions to the structure of society. On the other hand, we have pillars of society, the wealthy and the powerful, failing on the morals part of the equation. But Doc is also a truth seeker. Is it moral or ethical to be a seeker of the truth? Or both? Why is seeking truth important? Truth should be one of the bedrocks of society, and of individual relationships. And it is incorporated as trust. Doc opines that Bigfoot’s relationship of trust with his partner is the only real portion of his law enforcement career. Why, typically, the absence of trust in the larger constructions of society?

Along with the moral instinct, competitive instinct is also one of the bedrocks of human nature. It is primarily a selfish instinct, and it opposes the moral instinct. Digging deep, one could say that morality is rooted in the preservation of the species, and that the competitive instinct is rooted in preservation of the self. Abstracting from that depth, one could speculate that the concept of good is rooted in the instinct for species-preservation, and that the concept of evil is rooted in the instinct for self-preservation, leading to the notion that good and evil are fatally intertwined in the construct of human nature. And human nature is in the core of human society.

Back to the question of seeking the truth. Maintaining the balance between good and evil is, has always been, and will always be a chore of society. Extreme competitive endeavors that, for example, focus on wealth and power, tend to view truth as a tool to be used. It can be manipulated into a construct that has a façade of truth, the proverbial Potemkin village. This construction can then be presented as the truth, to serve a specific purpose. But for truth to be real, it needs to be an end, not the means to an end. One can suppose that the higher the stakes, regarding power or wealth or prestige, the lower the content of real truth. Perhaps this inverse relationship of stakes to truth is the reason behind the lack of trust in the larger constructions of society. Concrete examples of this looseness with the truth include political campaigns, where the pervasive and skewed ads deftly illustrate this principle, or media competitions to be the first out with the story, such as the recent mess of the Patriots Delflategate.

So perhaps, it takes a truth-seeking outsider like Doc to keep society honest, and to help maintain the proper balance between good and evil in its core, and likewise in the core of human nature (one could even say, the balance between Inherent Vice and Immanent Virtue). But if we are living in one of Vico’s democratic ages, then we don’t need such a savior or hero. Instead, if we view the final scene, where, ironically, the often invisible, but omnipresent and indiscriminate, connection to other individuals is unmasked by the fog, perhaps it is telling us that we all need to be moral “heroes” and truth-seekers, whether we live as an outsider or as an insider.

There’s an adage that has been originally attributed to Oliver Goldsmith which states that “Our greatest victory is not in never falling, but in rising each time we fall”. Perhaps our greatest victory as we go through life is to retain morality in our core. We inevitably meet immorality along the way, and see it victorious at times, even the majority of times. In childhood education, honesty and moral behavior are prioritized. However, in the real world of the grown-ups, their practice is not prevalent. Grown-ups are competing to survive, and competitive instincts can predominate. Thus, it is a challenge to maintain a moral core, and certainly a victory in life to do so.

his book drops you into the life of a private investigator named Doc who lives in Gordita Beach, in southern California. The book is written as though it is one in a series, referencing events that happened in the past and other cases Doc has worked on. I like that Pynchon has picked of these markers of the genre in which he is writing.
It is the very beginning of the 70s and Doc is a hippie. He is not the kind of hippie who goes on war protests or hides out with Black Panthers, but instead is what was probably the much more common type of hippie that smokes a lot of pot and finds himself friends with people who believe that a mythic island is going to rise out of the water off the coast or who send him on an acid trip in order to piece together the clues he has floating around in his brain. He is hired to fight a disappeared real estate mogul which links into a number of different conspiracies which were fun to thread together.
At times I felt like I was reading Hunter S. ThompsonFear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream...some of the same random, driving through the night running into random characters and taking various substances kind of vibe. Although there is more of a plot than the standard Hunter S. Thompson and, it also seems, a different kind of point. Although Doc is very much of the time in which he is living, there are significant clues that the author is commenting on the times from the future. The Manson murders weave throughout the book as background and signal the darker side of the hippie culture which is to turn even worse as the 70s progress. One of Doc's associates has found out how to log into an early version of the internet and forecasts a time when we will all be under constant surveillance.
I really enjoyed this book. I would say, however, that if you are super hung up on plot this might not be the book for you. It does have an interesting plot but it takes almost too much concentration to follow it. It is better just to appreciate the vibes that are being sent out by this book and the commentary that is offered on the era in which it takes place and our own era.

As a fan of Pynchon's prodigious and often inscrutable prose, reading Gravity's Rainbow oftentimes felt like some form of puritanical punishment instead of the superdense, richly rewarding experience it is.
Inherent Vice is a different species of Pynchon novel, a whole lot of Raymond Chandler, and not a hint of Finnegan's Wake-type pretension. It is actually his first truly accessible novel, steeped in 60's L.A. nostalgia that feels as if Pynchon may be offering up tainted glimpses of his own life, something highly uncharacteristic of the famously reclusive writer. It winds up being one of his best, smart, exciting, and almost moving. It reminded me of Mailers' shot at Noir with 'Tough Guys Don't Dance'... only better, of course. If you wanted to find Pynchon's polar opposite, look to Mailer. Whatever...

I just finished the novel Inherent Vice and then watched the movie. I liked the movie much better. In the book I got confused who was who. There were so many characters, many very similar in their eagerness to get wasted, and they sort of blended in to each other. Lots of what I thought were irrelevant subplots involving them too. I found myself getting really irritated with Doc. Like some of his trippy hallucinations were important comments on his personality, some just seemed like a waste of words.

"It was like finding the gateway to the past unguarded, unforbidden because it didn't have to be. Built into the act of return finally was this glittering mosaic of doubt."

Imagine a surfer-noir novel set in L.A. and environs in the spring of 1970 by Thomas Pynchon. Could anything be better? Answer: Inherent Vice is better! It's everything you could imagine, and then some. Every sentence is hugely entertaining, sort of the way Cormac McCarthy is entertaining, and also P.G. Wodehous. You just relish the diction. The plot is pure Chandler in its schematics: that is, characters are multiplied unnecessarily all for the dazzling color they give to the story; plot trots behind trying to keep up and just about succeeds in catching every character before they hit the ground. As in Chandler the characters who matter sort of only slowly emerge from the carnival, some very late: but that's the point of a carnival. Everyone matters to some gum-shoe or -sandal: we're concerned here with the ones that Marlowe or Doc are concerned with.

And Pynchon is so different from the writers I've lately been thinking about, writers who narrate the experience of narration. Reading Pynchon is a little like reading Shakespeare or Hammett: I'm just a wide-eyed reader again, not a person figuring out the experience of writing this book. I mean I am that sort of audience too for fun TV and Elmore Leonard and Neal Stephenson, for example. I like being just that. But for TV or Elmore Leonard I like because I can just enjoy the easy enjoyment of the thing. Whereas Pynchon requires -- no he doesn't require, he REWARDS -- the same kind of concentration I give Woolf or Geoff Dyer: a lot of concentration. But there's something wonderful about not concentrating on the experience of the book as an act of writing. You just concentrate for your own pleasure. And, man, he writes a good last line.

It's not that Pynchon as writer isn't an issue in the book. He is. But he's astonishingly good natured as a writer. What other real writers are? I can't think of any, not even Fielding.

Anyhow the first half of the book (when it's explaining something) repeats very occasionally -- sparsely even -- and very hauntingly two versions of the same phrase: "in those days"; "at that time." This plus a reference to Vineland as a place, plus one bracketed movie date at the end, are the only authorial self-references, the only sense that you have that an author is telling this to the reader instead of the voice coming off the page as part of the laid-back generosity of the narrative atmosphere. I love those phrases. They disappear from the second half, which is part of the very sadness the book's about: the end of an era, with Manson & Nixon (Doc must be called Doc partly as a descendent of Mason's, one of whose sons is called Doctor Isaac.)

Doc is slightly younger than Pynchon himself, pushing thirty in 1970, as we learn in a great, casually sad passage:

"Plastic trikes in the yards, people out watering the flowers and working on their cars, kids in the driveways shooting hoops, the high-frequency squeal of a TV sweep circuit through a screen door as Doc came up the path of the address he was looking for, to be followed by the more worldly sound, as he reached the front steps, of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour. According to Fritz, the sweep frequency was 15,750 cycles per second, and the instant Doc turned thirty, which would be any minute now, he would no longer be able to hear it. So this routine of American house approach had begun to hold for him a particular sadness." (P. 199)

Yes, I remember that routine. I thought TV's didn't do that anymore. But they do. Pynchon remembers this sound, which he can no longer hear, from forty-two years ago, when he reached the untrustworthy age of 30.

And yet the novel is entirely without self-pity, which might be why some of the smartest people I know don't like Doc much as a character: he's not made for pity: the book doesn't pity him either, it just lovingly recreates "those days," "that time" ("That time, O times!" as Cleopatra says) -- a time of endless betrayal as all times are for Pynchon, but a time when there were so many people to betray. The stoned hippie belief in innocence is ridiculous and yet something to cherish. Doc is cynical as all get-out, but still cherishes it, which means he's part of the innocence he's cynical about. He gets all this and still likes his world. You don't think people can really be like that? Pynchon is.

One of my favorite books. (The film was entertaining and enlightening too.) I've read the book twice and have watched the film three times. Though a tragicomedy set in the mid '70's in Southern California, the story is really timeless, the characters recognizable, Maybe I feel this way because I grew up in California, came of age during the '70's and spent some time along the coast, on the beach and traveling Northern California. The dry, ironical and occasional lol humor complements the story well. Let's face it - California was a trip then - a bummer and a psychedelic fantasy. (It's still a trip, but more of a narcoleptic-alcoholic nightmare now - a La La Land for predatory developers from the Mojave to the Cascades. I left over a decade ago.) No doubt I'll read the book and watch the film again. I particularly liked the exchange between "Doc" Sportello and Crocker Fenway at the country club - the film unfortunately truncates the complete exchange. I plan to read more Pynchon.

Did you miss the whole '60's scene? The hippie, wanna-be-free feeling of beachfront California? Fear not. Readers can revisit this environment in Thomas Pynchon's book, Inherent Vice. Pynchon fans will recognize his style here; a rambling story that meanders from cultural icon to cultural icon, taking the reader along to whatever destination Pynchon has in mind, entertaining them along the way.

Inherent Vice is the story of Doc Sportello, a private investigator who spends as little time working as he can get by on. He is visited by his ex-girlfriend, Shasta, who wants Doc to find her new boyfriend who seems to have disappeared. In the process of unraveling this mystery, Doc leads the reader through the discovery of the Internet, beach/surf music, a diabolical Eastern drug cartel, various right-wing thugs working for governmental or police agencies, Las Vegas before it was turned into Disneyland West, tons of marijuana smoking, lots of sex, and plenty of dubious characters. The whole chaotic journey devolves into a satisfactory conclusion where all the puzzles are solved and the good guys prevail.

This book is recommended for all readers. Pynchon is an American treasure, one of the authors whose work will be read far into the future. His keen eye notes the details that make up a culture while his style entertains. Pynchon fans will be pleased with this book, and those who haven't yet discovered this author will be pleasantly surprised.

Throughout this review, I'm going to reference a phrase "The Man", but without the quotes. The Man can be interpreted as those in power - CEOs, police higher-ups, real estate tycoons, etc. Note that the exact phrase The Man does not appear anywhere in this book, as far as I can remember. But that phrase seems to be the easiest for me to make my points.

In this novel, which I think is Pynchon's easiest to follow (I've read Vineland, Gravity's Rainbow, The Crying of Lot 49, a little bit of V, and am starting Mason & Dixon), the overall theme I'm seeing is that The Man wants to keep things under control, and the Manson murders have spooked them (this takes place around 1970 in Southern California). There's also the remembrance of the Watts Riots as additional support for The Man's worry. The novel's main character, Doc Sportello, represents a free-spirit wannabe that is certainly unhappy with The Man. Most every possible case of lower-class revolution (even if just in thought only) is addressed and stifled by The Man. I think that Pynchon's views, and even more of himself, are represented by Doc and sometimes argued out loud, with passion. It seems to me that past Pynchon protagonists have not felt as passionately about their viewpoint. But Doc does realize that those that support his viewpoint are either without power to make changes, or they simply don't have the energy to try. So, he's realistic, but nonetheless passionate.

Somehow, I think of the novel's voice as being illustrated by the movie Billy Jack (also not referenced in the book). It's that scene where Billy is surrounded by a bunch of thugs and he's told "You don't think those Green Beret karate tricks are going to save you from all these boys, do you?" To which he replies "I don't have much of a choice, do I? But, you know what, I'm going to take this right foot here and wop you on that side of the face." Billy knows he's beat, but he's going to get some hard shots in.

In the end, I felt satisfied that the loose ends were, in fact, tied up - at least to my satisfaction. The final pages give a perfect sense for how I felt by the end of the novel.

I really liked this book, and maybe loved it. I liked the Doc character and pretty much agreed with his politics. Additionally, I felt for Doc.

As with any Pynchon novel, there are a lot of peripheral characters, and back stories. Doc is the only fully fleshed-out character, but the novel is also from his viewpoint. Thus, he explains only what he knows and so you get his understanding of the other characters. I suppose a certain detective gets explained in some detail, but once again only from Doc's viewpoint.

Overall, I'd put this book on par with Vineland and The Crying of Lot 49. However, to me it ends with more certainty than either of those books. In fact, you can say that the three of those books form a segment of time from the 1960's to the 1980's - so they make perfect companions to each other.

After just finishing some book about a vampire private investigator, this one was so much more satisfying.

I liked this novel, even if it doesn't fully satisfy as either a work of literature or as a detective novel. It may just be that I have a soft spot for `stoner hippies' (must be all those Cheech and Chong albums I listened to in the 70s) but I was content enough just to spend time with Doc, a likeable, perennially stoned, beach-bum hippie PI.

Thomas Pynchon is one of contemporary literature's most compelling voices and fans of his sometimes dense and difficult fiction may not know what to make of Inherent Vice (first of all it's less than 400 pages, quite a bit shorter than the author's last novel, Against the Day, which is a remarkable 1,100 pages long). Inherent Vice is a detective novel and in order to stay somewhat true to the genre, Pynchon is constrained a little as an author. A detective novel is plot driven. Clues must be followed and mysteries solved. But of course, Pynchon can't be contained completely.

Inherent Vice isn't `just' a detective novel. Pynchon has something to say about the end of an era. The novel is set in 1970 with the Manson murders and the Vietnam War hovering overhead, like dark clouds that will inevitably drive away the short-lived idealism of the late 60s. Pynchon rolls out a seemingly endless parade of colorful characters and fills Vice with storylines that sometimes merge and sometimes go nowhere. We see LA through Doc's mostly innocent eyes (although we get a sense of his growing cynicism and paranoia). His observations are sometimes inane, sometimes profound. Pynchon has a reputation for merging high brow literature with low brow pop culture and he takes full advantage of time and place in Inherent Vice. In particular, his knowledge of the music of the era is used to full advantage.

But does it have enough of what Pynchon fans expect to satisfy them?

It's hard to say but I think most will embrace this whimsical romp, decree it to be a lesser Pynchon novel, and note that even so, a lesser Pynchon novel is still worth reading. Not everyone will agree though. Some will inevitably declare it to be a `major bummer'.

Fans of detective fiction are more likely to be bummed out by Doc's adventure. While Doc occasionally demonstrates that not all his brain cells have been fried, he mostly bumbles along in a marijuana haze. Doc's investigation lacks focus and urgency, and the convoluted plot comes together slowly with numerous distractions. To be honest, by the end I didn't really care much how it all turned out. If you read Inherent Vice expecting a typical detective novel, you probably won't find it very groovy.

But if you can dig hanging out with Doc, an engaging, entertaining tour-guide, as he leads you on a convoluted romp through LA at the end of the psychedelic sixties, you may find this to be, while not a great novel, a pretty enjoyable ride none-the-less.

3.5 stars.

Fast-paced, readable, entertaining, even poignant: this satisfies even if by Pynchon's past work it's almost pulp fiction. On the cusp of the '70s, the hangover from the Manson murders throbs over L.A. It's like a yard at San Quentin, full of cons on the make, and the newcomer or innocent treads, or drives, cautiously.

There's a sadness beneath the satire of a detective novel. The mystery, typically for this author, deepens. Late on, a real estate developer boasts that there's an "inexhaustible supply" of suckers, those who will sign on to be on the take in a desolate, bleached Southern California sprawl where every raw arrival or cynical native wants in on the scam. There's an arrested development culturally: surf tunes pepper the prose. And intellectually, few in these pages appear to have read anything. Unlike other Pynchon plots, this moves nearly free of literary allusion or historical complexity, as if L.A. lives up to its stereotype arrogantly.

I liked this. The Lemurian tangents seemed off-base even for Pynchon, and I thought the ramblings could have been tightened. However, the story moves efficiently and far more rapidly than most Pynchon predecessors-- which I also admire (see my review recently of "Against the Day"), but for first-time readers, perhaps this novel might be recommended for its accessibility. It's far easier. Tonally, it's casual and easygoing, and seems a homage more than a parody of the gumshoe genre.

The title comes from an insurance phrase, a deep weakness that cannot be extricated from the larger chaos. Foreboding shrouds this setting like the fog along Gordita Beach in the South Bay, where Doc lives when not pursuing the mysteries all the way to Ojai and over to Las Vegas. He struggles to remain in the place, the moment, even as the era rapidly diminishes into nostalgia, barely a blink after the Summers of Love. Within the countercultural dawning of the Age of Aquarius, perhaps a bit of idealism remains, "this little parenthesis of light" left by the hippie dream before Manson. Many tried to escape the "great collective trap" of U.S. conformity, but the Feds and cops and developers and cults and criminals, it seems, have called in whatever they're owed by those who tried to change the world. The revolution seemed "pre-doomed."

The novel ends with a marvelous scene. Amidst the fog on the freeway, Doc drives off into the mystery that surrounds him. The cars trail each other at a safe distance, shepherding the driver before and after, and all, for at least one saving moment, look out for the other guy, all reduced to the same lights shadowed by the all-encompassing gloom.

During his hey-day in the 60s and early 70s, Thomas Pynchon always seemed like the smartest guy in the room, but he wasn't usually the most fun. Pretty shocking that 4 decades after his peak, when was king of the post-modern dust hill, he gives his his most enjoyable novel. I'm a huge fan of post-WW 2 black comedy -- Terry Southern, Bruce Jay Friedman, Hunter Thompson, Thomas Berger, et al -- and have been waiting around for a new breed to emerge capable of deliverting the same kind of warped stories and demented laughs. Never would have thought that new breed would be dusty old T Pynchon, who reinvents himself in this novel as a purveyor of whacked out, character-driven stoner humor on the order of The Big Lebowski. Pynchon invents his best character yet with Doc S, the stoner detective of the south land. Pynchon's novels were always humorous but this one has moments that are laugh out loud funny. With Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon has re-emerged the king of the new breed of black comic novelists which includes Neal Pollack, Mark Leyner, Morgan Hobbs, George Saunders, Sam Lipsyte and Jerry Stahl.

Whenever Pynchon releases a book, it's an event to be relished. Readers will find this an easier go than AGAINST THE DAY, and in fact, it somewhat picks up where LOT 49 left off. It is certainly a more linear story than DAY or even Mason/Dixon, which in its own way was a sort of 18th Century Gravity's Rainbow. I'll need to get back to DAY as I found it a real slog on the first go. IV is encouraging me to do just that.
Anyway, here, Pynchon evokes Hammett and Chandler, Bogart and Nicholson, Carlin and Zonker Harris in a story that, as the New York Times put it, chronicles the dissolution of the Summer of Love into the Autumn of Authority. As ever, Pynchon's focus, even blurry-eyed and stoned, is on the dissolution of human freedom under the gravity of authority, convention, neuroses and Time. He details the negative dialectic in a very often tragic/comic struggle of simple humans, the dark and disturbing nightmare of Hegel's trajectory of the Absolute Spirit in a sort of Columbia space shuttle burnout under the arc of entropy. This go 'round, as Doc Sportello, like so many anti-heroes before him in the canon of Pynchon, is coming to grips with the fact that he is waking up from the kind of stupor that has allowed him to ensnare himself. On the case of missing girlfriends, real estate developers, sax players from surf bands, and a lifestyle that has rapidly jettisoned all and every from the beach to skid row, Doc deals with those market and authoritative forces that have already written not just the history but the ending. I am reminded of Oscar Wilde's comment that "Every great man nowadays has his disciples, but it always Judas who writes the biography."
In the course of Pynchon's oeuvre, a corrupted and corrosive Invisible Hand is giving man the finger, and regardless of the passions at work, the havoc industrialized, still the human spirit is left with small epiphanies and tiney graces to mollify his downward fall. If, like Tyrone Slothrop, one flies too high to gravitational rainbow, one can also effect one's release, but the rest of us lose track.
Doc is trying like hell to keep track of customers, old flames, his Kools and his pot, and whatever happened to the promise of his life.
This is a page turner. Much like any noir story, there are no redemptions, only survivors. It all begins again. At the end of the book, you'll find yourself hoping that there will be another book from Pynchon soon. He's in his 70's now. I'd love to find out what happened to Tyrone....

Thomas Pynchon is quickly becoming my favorite writer. If the soaring highs of Gravity’s Rainbow were not mesmerizing and enduring enough to cement myself as a Pynchon fan boy, then Inherent Vice was the slight nudge in a crowded stadium I needed to embark on reading Pynchon’s entire anthology (maybe with the exception of Bleeding Edge?). This is not to say that Vice is another masterpiece. Make no mistake; it’s not. But it’s a great book, that challenges any critic (armchair or professional) that would boldly declare that Pynchon cannot tell a story.

Thus, the revelation of this novel tips it’s hand: it has a steady plot that delivers answers, for the most part (It wouldn’t be Pynchon if it didn’t have some “plotlines” and passages that make you scratch your head in complete confoundment. It reminds me of what my brother said to me upon finishing Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses after first reading The Road, Blood Meridian, and No Country for Old Men: “In all [McCarthy’s] other books something goes terribly wrong, or it’s just over-the-top with it’s violence, but this one.. it’s just a story.. It’s just a story and everything’s fine.”

Inherent Vice has that element to it. Compared to GR and Mason & Dixon, Inherent Vice is “just a story and everything’s fine.” Hanging out with Larry “Doc” Sportello is “groovy.” He’s a doped up Private Investigator who is more intelligent than his nemesis at the LAPD, Bigfoot Bjornsen, gives him credit. The novel is simply the story of Doc getting involved in something that is much bigger than he realizes.

The novel is at it’s best when Doc is desperately trying to get some help from his friends, who rarely have the ability or wherewithal to be of any service. At any point in which Denis “from down the hill, whose name everybody pronounced to rhyme with ‘p-nis'” appears is worthy of real laugh out loud moments. Doc’s interactions with Bigfoot, two people who could not be further apart as humans, are something anyone can enjoy. The plot is enjoyable, but one simply gets the feeling that Pynchon could have gone on for 1000 pages or cut the book by 100 and the story would be no better or no worse. This isn’t a good thing for the type of book that is Inherent Vice.

The biggest problem Inherent VIce has is that it has very little to say about anything. The most this book could be doing is pointing out the failures of Pynchon’s own generation; as he makes clear that he feels that the culture created was difficult to take seriously. There is a lot said that I do agree with, but when placed in the mouths of some of the characters, the novel takes on a more critical feel than warm endorsement. Beyond that, the novel is laden with the expected conspiracy theories Pynchon loves to either create or tie in, but he spends time telling his reader that they should be feeling paranoid, rather than letting the natural paranoia of reading a Pynchon novel set in.

That being said, these are flaws that Pynchon creates simply be being Thomas Pynchon. Every great writer has a period of writing that is eventually declared his or her “down period.” I don’t want to be seen as someone who endorses that kind of thought, because I don’t feel that way. Many espouse that there is a “true” form of a writer; that The Sun Also Rises is “true” Hemmingway, that Of MIce and Men is “true” Steinbeck, etc. I don’t agree. But that is the subject for another post. Let me surmise to say this: there are some flaws that are entirely the result of expectations put upon writers, and I’m not sure how fair it is to criticize them for it.

This is no more a mystery novel than any of Pynchon's other novels are mysteries. Although the protagonist is a private eye, he is no more on a quest than are Oedipa Maas, Herbert Stencil, Tyrone Slothrop, or Mason & Dixon. Some readers think of this present Pynchonian installment as hard-boiled, a characteristic that is associated with the mystery genre, but there is also another possible interpretation: Rather than hard-boiled, the style is meant to describe a mean and desolate civilization, one completely void of compassion, of human warmth, or, for that matter, human contact. Characters who are not drugged, are caught up in pointless pop culture. If there is indeed a mystery to be solved, few are coherent enough to care. If some care, few are articulate enough to express this, even to themselves. As we make our way through Pynchon's fictions, from the renaissance of Mason & Dixon through the turn of the twentieth century of V. and Against the Day, and to the World War II of Gravity's Rainbow and the 60s of Lot 49, perhaps we can sense the beginnings of the coldness that comes to dominate Inherent Vice. In any case, if this book is a comedy, it is not playful. It may be Pynchon's most realistic story to-date.

"Doc" Sportelo is a soft-boiled private investigator working the wide open territory of southern California during the psychedelic early `70s. An old girlfriend asks him to investigate the disappearance of an unscrupulous businessman whose bodyguard has turned up dead. Doc's investigations take him on a harrowing ride through various dark corners of the surf scene, often due to the machinations of a police officer called Bigfoot, with whom Doc has an uneasy relationship. After some crazy plot twists and even crazier women, Doc seems on the verge of uncovering a vast underworld conspiracy known as the Golden Fang.

The host of characters made this a fairly confusing tale, but for a Pynchon novel, it all held together pretty well. There are lots of crazy individual stories, and endless pot smoking, but always in a very active vein - these aren't the kind of druggies who get high and then stare at the TV for 4 hours. Doc gets run all over the place continually, often by Bigfoot, and he never goes anywhere without smoking on the way. Ultimately, we have to believe that Bigfoot is one of the good guys as well, although he has a nasty habit of manipulating things so that the pot-smoking hippie freaks take all the risks that further his agenda.

Essentially, Doc (as well as some of the other characters depicted in the work) is an idealist: he's bought into the easy living, pot-smoking, wave chasing surfer lifestyle and would never trade it to be a buttoned-down working slob, chasing the almighty dollar. His P.I. business is mainly about getting women and trying to help people in need, not about getting rich. And so we can't be too surprised that despite some tense moments, things wind up working out pretty well for Doc.

This novel could be thought of as a Pynchon-light, since it's so accessible, and it's undeniably a period piece as well. The main thrust seems to be that the lines between good and evil are easily blurred, and even the nastiest trouble-makers have the capacity for redemption. Beyond that there isn't much of a message here. But if you're not too prudish for Pynchon's brand of sex and drugs and surf rock, this is a pretty enjoyable read that makes a decent introduction to a very talented writer. Four and half stars.

This was my first Thomas Pynchon. I was at the airport, not wanting to spend the flight actually working - and it was too short for a movie. So I stopped in the bookstore. I was specifically looking for something to read that felt like a break from the droll scientific literature that I'm inundated with as a PhD student in Geography.

I'm a big fan of Tom Robbins (Still Life with Woodpecker) and heard a review of Pynchon's new book on NPR that made me think that maybe this could be a new favorite author. I love good play with language and stories that are far fetched. The only reason I've made it past the glaring technical road bumps in Dan Brown's books (Deception Point) were the easy writing style and the fantastic yarn. In contrast, I've been working my way through Foucault's Pendulum for nearly six years now. Sure, the Eco's story is equally fantastic and lacking in road bumps - but each page is a challenge.

So, enough about me - I'm basically a reader who likes crazy stories and good writing... Inherent Vice was successful on both counts. The story line is byzantine - although not to the extremes of Robbins, Eco or Brown. And the writing is enjoyable - if at times a little overly influenced by pot and LSD.

The main character, Doc Sportello, is likable but hard to really identify with. He plays out this line between pot head and cop lover that's a little hard to nail down. Robbin's character, by contrast, become your lovers and long-lost friends by the end of the book - you develop an intimacy that you never want to end. As for Doc Sportello, well, I hope he doesn't come calling again...

The story is an odd mix of psychedelic 60s flashback and classic gumshoe fiction. It's an interesting romp around LA informed by the kind of 20/20 vision that only comes from hindsight. For instance, Doc relies on a friend who's hooked into ARPAnet (the technological predecessor of the Internet) for information that, while accessible today via the WWW, wasn't even a pipe dream in 1969.

Having read his latest, I've now gone back in time and have his first novel, V. (Perennial Classics), on my nightstand.

Inherent Vice is Pynchon letting himself loose and just having a good time, which is exactly what you'll do when you read the story of Doc Sportello, would be PI, as he wanders around greater Los Angeles, usually stoned, on odd ball cases. Pynchon works in bad cops, even badder pimps, druggies, and ladies of the evening, but he makes it all feel appropriate with a levity few authors have mastered.

Doc is an immediately likable character and Pynchon has done his homework as he works in minuscule period references throughout the narrative. Nearly every chapter Pynchon squeezes in a song from the time, including the lyrics which was a bit overdone by the end especially since I knew so few of them. But the dialogue is what you'll crave as Sportello takes every opening to snake in a joke.

More and more cases fall into Doc's lap as the stakes keep getting more dangerous. Somehow most of the pieces fall together in the end yet somewhat haphazardly, but you'll be grinning all the way to the slightly lackluster ending. If anything the story suffers from Pynchon trying to squeeze too much in with aimless additions such as visiting relatives. Comparisons to The Big Lebowski are quite apt, but Doc is his own beast and is a much better detective than The Dude ever could be. If you're in the mood to see LA ala Dragnet style from the hippie's point of view this is definitely worth the trip. I'd also venture to say that this is Pynchon's most accessible read ever and not only because of the trim page count. Great vacation read material.

Did Thomas Pynchon really write this novel? I read it twice to make sure and came away with the feeling that it was someone else trying (too hard) to write in the style of Pynchon. I guess it conveys a certain sense of time and place, and comes around to tie the loose ends together, but it's just a pretty good private dick story. I'm not a big reader of detective fiction, so I don't know how this compares to the best of that genre. I have, however, read and re-read most of Pynchon's novels and it's still hard to believe that Inherent Vice was written by the same author that wrote Gravity's Rainbow. Maybe he needed to pay his kid's tuition or something.

I liked this better than anything Pynchon's written since Gravity's Rainbow. Pynchon's not much of a novelist in the classic sense: his plots are byzantine rambling wrecks in which loose ends are never tied up; his women are all "sexy chicks" or older female relatives; you can barely tell his characters apart if they talk for more than a couple sentences, because they all sound like Thomas Pynchon, and they certainly don't motivate his plots. But who cares? Not me, because he's the epic poet of our disintegrating age.
In Inherent Vice, Pynchon waxes nostalgic for the lost era when some of us thought that, given enough LSD, we could save our greedy real estate crazed violent society from itself. The vehicle for expressing this nostalgia is Doc Sportello, a pot-head detective who tries to stay groovy with everything, and my favorite of all Pynchon's characters, perhaps because he's more like Pynchon than any of the others, so hearing Pynchon's thoughts in Sportello's brain seems natural.
Perhaps due to age, Pynchon's gotten a bit careless about detail, or maybe I just didn't know enough about WWII to notice the time slips in Gravity's Rainbow. According to the Wiki commentary, the novel takes place between March 24th and May 8th, 1970, but during the present tense time of the narration, Lew Alcindor has already changed his name to Kareem-Abdul Jabbar, which didn't happen until 1971, and the Manson trial, which didn't start until June 15th, 1970, is taking or has just taken place. Maybe it's all that pot Sportello's been smoking that keeps him from being firmly anchored in time, or maybe Pynchon was in too big a hurry to do the research needed to pin all the novel's events down firmly to one consistent time line. I've said it once, and have to say it again. Who cares when Pynchon's endlessly original and evocative poetry tumbles out of almost every page? This is a novel that's making me re-think my abhorrence of "language" literature. Most novelists can't pull it off, but in Pynchon's case, his voice is almost (except in the case of Mason & Dixon) enough.

Readers of Thomas Pynchon novels in the past usually were left wondering about the mysteries of the plots and their characters. So it is time that the author turned his attention to the mystery genre. And while this novel somehow is classified as a mystery, featuring a psychedelic PI, Larry Sportello, a/k/a Doc, it is more of a far-out effort obfuscated by marijuana smoke.

Set in Los Angeles in the 1960s, with Vietnam, hippies, drugs and the like running throughout, the plot begins with Doc being told by an ex-girlfriend that there is a plot to kidnap her current lover, a billionaire real estate developer. Thus begins a bizarre tale filled with all kinds of weird characters, with even stranger names, a favorite Pynchon ploy. So we find Dr. Blatnoyd; Bigfoot, an LAPD detective lieutenant; Denis (pronounced "penis"); FBI agents Flatweed and Borderline; and a whole host of others.

It really is impossible to describe the absurdity of the novel. Is it noir? Is it a spoof? Is it just Pynchon being playful? Is it satire? Who knows? But it is all-encompassing and some might think it is a tour de force, and it is recommended.

For some reason this book has been on my mind. I read it several years ago when it first came out, and really liked it. I have read pretty much all of Pynchon's work, and I want to make clear that I don't disagree with any of the negative reviews here. But I was watching The Big Lebowski on cable the other day, and it struck me that this is cut from the same confusing, pot-driven, crime based view of California as that movie. The Dude reminded me of the detective here. My guess is that if you don't get The Big Lebowski, then you probably won't get this, either. So, this is hardly a complete review, just a thought that crossed my mind, since both Inherent Vice and The Big Lebowski really stick with you, in their bizarre, fractured view of life.

I love detective novels, love them. I've read over 50 of the Hard Case Crime series and can't get enough. When I saw the book sleeve for this one, I thought it would be a natural fit. However, if you are not well versed in late 1960s/early 1970s drug references and culture, or stoned, stay away. This book makes little to no sense unless you are well immersed in that culture, having numerous drug and hallucination references and insinuations, and generally being a meandering piece of slop. I had to re-read several pages and passages multiple times, as there was no coherent thought or plot continuation in play. Just a mess.

On the one hand, I pretty much loved Inherent Vice from start to finish. It's funny--probably funnier than any other Pynchon. Doc Sportello is a great character. The period detail is extraordinarily vivid, in spite of occasional bits of anachronism (you can't have a Cheech and Chong reference in a novel that takes place in early 1970 (which we know it does by a reference to the NBA finals)--d'oh). This is one instance in which you really CAN judge a book by its cover--the garish neon lettering and utopian surfer aesthetic pretty much say it all.

On the other hand, I can't help--huh. It appears that the other hand is passing me a joint. Far be it from me to eff up the rotation, so I'll just have a toke, pass it on, and leave it at that. Ah.

What I was possibly going to say but now think doesn't need to be said is that the book seems a little light by Pynchon standards. All the usual motifs are here--paranoia, red-herringy digressions, whimsical character names, song lyrics arbitrarily inserted into the text--but it is certainly the case that Inherent Vice is more plot-driven than any of the man's previous novels. Which is to say that the pleasure of reading it derives more from the story itself and less from studying it for Meaning.

But there are two points to be made in response to that.

Point one: so what? After the incredible weightiness of Against the Day, why SHOULDN'T he relax a little? Do something just for fun? Sheesh, how demanding AM I?

Point two: While admitting the novel's comparative lightness, let's not overstate things. There's still lots to think about here, and no doubt more that will become apparent on second reading. It should be pretty immediately obvious that Pynchon is in part riffing on the same themes as Vineland does (there are a few unobtrusive references to the earlier novel, as well as a few minor common characters--whee!): the apparently limitless utopian possibilities of the sixties, squandered, lost, and replaced by the stultifying, conformist, authoritarian materialism of the eighties. Doc has periodic intimations throughout the novel that something's got to give. While this might not be a book to launch a thousand dissertations, it's plenty smart in its own right, and it is to Pynchon's credit that he was able to so effectively write a novel in a previously unfamiliar idiom and make it totally Pynchonian (though I guess after Mason & Dixon, this shouldn't surprise us, right?).

One might suggest that this novel might draw in a fair number of Pynchon newbies (who might then be badly poleaxed by Gravity's Rainbow), but I'm not sure whether or not that's a true statement. It's definitely his most accessible novel, but the fact remains that a lot of the pleasure in reading it, for a confirmed cultist like me, comes from reveling in the ineffable Pynchoness of it all. I'm not quite solipsistic enough to imagine that a person lacking the background to recognize this aura would necessarily find it similarly compelling. What I'm trying to say is, who knows if this review will be of any use to you whatsoever? However, the trend of me loving every Pynchon novel continues. If I say that I hope the next one (yes! I'm being optimistic! Hey, it worked last time, didn't it?) is a little heavier, that should in no way be taken as a slight against Inherent Vice, which I heartily recommend to you.

Read it if … you love the ’70s, with all its psychedelic drugs, dirty real estate moguls, and smoke-filled mob bars. Inherent Vice fits the bill and then some. Obviously, most Pynchon fans will have already read this, but if you’re a budding groupie, pick this up for a groovy time.

Don’t read it if … you’re some kind of mystery fiend and don’t know how to take a joke. Pynchon loves to play and loves to laugh. His stoner PI protagonist Doc Sportello is everything but a serious crime-solver. This novel borders on Pink Panther levels of silliness, albeit with a much darker, much more American sense of mysterious doom.

This book is like … other books by Pynchon, really, specifically Bleeding Edge, which was published late last year, or Hugh Laurie’s fun foray into literature, The Gun Seller. Both Pynchon and Laurie combine seedy, entertaining mystery plots with ironic humor that shows they refuse to take themselves seriously. Too often I read books that would have you wallow in depression rather than laugh, or sacrifice compelling content for a few cheap guffaws.

If you want the full review, head to my bloggy blog: [...]

Had I a thousand tongues in a thousand heads I could not express how pointless and trite this is. For one thing, Pynchon is probably the most overrated American writer. Now that's saying a lot for a nation that also contains "Blood Meridian" and "A Farewell to Arms", but I think history will bear me out. So, that being said, this little piece of nonsense ought to be levelling the short leg of a bar room table somewhere but instead it got made into a movie. We still wait for "Dog of the South" and "Monkey Wrench Gang" to be filmed, but this pap jumped the line ahead of both of them. Imagine if The Dude from "The Big Lebowski" was a private detective, and instead of having a lot of hilarious, groovy adventures, he wanders around aimlessly looking for someone about which we care nothing, involved in crimes about which we care nothing. Remember those dumb "Family Circus" cartoons that show Billy going on a dotted-line tour all over the neighborhood when in fact his trip could have been about 10' long? There you go - that's "Inherent Vice". Keep a copy handy in case you sit down at a wobbly bar table.

I recently attended an author function where someone wanted to know if anyone had read Thomas Pynchon's new book yet. Only one person at that point had; when asked how it was, the gentleman wiggled his eyebrows, touched his forefinger to his thumb, and brought it to his lips and inhaled. Everyone there laughed; they knew exactly what he meant, from prior experience with Pynchon.

Indeed, reading INHERENT VICE is a psychedelic experience, from both a topical and intellectual standpoint. It is Pynchon's most coherent and linear work since THE CRYING OF LOT 49, and utilizes many of the same elements to propel its narration, not the least of which are sex, drugs and rock `n' roll. It is also a pastiche, parody and tribute to the detective novel. Pynchon takes the characteristic strengths and weaknesses of the genre --- unusual characters, occasionally contrived coincidences, complex plots --- and exaggerate them to the extent that reading the book is at times akin to reading a pool of milk, but an extremely interesting pool of milk.

A private detective is at the heart of any mystery novel worthy of the name, and indeed, INHERENT VICE has one in the form of Doc Sportello, who serves as the reader's guide through the drug-laden streets of Los Angeles, circa 1970. Doc spends a good portion of the novel under the influence of controlled substances, resulting in his involvement in situations that coherent thinking would dictate he avoid. The ball starts rolling when Shasta, Doc's ex-girlfriend, asks him to investigate a possible plot against Mickey Wolfmann, a real estate magnate and Shasta's current love interest, which is being hatched by Mickey's wife and her boyfriend. At about the same time, Doc is retained by a black militant to locate a prison friend of his who is in the Aryan Brotherhood, and is also hired to find a local musician who supposedly died of a drug overdose. Of course all of these investigations quickly intersect, the nexus being the Golden Fang, which may or may not be a mysterious smuggling boat, an assassin's guild, a dentist's investment group, or something else.

As one might expect, Pynchon's trademarks are all present, and in spades. Hordes of characters, important or otherwise, wander on and off the page. Names of people, groups, fictional places and objects are oddly and occasionally hysterically named (a fictional British rock band bearing the name "Spotted Dick" continued to be funny for some reason right through to the end of the book). Perhaps most significantly, however, Pynchon continues to toss off intermittently brilliant passages that ironically seem to manifest themselves just when the reader's attention starts to wander, and in unlikely places to boot. This is especially true of the first and last third of the book. And then there are the objects that seem to populate every page, walking on, performing a bow, and then disappearing forever. A Las Vegas antique dealer, for example, has for sale a number of remarkable artifacts, including a decorative ashtray from the Sands "once thrown up into by Joey Bishop."

Pynchon is one of those authors who is perhaps more widely known than widely read. His work comes wrapped in a density that is challenging to break through, while the length of a number of his novels has been somewhat daunting as well. INHERENT VICE is (relatively) short and set in a place and time that is somewhat readily identifiable, wrapped in a genre that is familiar and, in this case, somewhat accessible. While one does not have to be under the influence to follow the proceedings that take place, those who are past or present imbibers will nod knowingly in spots. Does it work as a detective novel? Not exactly. But if you have been tempted to read a Pynchon book in the past but put it off for any number of reasons, INHERENT VICE would be the place to start.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Pynchon is one of my favorite authors and so to me any release by him is a Big Deal. Thus it was a bit of a surprise by me how little known this novel seemed upon publishing, the local large chain bookstore had it basically hidden on the lower level of the front display, to the point where the clerk even had to do some searching for it. Maybe people are fooled by the cover in thinking that it's just another beach read detective story, meant to wile away the hours whilst one relaxes on the sand, secure in the knowledge that their brain won't be taxed too much.

Alas, those people are going to be disappointed and slightly confused if they're at all paying attention.

As numerous others have pointed out, Pynchon has tended to alternate the shorter, more relaxed novels with the gigantic works of Serious Importance. Thus, almost as a reward for making it through all thousand dense pages of "Against the Day", we get this novel, which is so light by comparison that there hardly seems to be any weight to it at all.

But the key phrase here is "by comparison" . . . next to the last novel, neutron stars might appear to be somewhat lightweight and the sudden shift back to fiction that most of us mortals can grasp is a welcome change. Set in the sixties, it at first seems relatively straightforward as "Doc" Sportello takes on a case brought up by an ex-girlfriend about the disappearance of her current boyfriend. Sportello, a hippie in LA during the heyday of the hippies, is unlike a lot of Pynchon characters in that while he's confused and pulled by forces that lurk just out of reach, he's also capable on his own, putting pieces together (sometimes with the help of illegal substances) almost as much as people start pulling fast ones on him. It's his view of the sixties and his seeming ability to exist safely at nearly all levels of it that informs the novel, as he moves from the scoured underbelly of the city to the LAPD where things aren't much cleaner.

Being that this is a Pynchon novel, things don't stay simple for long and you don't summarize or fathom the plot as much as letting yourself by yanked along by it, as conspiracies blossom from unexpected woodwork and wrinkles abound as disappearances wind up not being just disappearances, as mysterous entities that may or may not exist appear to be controlling everything, or nothing and people scurry about at the mercy of it all. Or maybe not. Maybe they're just being paranoid.

What makes this so readable is how closely Pynchon hews to being a fairly straightforward detective story while mainitaining his own style. Doc may be going through the motions of a Chandler novel but the rhythms and the prose and the underlying concerns are definitely Pynchon's, the sudden departures into topics that are erudite (the nascent origins of the Internet) or not so much (surf-rock), stringing it all together into a tapestry that for all its contrivances actually feels more real than the actual sixties do, the different portions of the city and the era interlocking and slowly gravitating toward being at each other's throats, embodied best in the relationship between Doc and cop foil Bigfoot . . . they may not like each other much but without the other's insights they would have an incomplete understanding of the times.

There's a playfulness present here that most of his novels don't have, or that aren't as obvious. Maybe it's the setting, maybe it's Pynchon consciously trying to not scare off any potential readers, but for once his people really feel like people and there's a humanity present that we haven't seen since "Mason & Dixon" ("Against the Day" for all its pleasures, also felt curiously detached at times), in the attention paid to even the smallest problems, the compassion that doesn't feel forced, the sense of loss that these maybe-not-phantom conspiracies bring about and the toll it takes on the people involved.

It winds up being a romp and an elegy for the sixties, with the paranoia always present in Pynchon's works never really going away, no matter how light things get, coming out in unguarded moments, when the drugs don't work or they do their work too well, the sense of a system coming down to lock us all into its gears and all you can do is either get out of the way for a time or resign yourself to be immeshed in its gears. Sportello weaves his way through a breakneck landscape (there's even time for an action scene!) of characters and plots consisting of elements trying to shape a future that is more than willing to shape them. There's no avoiding it.

I didn't think Pynchon could ever write a "page-turner" but this pretty much qualifies and while it doesn't totally prep someone for the intricacies and obsessions writ large of the more substantial works, it's as much as an introductory primer for the man as we'll probably ever get.

As with any Pynchon novel, enjoyment can be found in his cultural references, use of language, general intellectual horsepower... and what I'll term the "unbridled hoppy-ness" that is quintissential, at times capricious TP -- rather than emotional attachment to character or story.

Not that there isn't story or character to be found. Both are there, in Sam Spades, but Pynchon, as always, is to his unique style over any emotional gravitas, beholden, and because I'm kept at arms length, even though I'm marveling and laughing at a genius's side project, I simply can't give it a higher rating.

It would be nice to see the man leave his comfort zone. I can only see just so many flawless triple axles at the Olympics before I'm dying to see even one messy quad.

'Inherent Vice' is Thomas Pynchon's most recent novel. It's also the shortest and the most straightforward he has ever put out.
The book is a downright enjoyable, comic take on the archetypal big-city private eye tale but it also doubles as Pynchon's personal ode to the '60s and their ultimate demise.
Set in LA circa 1970, the plot stars Larry `Doc' Sportello, a detective who also happens to be a dope head. Speaking of dope, there are loads of it featured throughout the novel, as there are loads of many other things that are synonym with the '60s: surf music, Ford Mustangs, Charles Manson, hippies, etc.

You'll get an endless stream of pop culture name-dropping across the novel but for once Pynchon sticks mostly to the plot, without letting the side episodes overrun the narrative. This, again, makes for a much more straightforward reading experience.

While living in a permanent state of haze, `Doc' somehow manages to get entangled in a conspiracy involving, among other things, the LAPD, a notorious real estate mogul, a gang of nazi bikers, drug dealers, pimps, beach babes, the Feds, musicians of various order and a mysterious organization called `The Golden Fang'.
The silly names, deranged song lyrics and cartoonish, exaggerated set-ups make for a great comic novel, yet there is some depth under the sheer fun of the plotline.

More specifically Pynchon fills some passages with a marked nostalgia for what the '60s where about and what went wrong with them. Speaking of the latter aspect, it's no coincidence the novel is set in 1970, more or less at the same time of the Manson trial, which in pop culture marked the end of an era. `Doc', the main character, is the shiny, happy, if a bit naive, side of the '60s, the author seems to imply. When public opinion rejected the '60s (in the aftermath of the Manson trial), they rejected him too and that's a pity. Hippies were deeply flawed creatures but, this seems to be the idea, they had something good to offer too.

As for the writing style this is 100% Pynchon. The language is just plain beautiful and I'm always amazed by how the author can weave high-brow references and low-brow pop touches together with such ease.

This is basically a book Tom Robbins, another favourite of mine, could have written, if he were more post-modern and, let's face it, more sophisticated.
Ultimately `Inherent Vice' doesn't belong up there with Pynchon's masterworks yet it's the closest he will ever get to writing a popular novel and it might well serve as an entry point for those who are not familiar with this mysterious writer.

Thomas Pynchon's latest novel, Inherent Vice, is a "part noir, part psychedelic" detective story that plunges readers yet again into the author's wacky world of lists and staggering ideas. This time though, the author decides to stave readers off the mind-numbing mental calories that decorated colossal powerhouses like V, Gravity's Rainbow, Mason & Dixon, and Against the Day. In a grain that runs along his eighties romp Vineland and the more succinct The Crying of Lot 49, Inherent Vice is parenthetically steeped in the countercultural sixties and seventies--an angst-ridden zeitgeist of paisleys, phony afros, narcs, hippies, psychedelic joints, flashy neons, surfers, copasetic chicks, dopey dudes, rock-and-roll, stellular sex, hallucinogenic doobies, and a plethora of tubular US subculture allusions--packed within a brisk narrative riddled with his usual raunchy and hilarious lyrics and acronyms, farcical character names, and snappy dialogue.

Some critics and avid fans have labeled this novel Pynchon Lite, a term that carries slightly negative connotations for readers acclimated to the author's injections of chemistry, physics, and mathematical equations and theorems; probing philosophical concepts; and juxtapositions of chaos and order within systems. In an uncharacteristic slant on style and content, however, Inherent Vice does away with the macrocosmic and presents a downscaled version of his dabbling with such complexities in a detective thriller of surreal "hippie metaphysics." But Pynchon wrote it, so it is no ordinary detective thriller. Ostensibly, it is a cop story about a Scooby gumshoe who solves a mysterious murder case. On a deeper level, it is a psychological callback to the era's "unprecedented stressfulness of life" and "dream of prerevolution," a tale of an America disillusioned with "parables of consumer capitalism" in a "faithless, money-driven world" and the wayward politics of the Nixon regime.

Its hero, Larry (Doc) Sportello, is a feckless, Los Angeles-based private eye persuaded by his ex-girlfriend Shasta Fay to look into a case involving her boyfriend, the real estate mogul Mickey Wolfmann. But just as this is no conventional detective thriller, Doc Sportello is no conventional private eye either. Doc lives in a funky little town called Gordita Beach, a backwater oceanside haven for bums and easy-go-lucky chums oblivious to the tides of law and mainstream culture. He is a vertically challenged and oddly charming dude who makes "up for in at-titude" what he lacks "in al-titude," the kind of gent who flirts with karmic laws instead of forensic syllogisms. Like most of Pynchon's heroes, Doc suffers from a hysterical brand of paranoia, although this time fueled more by smoking weed rather than the foreboding of a seedy political deed.

Shasta and Mickey go missing, and thus what begins as a harmless inquest leads Doc into a number of past cases that veer into a "bizarre tangle of motives and passions whose cast of characters includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a murderous loan shark, a tenor sax player working undercover, an ex-con with a swastika tattoo and a fondness for Ethel Merman, and a mysterious entity known as the Golden Fang, which may only be a tax dodge set up by some dentists." The Golden Fang too may be a Vietnamese drug cartel or some shady holding company involving Mickey Wolfmann, but the list doesn't end there.

Among the zany outcries and licentious romps of antiwar and anti-racism activists, capitalist dissenters, potheads, bombers, satyrs, nymphomaniacs, and political pinkos, Pynchon also manages to insert marijuana-tinged philosophical jabber about a Pacific Atlantis called Lemuria and hazy talks about "other dimensions." Doc must also contend with his nemesis Detective Lt. Bigfoot Bjornsen, a snoopy head honcho of the corrupt cop kingdom of L.A.

Pynchon's writing in this low calorie page-turner retains many of the author's hallmarks: an extensive grocery list of stock characters with funny names, a stylistic decadence that takes the prosaic form to the hilt, a paranoiac streak that is as eccentric as it is humorous, and a profusion of cultural minutiae specific to the period. The prose, however, is less self-indulgent and manages to be uncharacteristically compact. Similarly, the musical and artistic nitty gritty plastered all over are fun and easily accessible inside jokes to the sixties savvy reader rather than cryptic allusions that require the help of an encyclopedia. Would anyone care to look up some background information on the Japanese monster flick Ghidrah, or Henry Kissinger's stint on the Today Show, or period euphemisms for cocaine and heroin?

Unlike the cosmopolitan vein that runs about novels like V, Gravity's Rainbow, and Against the Day, the premise of Inherent Vice is rooted to the period trappings of the West Coast four decades removed. This is a novel about California and Las Vegas and the New Age communes, rock `n' roll concerts, clubs, druggies, dopers, hippies, and drifters that permeated an easy and laid-back region before it metamorphosed into the star-struck glam theme park of Hollywood actors, multimillion dollar homes, cosmetic surgery joints, and cinematic multiplexesThis is a novel about the vagaries and cultural schisms of the era. This is a novel about America.

Considering the canon that precedes it, Inherent Vice admittedly reads like a watered down development on the author's bibliography. To neophytes normally daunted by Pynchon's oeuvre, however, this book may very well be the most accessible introduction to his very complex fiction. While the novel is decidedly underwhelming in addressing the staple Pynchonian dichotomies between order versus chaos and the individual versus the regime, it provides nonetheless a powerful vision encapsulated in the author's ability to envision a society fraught with problems perpetually immediate and relevant. At the novel's close, Doc Sportello appears to portend the end of an era where a cold and impersonal unknown impinges on a life ruled formerly by freedom, individuality, and privacy. Doing away with hordes of stoned hippies and the decade's collection of groovy and gnarly paraphernalia, is it possible that the sixties zeitgeist is coming back to haunt us?

This isn't the first iteration of the dopey detective, but it might be the most forgettable. From "The Big Lebowski" to "The Long Goodbye," to I'm sure numerous other literary precedents that I can't instantly recall nor care to, the stoned-out gumshoe has long been a popular subculture of the long-storied hard-boiled detective book. But while those reads are typically lean and mean pulp pieces, this iteration has been funneled through a famously obtuse author to become a bloated 400-page mess of rambling tropes.

As is typical of the weaker entries in this kind of genre, all the players have the same smart-alecky quips, cardboard characterizations, one-note roles except for the inevitable double-crosses, while the plot meanders through the tired ruminations intercut with tired conversations. "Think about mystery by myself, maybe go somewhere, then talk to someone about mystery. Repeat." You're lucky with the occasional punch to the face or gunshot.

The cliches aren't in and of itself bad, but the execution is. The jokes fall flat, the action is tired, the characters are not engaging, the would-be languid imagery and prose is simply basic. Worst of all is that while these mysteries generally thrive on an interesting and engaging plot, this book is literally clueless. But maybe this is all by design as some heady post-modern deconstruction of the genre.

"I will send against them the fangs of wild beasts, the venom of vipers that glide in the dust." -- Deuteronomy 32:24

Reading Inherent Vice is a combination of a psychedelic trip back to the sixties in Southern California, a detective story, the experience of hanging with unforgettable characters, and enjoying remarkably well crafted sentences tightly packed with allusions and meaning. Wow! Who else would have thought of it? I can only imagine that this book is a paean to Raymond Chandler, accompanied by marijuana-laced brownies.

"The sign on his door read LSD INVESTIGATIONS. LSD, as he explained when people asked, which was not often, standing for 'Location, Surveillance, Detection.' Beneath this was a rendering of a giant bloodshot eyeball in the psychedelic favorites green and magenta, the detailing of whose literally thousands of frenzied capillaries had been subcontracted out to a commune of speed freaks who had long since migrated up to Sonoma. Potential clients had been known to spend hours gazing at the ocular mazework, often forgetting what they'd come for."

As you can see from this writing, this book is full of fun . . . a self-satire of the genre through the haze from a smoldering toke.

As someone who knows that territory and time well, I was very impressed by the accuracy of the references to the time and place. I felt about forty years younger as I read the book . . . but I didn't have any flashbacks.

The book's main drawback is that the ending doesn't live up to the opening.

Pass that brownie, will you?

I am probably one of the few people on this planet who can claim to have read all of Pynchon's novels, with the exception of Against the Day (which I still have three hundred pages to go), and I've perused Gravity's Rainbow four times over a twenty year period. I can therefore say with some authority that this is definitely his most accessible novel. The plot is pretty much linear and straightforward, and outside of a brief jaunt to Las Vegas, all the action takes place in the span of a few weeks in a beachtown and other parts of the LA area, as opposed to his other novels where the action unfolds over months, years, even centuries in various and sundry regions around the globe from the vantage points of numerous characters. This novel is also unique in the Pynchon oeuvre in that it is told from the viewpoint of only one character, the "gum-sandal" hippy detective Doc Sportello. Pynchon affords us a deep look into the mind of this singular character, who bears some resemblance to previous happy-go-lucky types in Pynchonland, from Tyrone Slothrop, with whom he shares a central mystery and a lot of detective work coupled with a string of casual love encounters, to Zoyd Wheeler, one of the main characters in Vineland who could even be a more jaded, older version of Doc. In the process of solving the mystery of the disappearance of a bigwig developer and his own ex-girlfriend, Doc works his way through a viper's nest of odd and sometimes menacing characters, proving himself not only a lot smarter than he seems on the surface, and a badass not to be messed with, but also a man of great compassion for the folks under his watchful eye. One of the most enchanting aspects of this novel is how well Pynchon captures a sense of time and place. His detailed descriptions of car rides through the LA area, songs on the radio, eateries and other establishments, homes and institutions have the ring of authenticity, and Pynchon must have done some prodigious research into the local history and culture of late '60s LA. Or perhaps he was there at the time and has a fantastic memory for details. Either way, Pynchon's latest novel is a refreshing break from the mindnumbingly epic scope of his previous one, but it resonates with many of the themes that Pynchon has developed throughout his career as a novelist, particularly the struggle of "little people" to survive and understand the bare workings of the monstrous institutions of authority and power that shape and channel their lives.

a miraculously humorous, friendly, witty, creative and highly intelligent story that perfectly answers the inane complaint that Pynchon is "too difficult to get through." I love his lengthy novels and consider them masterpieces. Each page is a wonder unto itself. To follow up the epic, encyclopedic magnitude of "Against The Day" with such a tight, concise, rollicking, and light-hearted psychedelic mystery story is another surprising stroke of genius from the man worthy of endless esteem and awe.

This is energetic and delightful "summertime reading" that will quench your thirst for something fun and peppy while it surreptitiously expands your mind! The language is gorgeous, the plot twists intriguing, and the dynamic philosophical musings are little gems of cognitive candy that leave a lasting taste.

This amazing book proves a thoroughly enriching and satisfying novel through-and-through.

Long Live Thomas Pynchon, the reigning master of the game!

Personally, I think he's been waiting his whole life just to write that book (y'know: "PLOP! Here ya go!").

It's simplicity is elusive & pleasurable & manages to not "shy away" from any of the darker elements of the '60s w/o being a bummer (hence the quote used on the paperback ed., calling it a "throwaway masterwork").

It certainly has some of that "marijuana humor" he & his Cornell pal were so "tickled by, in inverse proportion to the availability of that useful substance" (to quote from his "Introduction" in "Slow Learner").

The three consecutive paragraphs where the reader follows Doc in his "spacing" what had just recently happened ("No, we just ATE the food, Doc!" "No, it's o.k. to leave .. we DID pay!") just killed me! [Not verbatim quotes there, but ... so SUE me! I guess I must have SPACED them, too!]

ALSO: A great introduction to Pynchon for the neophyte, since "The Crying of Lot 49" does, admittedly, end rather abruptly!
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FOR "FURTHER" READING:
[1.] Slow Learner: Early Stories,V. (Perennial Classics),Villette (Signet Classics),Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, and Barry Lyndon.
[2.] The Stoned Apocalypse,Long Time Coming and A Long time Gone, and Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina & Richard Farina.
[3.] 1973 Nervous Breakdown: Watergate, Warhol, and the Birth of Post-Sixties America and ... Vineland (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin), of course!

This is the first book I've read by Pynchon. In the end it was enjoyable, but I'm not going to run out and get his others. This is really a detective novel, centered on PI Doc Sportello, lured into a complex mystery via his relationships to his ex-girlfriend and a crooked cop.

The plot is nicely complicated by the cop's manipulations of Sportello's attention and by the fact that the crux of the case (the disappearance of a wealthy and equally twisted lover and intended con-game victim of Sportello's ex-girlfriend) isn't what it appears to be. It also pits Sportello's hippie/surfer outlook on life against the cop's dog-kill-dog-who-killed-other-dog outlook. In the end, I suppose it's a stand-off.

For whatever reason, it seemed to take me forever to read the book -- it's not that long, 370 pages, but the plot is intricate enough that I lost my way repeatedly and either had to regroup or lose interest. Also, every time I read it, I had this weird sense memory -- the smell of an old wooden dope pipe, reeking of fired-on resin.

Thomas Pynchon does so many things so brilliantly that we should not be surprised that he has now produced a terrific noir crime novel, INHERENT VICE.
He mixes the hard-boiled story of druggie-surfer-P.I. Doc Sportello (great name) with those ubiquitous Pynchonian flights into philosophy and uber-truth.
John D. MacDonald (the Travis McGee series) was the first crime novelist I can remember who would put the brakes on the plot and dialogue for a page or two in order to rhapsodize about the world and its meanings.
Ulterior motives are now common among crime guys. Carl Hiaasen wants us to laugh yet consider the rape of Florida's environment as well as hear his stories. Richard Price gives a dead-on, brutally honest view of the Lower East Side of New York City in LUSH LIFE. James Lee Burke always seems to include his poetic descriptions of the eucalyptus trees of the Deep South. Andrew Vachss wants to expose the horrors of child molestation as much as tell Burke's tales.
Pynchon is merely continuing this tradition of giving the reader double-dips of enjoyment in INHERENT VICE.

Speedo

Cop, Cop, Lawyer (Joe LaLuna)

Have read them all, sometimes twice, sometimes more (GR still gets reread every once in awhile). Have attempted them all, sometimes more than twice (MD took how many times to finally finish? And AD still isn't done). This is the FIRST Pynchon novel I've ever gotten through in one go. Enjoyable, rollicking (never thought I'd use that word in a sentence, thanks Thomas!), and ending nicely on a search for meaning amidst the fog of reality. In fact, this book is capable of appealing to so many different types of readers that I've even recommended it to my mother (who sounded intrigued when I gave her a plot summary). Darn good reading, a worthy way to end the summer. Now, if I can still make it through AD someday.

Set largely in and around Los Angeles in 1969 and 1970, and told in the form of a psychedelic (as opposed to noir) detective story, plot is far from the point of Thomas Pynchon's novel, "Inherent Vice." The plot is disjointed, but then so were the times during which the story unfolds. Rather, the novel presents a pastiche of a post-Altamont and Manson-obsessed slice of America, when the hippie culture was quickly self-destructing, shortly to be eclipsed by Watergate, disco and polyester. Pynchon does a superb job capturing and conveying that milieu through a wide array of distinctive characters who pop in and out of the story, each presenting through their respective mannerisms in speech, conduct, dress and philosophy a unique perspective on the unkept promises of the so-called Age of Aquarius. The book's title is a legal term referring to a thing that has inextricably in its very nature a covert flaw that renders the thing's deterioration inevitable. In this novel, the thing in question is the heyday of the American hippie. As Pynchon was there to witness the fall, his work provides a meaningful vista of a particularly American time and place not so very long ago.

While some have said this was a simple sit down, dive in, and finish easily book, I would have to disagree. Inherent Vice for readers born after the 60s offers a tricky plotline to follow. Thankfully we have a magnificent leader in Pynchon to guide us through this psychedelic time warp. Like Magellan navigating the tricky straights of the southern point of South America, Pynchon navigates through all of the major conflicts of the 60s, and does so with ease through his character of Doc Sportello.
Doc Sportello is a Private Investigator, and public genius. To the police on payroll, he is classified as nothing more than a hippie vagrant like everyone else living in the Venice Beach area of Hollywood where his practice is located. But to the hippies, he is a regular Sherlock Holmes. While this doesn't hit on specifics like the Kent State Massacre, the difference between peace loving civilians and the police department is clearly shown. This key difference offers en extreme historical significance, adding to the underlying theme of the book.
Doc is introduced going about his daily business when he is interrupted by an ex-girlfriend, Shasta. As Shasta and he reconnect he discovers her new boyfriend, a billionaire construction mogul, will go missing and Doc is asked to help. A construction mogul having a billion dollars seems a bit outrageous, especially for the 60's, but Pynchon does everything for a reason. The loss of power and money in LA, and the introduction of corruption and deceit, represents as a whole, a new idea of how things are working in America in the 60's. As Doc attempts to discover his whereabouts hilarity ensues. Pynchon's trick to unraveling the 60's without becoming too political or factual is to use comedy to mask the deeper meaning. Doc is a peace loving hippy trying to find a straight edge, money loving mogul. This ying-yang difference is what creates the humor as Doc battles guns with weed, and uses love as a tactic to gather evidence.
The genius behind Doc, excluding Pynchon, is his near addiction to smoking weed. His marijuana usage helps bring to life the psychosis of the 60s in the writing and plot line. He's not simply corrupting his lungs when he indulges on Vietnamese weed; rather, Pynchon is stating something of much bigger historical significance. But to Doc, everything is just a haze. The ambiguity of the case presents a parallel to Doc's hazy thoughts. He is able to float the line between a serious detective and a laughable hippie all thanks to his favorite herb. Overall though, it is Pynchon's ability to float the line between the serious issues of the 1960's and the hilarity of a story with a character that rivals the pink panther, that makes this book truly a great read.

Best of all, just when a reader has to wonder what Sportello is really all about, how he acts in a pinch, he delivers like only a Pynchon character could. True to the book's noirish pith, Pynchon, a visitor to the genre, eventually places his stoney sleuth in a typically impossible situation, and Sportello surprises and shines. Sportello is like a paranoid hippie version of Philip Marlowe surrounded by bright lights gleaming through a smoky haze.

I’ve been trying so very hard to read and comprehend at least one book by Thomas Pynchon in the last couple years. His stuff is so intriguing, his style in another universe from most other writers, and his influence is monolithic. So I thought it was criminally negligent and lazy that I’d never read anything of his. It started in 2012 in prison: I tried to read The Crying of Lot 49. I only got about 40 pages in before I had to set it aside. I blame that more on my state of mind and the fact that Health “Care” cut me off ALL medications (I’m disabled with a nerve disorder which causes severe, constant chronic pain). Maybe it wasn’t the right place and time to trudge through the encyclopedic references and density of a Pynchon book.

So I waited until I got out, and eventually tried my hand at what’s considered his greatest masterpiece, the 1974 National Book Award-winner, Gravity’s Rainbow. Nearly 800 pages. Supposedly something like 400 characters. And 70 pages—that’s as far as I got before I was just too confused to continue. Mason & Dixon sounded cool, but it was about the same length, and written in the style of an 18th century British academic. NO THANKS! Finally I read Vineland, and actually managed to finish it, mid-2013. The problem was, most of it flew over my head. Three-fourths of the time, I had no idea what was going on. After that I tried to read his first book, V., and I got 250 pages in, but I just found myself lost, confused. Another set-aside.

That’s why it was so great to finally start reading his 2009 book, Inherent Vice. It takes place in late 1960s Southern California. That alone gave it a great amount of intrigue—I’m fascinated by the hippie era. And I grew up in SoCal, so that was just icing. This was definitely, by FAR, Thomas Pynchon’s most accessible book. Normally I can’t stand genre fiction; this is definitely a mystery/detective-type book, written in the genre style on purpose; the only thing that saves it from being genre drivel is Pynchon’s writing. It’s crisp and snappy. His style makes even the most prosaic situations—getting stoned and ordering a pizza, say—crackle like a live wire. It’s a pretty humorous book. I laughed out loud numerous times; a difficult thing for any book to achieve. The only real problems I had with the book were its very ties to the genre in which Pynchon is dabbling. Too many characters, and too many of them are unmemorable; I’m getting the feeling that, with Thomas Pynchon, you just have to throw up your hands and let him take you where he might.

First off, cool cover design by Tal Goretsky and Darren Haggar... these guys deserve credit for their eye-catching pulpish art.
Now let's get to the content: Pynchon's rendering of LA in the 60's and his ribald, unique bent on stoner noir is hilarious. He makes you want to roll a number and put on some Electric Prunes. I loved the offbeat characters... In Pynchon's world before there was legendary Laird Hamilton there was St. Flip of Lawndale "for whom Jesus Christ was not only personal savior but surfing consultant as well" and "what was walking on water, if it wasn't Bible talk for surfing?" I understand Pynchon lived in LA during the 60s and 70s while writing his epic Gravity's Rainbow, so he calls it as he remembered it, whether that recollection was refracted through a drug haze, that's entertainment for us and we are the benefactors. He paints landscapes from Gordita to Watts... Gilligan's Island to a mysterious boat called the Golden Fang... conspiracies abound man.... I dug it! It's like Raymond Chandler on acid, man!

Pynchon's books are recognizable because of their common elements--a quest story, a world populated by individuals with tag names that are often comic, an omnipresent sense of connectedness that implies either bona fide connectedness or paranoia, a deep awareness of both scientific and technical detail and the elements of contemporary popular culture. The resulting mix carries with it a sense of foreboding that is simultaneously comic and can be, literally, funny. The overall effect is one of bemusement at the world or fear of it or bemusement as an instrument to mitigate the fear.

Inherent Vice fits that template precisely and the effects are doubled by the fact that Pynchon is working in the California PI tradition established by the Black Mask writers and codified most precisely by Raymond Chandler in his essay, "The Simple Art of Murder." Here, Larry "Doc" Sportello, a 60's doper/PI is investigating the disappearance of a land developer who has become involved with Doc's former girl friend. As he investigates the case he discovers the tentacles connecting the land developer, his bodyguards, the LAPD, Vegas gamblers, the developer's antagonists and a ship/organization called the Golden Fang, which may be the pivotal element in a huge drug operation or a tax dodge for a group of dentists.

If you read "The Simple Art of Murder," principally its conclusion with the discussion of the Chandlerian hero and the mean streets down which he must go, you see immediately the connections with Inherent Vice, for Doc most go down some pretty mean streets; he must carry the narrative and he will discover the connectedness which, for Chandler, involved the corruption that both inheres in and links the core institutions of society: crime, business, the police, unions, et al. Thus, Inherent Vice is both uniquely Pynchonesque and, simultaneously, Chandleresque.

The time frame is the end of the 1960's and the setting is Gordita Beach, a fictional location which most would link with Manhattan Beach, Pynchon's personal residence at that time. While the details of Pynchon's personal life are closely guarded, some reminiscences of his neighbors and landlord have surfaced and there is a sense that the book is autobiographical, not in its specific details but in the sense that his memories of and feelings for that time are warm and the book has helped him to relive them.

The book is a relatively fast read with a straightforward plot (by Pynchon's standards). It is, overall, more upbeat (like, e.g. Vineland), with sunshine penetrating the shadows. The title refers to a term used to describe the fundamental, unavoidable issues that attend the shipping of cargo and is imaginatively linked with what believers would call original sin. The overall conclusions are more `specific' than Pynchon is sometimes willing to provide, but vaguer than readers of crime fiction will usually expect, but as the publisher notes, this was a time when the smoke filled the air and memory was fallible.

The `Pynchon meets Chandler' motif is not unique to the book; in a sense Pynchon has always been meeting Chandler, but here the meeting occurs in the setting and genre where that meeting can be most fruitful. A real bonus is the `soundtrack'--conveyed through fictional lyrics created by Pynchon or by references to the songs of the time, which are listed/linked on the store's site, courtesy of the author. At 369 pp. this is not a doorstop like Against the Day or a quick read like The Crying of Lot 49. While not a beach book it is as close as Pynchon has got to writing one. Highly recommended.

Challenging read. Kinda fun too. Sort of like a time warp between James Ellroy's 1950's and Carl Hiaasen's 1990's.

The digressions are as much fun as the storyline.

"When he got back, he flipped on the TV and watched Monkees reruns till the local news came on. The guest today was a visiting Marxist economist from one of the Warsaw Pact nations, who appeared to be in the middle of a nervous breakdown. "Las Vegas," he tried to explain, "it sits out here in middle of desert, produces no tangible goods, money flows in, money flows out, nothing is produced. This place should not, according to theory, even exist, let alone prosper as it does. I feel my whole life has been based on illusory premises. I have lost reality. Can you tell me, please, where is reality?" The interviewer looked uncomfortable and tried to change the subject to Elvis Presley."

Doc falls asleep to Godzilligan's Island on the TV and wakes up to Henry Kissinger on the Today Show going, "Vell, den, ve schoud chust bombp dem, schouldn't ve?"

_Inherent Vice_ begins and ends in the 1960s: the era of Vietnam, hippies, and as well as sex, drugs, and rock and roll. The book ends in roughly the same era.
Doc Sportello, a resident of southern California, is a private investigator assigned to solve the mystery of a missing person. Doc makes little headway into his assignment because of the marijuana cloud floating within him and without him.

Mr. Pynchon is known for his writing around his subject matter. As in some of the other Pynchon novels, characters in this book are undeveloped, go no where, and dither around getting high. "Groovy" is one of the words commonly used in _Inherent Vice_. Unfortunately there is nothing groovy about Mr. Pynchon work. I would suggest changing the book's title to "incoherent" Vice. And it is definitely not funny, contrary to some of the blurbs of some of the book reviewers on the book's back cover.

Besides the convoluted crime plot which never lets up, delivering the goods time after time, what's of primary interest here is how people change, how they wholeheartedly believe one thing one day and how over time that belief is turned on its head and their lives and beliefs become the antitheses of what they were when they were younger. What is the process involved here? This is what Pynchon wants to know, and though he typically foists the responsibility onto soulless authority figures who have their own occult reprogramming methods, he never does find out the deeper, more personal (even biological) reasons. It's just what happens, though he doesn't want to accept this. The only alternative for the individual of integrity is to remain on the fringes and resist that change.

Doc Sportello, PI, plays that role in "Inherent Vice" even as he's investigating why all the changes are happening. He's an amiable guy, content to drift and flow along with herbal assistance, but he's also a shadowy figure, a kind of transitional figure working both sides, as he makes his living by working for unscrupulous people; and late in the book an ex calls him on this very fact, and it hits him hard. But how can he get out? Deep down he knows how much he resembles the very cop who is his nemesis. What a bind!

Doc reminded me a little of "Ghost Dog" (from the Jarmusch movie): gentle to the core, even sweet, but capable of violence. There's a great scene late in the book where Doc, grateful that he's not too stoned, engages in his own version of Samurai warrior violence---flowing with a deadly flow---to kill a thoroughly repugnant individual. This single moment of violence surprised me and added a depth to the character, an intensity that seemed absent until then.

I only detected a little reverberative cultural relevance to the contemporary world. One was a primitive computer network that Doc consults from time to time with the assistance of a friend. This was an early manifestation of the internet, so it allows Pynchon a few openings to insert anti-web barbs: how the knowledgeable individual will be expendable, how all the info only adds up to a big hollowness, and of course how nobody will be able to hide. But then at the end of the book, in a very lovely concluding passage in a dense California fog, as a convoy of strangers in cars help each other make a safe passage on difficult roads, he speculates that in the future of instant communication and info retrieval these strangers would connect with each other as it's happening, and would even instantly organize annual reunions to commemorate their moment of brotherhood. I suspect he's being at least partly ironic in his praises, and lamenting the loss of anonymity in such situations, but there's also a concession to the real bonding that can occur between strangers with the help of the internet and the proliferation of social networking tools.

Pynchon's latest offering is a parody of Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction set in 1970 L.A. -- think 'Sam Spade on Acid' and you begin to get the vibe. A Hippie PI gets a case from an old flame, and matters quickly snowball in complexity (and body count) as he delves deeper into the seamy world of real estate development, surf rock, and a Triad-like crime clan run by dentists.

This is quite likely Pynchon's most "accessible" novel to date, as it lacks much of the convoluted prose and obscure period-piece references that are the hallmark of his other works. Fans need not worry: Pynchon's penchant for silly character names, absurd song lyrics, and random trivia are here in spades, but given the setting it's quite likely that most readers will actually recognize the refs, and if you're over 30 it'll probably knock the cobwebs of your memory with a grin and go "oh yeah, I remember that..."

Unlike most of his other books, which take a while to get rolling, this one pulled me right in, and I finished it in 2 days. If you've never read Pynchon, this is a great place to start, though a bit atypical of his other material. Actually, it reminded me of Crying of Lot 49, which is also a mystery, though this is surreal for different reasons -- usually involving the letters THC. Obviously, given the setting, there's a lot of stoner humor in it, and if that is not your cup of tea it'll definitely put you off, but otherwise absolutely give it a go.

Highly recommended.

This is a noir detective novel set in LA in the early 1970s by the reclusive literary figure, Thomas Pynchon. Its a good read and involves a likable PI named Doc, who is investigating a complex case. The book includes a lot of drug and surfer jargon which is sometimes a little tough to follow along with a ton of pop culture references, which is one of Pynchon's trademarks.

The plot is complicated and a bit convoluted, but like Raymond Chandler, the story is secondary to the writing, which is the really fun part of the book. Pynchon does have an incredible talent with words and this makes the novel a worthwhile undertaking.

I understand and agree with the reviewers that suggest that "Inherent Vice" is Pynchon playing with the detective genre. But in most detective stories, you actually care about the mystery as it unfolds and each randomly introduced character contributes something to the story. Neither is the case here, nor is it the case that Pynchon will dazzle you with the language, structure or imagery that he is capable of. A lot of Pynchon is here: the vast organized conspiracy working behind the scenes, the goofy and charming character names, the sexual obsession, the bumbling anti-hero. But what isn't here is something that leaves you impressed that he has reinvented the detective story, or even presented a decent one on its own merits. If you want an easy-ish intro to Pynchon, start with "The Crying of Lot 49". If you want to be blown away, go straight for "Gravity's Rainbow". If you want to read a boring PI novel from a novelist who imagines himself as a hippie doper in 70s LA, then you'll enjoy this one more than I did.

How do you solve crimes after you have smoked 5 - 6 joints during the day? - or for that matter manage to brush your teeth.

This was the first question I asked myself as I got into this poor man's 'Chandler'.

The 'gumshoe' in this California 'noir' smokes his pot like Marlowe smoked cigarettes.

More power to him ,but it makes for pretty tedious reading when all he seems to do is 'flash up' the next number , then we get "stoned think", his stoned thoughts on God, the universe, the munchies and the case at hand.

I surmised that the early 70's California weed must have been very mild due to the amount he consumes and still stays upright. Perhaps if our hero, Doc Sportello, had been a bit straighter he may have sorted this very ordinary plot out quicker than the 366 pages it takes him.

Its a strange book set in about 1970. Why its set there I do not know,and there is no clue.

The constant references to the pop icons of the era - i.e Ginger and others from Gilligans Island -are just plain annoying. My age group may remember this stuff but to most younger people none of the television, music or movies constantly referred are well enough known to have any meaning.

At the end of the book, after many digressions, all we have is a story about heroin and bad guys. with Doc Sportello getting his chick back!

I don't know if Mr. Pynchon imbibes but it gives the impression of being written by a stoned person. Things start up all the time but never go anywhere.

This purchase wasn't a complete waste of $34 but close, a few laughs saved it from getting packed straight off to the church jumble sale.

Inherent vice has been described as Pynchon-light and it probably is his most accessible novel, filled with ersatz nostalgia. It is a trippy detective novel, complete with its Chandler-esque opening and a myriad of psychedelic twists and turns. But I think The Crying of Lot 49 still is the best entry into the world of Pyncon because it contains all of the themes that obsess him (pop culture, cults, entropy) in a short novel. If you enjoy those wild excursions into science (i.e. Pynchon heir Neal Stephenson) there is little here except some musings about old school computer and binary code. There's an avalanche of pop culture references (Godzilla, Scooby Doo), the trademark cornball lyrics, hit-or-miss puns, and weird names (i.e. Shasta) and the Tristero-like conspiratorial organization, The Golden Fang.

This is the only Pynchon work that is being considered by Hollywood as a feature film. Since it is being compared to The Big Lebowski, I think the Cohen Brothers should direct and Jeff Bridges should play the lead character, Doc Sportello. Doc Sportello, like the Dude in Big Lebowski, is an unlikely detective. Why not make the movie somewhat self referential and almost like a Lebowski sequel: The Dude goes pro? That would really tie the room together.

While the novel was very funny and captured the vibe of the late sixties, I think I like my Pynchon with a little more-well-gravity. Anthony Macris said of Against the Day that it is "less a novel than an enormous new planet freshly arrived in the Pynchonian solar system." This one may be his Pluto (cute and lots of fun, but demoted) but here's to hoping the 72 year old Pynchon has another Jupiter (big and gassy, but fascinating) in the works.

Oh my, the English Majors are not going to like this at all. Thomas Pynchon continues on his devastating tear through the genres of American Fiction (Against the Day....great science fiction) and takes on the mystery/detective novel in spectacular fashion. Hollywood concept speak: it's a cross between Reginald Hill and Elmore Leonard, with a bit of Carl Hiassen thrown in for humor. The writing is glorious, with musical notes, cultural references, and inside jokes galore. The characters are among the most accessible that Pynchon has ever created. This could be a best seller, if it wasn't by Pynchon, who scares too many people away with just his reputation. It's a great beach read, and great go-to-bed-with book, and even a great airplane read. Pynchon is writing better than ever. The book has a constant undercurrent of humorous observations on the wild and wonderful world of 1970. I hope Pynchon has at least five more books like this one in him.

Pynchon cranks out another winner with "Inherent Vice", though I found it to be a lot different than some of his other works. Here he tackles the detective genre in the hard-boiled vein of Chandler, and it's set in the sixties, no less.

Yet if you can look past the flashy cover and its relatively small size (weighing in at less than 400 pages, it's the smallest of Pynchon's works in decades), you'll see that you still have a Pychon novel, through and through. Despite its short length, it's most certainly a complex novel, with Pynchon's staple humor, social commentary and culture study running rampant throughout. Set in the last years of the dying hippie era, Pynchon has a lot to say about this strange period in our history, yet manages to produce some insight not limited to a single point in time.

As always, Pynchon provides us with an engaging, and usually outlandish, story to keep it all together. For its size and for the nature of the plot, most readers will find "Inherent Vice" to be one of Pynchon's more accessible works, and I'd probably have to agree with that. This is a book you can read in a night or two, yet it's something you can come back and read again with ease in order to catch things you missed. As others have mentioned, "Inherent Vice" is a good gateway novel to the author's other work, yet I urge first-time readers to be a bit careful. You do not jump into Pynchon's universe, head-first. "Inherent Vice" is a figurative cake-walk when compared to Pynchon's earlier work, so watch yourself.

In the end, it's delightful that Pynchon still manages to surprise us after all these years, and provide us with such quality reading. He is a truly versatile and insightful writer. His skills know no bounds, and we're genuinely lucky to still have him around. My only concern is how long we'll have to wait for his next one.

Sometimes when a writer of straight-up dramas or literary works takes a crack at the mystery genre, the results can be interesting. I often reflect on Martin Amis' "Night Train", for instance. Amis made use of the conventions of the mystery genre without allowing himself to be pulled along by them, ultimately delivering a gangbusters, heartbreaking story that delivered satisfaction by, well... not delivering satisfaction and clarity on every aspect of the story. The lingering mystery of "why...?" on certain character points can be just as resonant as an "Aha!" type explanation, as Amis ably demonstrated. But, just as importantly, he told a clear story along the way to his ambiguity-laced conclusion.

But we're talking about Thomas Pynchon's "Inherent Vice", aren't we? Anyway, the thing starts out well, and throughout delivers much value: lots of well-drawn, imaginative scene setting, description, and characterizations (Doc, the central character, is both smart and ridiculous), but soon the story gets so complicated and meandering that all one can really enjoy are individual scenes, which- to be fair- are often quite well-crafted. However, any momentum, novel-wide architectural craftsmanship that builds on what has gone before, etc., occurs in minimal fashion. So, Pynchon doesn't even get to the point where he has to choose between haunting mysteriousness and total explanation in the resolution, because the hundreds of pages of story before the closing sections are muddled and unclear already. In other words, while the resolution in "Night Train" produced many questions to think about afterward, Amis' comprehensible, well-crafted story clearly laid out those questions beforehand... we easily followed what was going on up until the ultimate questions are laid at our feet. Pynchon doesn't do that; his whole story is all over the map.

To be clear (can't resist that), "Inherent Vice" offers some good banter, observation (especially of the cynical variety), humor, and the imaginative description I mentioned before, but in the end the book was a chore. Not as painful as other chores, but- with its muddled story and muddled final viewpoint- a chore nonetheless. The book does work as a kind of mood piece, I'll give it that. And if that's enough for you, give it a shot. For me, "Inherent Vice" fell into the trap of many literary works: it disregarded craft in favor of self-conscious artiness. And that can often result, as it did in my case, in frequent distraction and yawns.

4.5 out of 5: Cloaked as a detective thriller, Inherent Vice contains the snappy dialog, complicated plot, and criminal underworld types typical of the genre. Don't be fooled by the packaging, though. This novel is pure everything-including-the-kitchen-sink Pynchon with satirical song lyrics, paranoia, drugs, pop culture, lawyers, sex, politics, zombies, more drugs, and a side-trip to Vegas. The neat resolution of a convoluted plot is not really the point. Instead, let go of your need for closure and join Pynchon for a buoyant romp through the psychedelic haze that was L.A. in the late 1960s.

Doc, an amiable, drug-addled personal investigator, stumbles onto a vicious international crime ring as he works on a case brought to him by his ex-girlfriend. By turns brilliant and bumbling, Doc exudes a kind of humble innocence and is the likeable center of this novel. He's both trustworthy and trustful and never far from questioning his own abilities and actions ("Did I say that outloud?"). In a typical example of the endearing workings of Doc's logic, he tries to deduce the origin of a postcard he receives "from some island he had never heard of out in the Pacific Ocean, with a lot of vowels in its name":

"The cancellation was in French and initialed by a local postmaster, along with the notation courrier par lance-coco which as close as he could figure from the Petit Larousse must mean some kind of catapult mail delivery involving coconut shells, maybe as a way of dealing with an unapproachable reef."

In Doc's world, postcards delivered via coconut catapults make perfect sense.

Clearly, Pynchon is having fun with the detective genre. In one scene, Doc drives to a mansion protected by a moat with a drawbridge. After the drawbridge descends "rumbling and creaking," "the night was very quiet again--not even the distant freeway traffic could be heard, or the footpads of coyotes, or the slither of snakes." Beneath all the humor and satire, there's a darker message here. The fun is almost over for Doc and his fellow hippies as paranoia, the harbinger of future oppression, overtakes the fun-loving sixties "like blood in a swimming pool, till it occupies all the volume of the day."

At times Inherent Vice is overly constrained by its purported genre as Pynchon weaves together the complicated plotlines of a detective story, maintaining too tight a grasp on a linear reality. The excessive plotting hampers some of the book's whimsical exuberance. But, unlike much of Pynchon's previous work, Inherent Vice is eminently readable and even, at times, actually suspenseful. At under 400 pages, Inherent Vice is also one of Pynchon's shortest novels. If you've been too intimidated to attempt a Pynchon novel up to now, try this one.

Thomas Pynchon transports readers of his new novel, Inherent Vice, to the early 1970s in Southern California. He captures the mood of that time in many dimensions, especially in the form of drugs, rock and roll and movies. There must be references to four dozen songs that will delight music lovers. Pynchon's prose is word perfect, the dialogue perfect for the era, and the plots were hilarious. Protagonist Larry Doc Sportello is larger than life, mellow on weed, and in the thick of so many subplots that each successive one is funnier than the one before. The names of Pynchon's characters were also funny, and the presence of the early Internet will make even geeks laugh. Inherent Vice provides an amusing and entertaining excursion to a place and time that seems more amusing and quaint now than it seemed at the time.

Rating: Three-star (Recommended)

I can't say I found many "thrills" in this story for it to be called a "thriller". For me it was more of a funny snapshot in time of the late 60's and a comedy. So much so I nearly thought I was stoned with all the grass the dopers were all smoking throughout the book. Lottsa dopers here and everybody is toking up heavy duty every couple hours throughout the book. For me "Inherent Vice" was more of a comedy than a suspense story with some grade B movie 60's sex thrown in to titilate the audience. The rise and fall of the hippies and the now palpable fear of the Manson clan and the waning of th hopeful bright days of free-love are giving way to a darker and more sinister mindset for SoCal. The story stars the amilable doper PI Doc Sportello who is nosing around the SoCal beaches and he keeps realizing that some things are just not adding up as he pursues some leads from his X-girl, Shasta. Doubtless his intuition must be enhanced by all the weed he's smoking? Nah. What can I say? Stupid. I found the story semi-entertaining and a story you got to be in the right mood for. Many of his references to the Vietnam War and the moment in time are funny but this turkey just never gets off the ground no matter how hard it keeps flapping its wings. I found it to be a erstatz cute little story sandwiched in between Doc's music of the moment complete with lyrics and Doc's near aimless blundering around stoned trying to solve a case in which Doc is in way over his head. It was an Ok read but I wish I'd taken a Passadena instead.

Everyone is calling "Inherent Vice" Pynchon-Lite, but I think a more fitting way to think of it is "the lighter side of Thomas Pynchon." Really, "Inherent Vice" is a wonderful, hilarious, and almost candid opportunity to somewhat more easily digest many of the crucial themes that have preoccupied Pynchon since "V." This novel is also a fabulous period piece as well as a poignant critique of our society that extends far beyond L.A. in 1970. Indeed, the principle behind an inherent vice strikes me one of the most succinct ways of getting to the core of Pynchon's view of society, culture, and experience:

"It was as if whatever had happened had reached some kind of limit. It was like finding the gateway to the past unguarded, unforbidden because it didn't have to be. Built into the act of return finally was this glittering mosaic of doubt. Something like what Sauncho's colleagues in maritime insurance liked to call inherent vice. 'Is that like original sin?' Doc wondered. 'It's what you can't avoid,' Sauncho said..."

I've never read any of his work until now so this is just about this book. I liked the "vibe" of the book but it was way too long and filled with inane stuff. He's watching TV and Pynchon takes time to describe the show, why do I need that? Things of that nature (which there is an abundance of) I just skimmed over. I may read other books of his, but not anytime soon.

I am assuming my words here are not the first place you looked for a critical take on this novel. With that assumption I can skip the pretense of a plot summation and jump right into something maybe more thoughtful.

The NYMag's Sam Anderson trashed this novel:
"It would be exciting to see such a prodigious talent find his way onto some new artistic path--one, maybe, open to finding meaning in pauses and silence and understatement rather than the same endless manic invention."

This is a good place for me to start - how very thoughtful of Sam Anderson to provide Pynchon with some career advice (note: sarcasm). This is tantamount to a film critic of the 70s recommending that Sam Pekinpah stop obsessing over violence and move on already. (Or maybe a 1977 Mr. Olympic judge critcizing Arnold for being too proud of his musculature?)

The point is this "endless manic invention" is at the very core of what makes Pynchon a legit national treasure.

A novel which inherently and by design has sapped all the tension (and most of the cohesion) from the narrative that's slathered in paranoia, class tension, and many stoned conversations isn't for everyone. And honestly I'm not sure what the whole thing added up to, but I don't lay awake at night wondering what a particular Coltrane solo means either. I just take it as it is.

My husband and I (who remember the seventies all too well) brought the audio version (12 disks!) along for a road trip of 2400 miles. It was a great choice, and Ron McLarty was a good companion as narrator. Some books make better audio "reads" than others, I find, but this was well matched to the journey. If not as literary as some of Pynchon's other novels, it is a stem-winding mystery of sorts. Of course, with Pynchon, it's more about what happens along the way, and I'm delighted to see that the store has a play list of all those long-forgotten songs.

Should be titled "Incoherent Vice." I lost interest in the disjointed narrative and amorphous plot, and the analytical skills of a detective who stumbles through every scene stoned out of his mind. There was virtually no character development, so I started wondering why I was forcing myself to read it just because I'd wasted $10 bucks on it. A few good lines, otherwise it would have been one star.

The main focus of this review has to do with how Inherent Vice fits in with the rest of Pynchon's catalog (namely, that it doesn't). I could certainly think of little else while I read it--even though this feels like Pynchon, all the parts are in place, it's still just... not the same. I've always enjoyed Pynchon for a number of qualities that aren't to be found in any other author; these are, for the most part, absent. Despite brief burst of lyricism, the language was fairly base, and there was very little of Pynchon's accustomed intellectual voracity.

Still, Pynchon has never been funnier, nor have his characters been likable. The plotting is fairly convoluted at well. Inherent Vice seems to fill a hole within Pynchon's profile; it feels almost inevitable we experience him this way. As a unit within his works, it does its job decently well--and though it lacks substance (everything here is to be found in a more concentrated form within Vineland), it's defintely enjoyable. As long as he doesn't write something like this again.

If nothing else, Inherent Vice introduction to Pynchon's work; it ought to create a whole new audience for him. In a more sublime sense, it also represents Pynchon's ultimate tribute to the end of the sixties. An aura of nostalgia pervades the pages, and I can't help feeling that it, more than anything else, was driving force behind the composition of this newest text.

My edition ended at page 369. I'm sure I'm reading too much into it, but maybe that means something as well.

Confession: this is the first book I've ever read by Pynchon. Unlike most, I was never assigned to read The Crying of Lot 49 in high school, and though it and V are on my long list of to-reads, I just haven't gotten around to it.

I bumped Inherent Vice up the list this past summer, when it made the review rounds as a fun hippie gumshoe novel. Never judge a book by its cover, but man if that isn't a perfect opening image to start a book. 368 lumbering pages later, and I'm wondering why I even bothered finishing it.

This book feels like a really light, really flat mess of subplots with bad humor and nothing driving the story. Our lead character, Larry "Doc" Sportello, is a hippie private dick, and the possibilities seem endless for how such a character could be as memorable as a Marlowe or Spade. Except, Doc is just one of a zillion characters that feels completely flat. It's absolutely impossible to tell where Doc falls on the spectrum of hippiedom - is he a Shaggy, a The Dude, a Maynard G Krebbs? At times his responses suggest he's high as a kite, or has an IQ of about 40. Then, a sentence later, and he might be putting together a massive clue. It's like a dumb Saturday morning cartoon hippie caricature.

Early on, Doc is hired to look into trouble with an old flame's new lover. Sort of. Exactly what he's supposed to do is not really made clear, and Doc really doesn't seem to care. Then someone else hires him, and he doesn't seem to care about that. Throughout the book, in fact, Doc gets thrown into case after case after case, and it's just impossible to tell if Doc has a vested interest in anything.

Here's the thing: it would be FINE if Doc explicitly didn't care; that he was always too stoned to put much effort into it. But Doc wavers all over the ballpark, from sort of caring, then not caring, then caring, then not - and it's all too random to have him come off as anything but a poorly written character.

Ultimately, I don't get why Doc cares to solve any of the mysteries. He isn't getting paid. He doesn't seem to have a moral or ethical issue. There's sort of a romance reason, but boy is that lost as the book goes on. And without this driving force, the book largely consists of a bunch of events that transpire around Doc; Doc occasionally pokes his head up to see what's going on, but for the most part, he could just as soon take a nap as help his ex-girlfriend out. One might make the mistake of comparing Doc to The Dude of Lebowski fame; this would be an incorrect comparison. The Dude had a goal: get compensation for his peed-on rug, something he cares way more about than Doc does about his ex.

As for the mystery: it's a complete mess, one of those books where a name mentioned in passing 100 pages prior suddenly comes back to the protagonist's mind as important, leaving you to search for just who this person is. There are TONS of unbelievable coincidences in the book that become insanely irritating, and lots and lots of exposition to fill in gaps in logic. It'd be one thing if we were meant to not focus on the mystery and more on Doc floating through it...but we clearly are, based on how little of the book is devoted to anything but.

When all was revealed in the end, it was utterly ho-hum. The sort of thing that feels essentially like a square peg mystery pounded into a round hole narrative that simply didn't want to accept it.

And it's not funny. It's painfully unfunny. There are certainly a few great moments, but those are overshadowed by line after line after line of "ba-dum-ching!" dialog.

Best thing about this book: the beautiful cover art. Everything goes downhill from there.

I have not treated Pynchon's latest novel as a "beach read" as some reviewers on the store describe it. Thomas Pynchon is America's greatest living author and one of its greatest writers ever. His is a true late modern voice who follows Fitzgerald and leads us by the hand into hyperreality. Completing his California trilogy (CoLot49, Vineland, now IV), Pynchon's new protagonist, Larry "Doc" Sportello is a deconstruction of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe and Dashiell Hammet's Sam Spade. He is not hard edged, or tough - he's Karmic.

If that doesn't sound of interest to you, perhaps there's a new vampire or wizard book coming out?

Anyway, if you are considering reading this book, read the reviews offered by the New Yorker or NYT - not some 12 year olds pretending they read books like these on the store.

"You read it yet?" I leered, indicating the stack of Pynchons with my left, Spock eyebrow.

"Not yet."

"It's great. Some of the critics, though..."

"Well," the lad manning the register at the 18th Street and 5th Avenue B&N cracked, "It's really up to him to define literary excellence, ain't it?"

Damn straight.

"Credit card purchase?" I refolded the Franklin, already startled by the light, "But it was already light", and put him back to sleep in the wallet, drawing my ace: the Gold Card.

I palmed my books on Weimar Art and the Nazi Occult, further rounding out my paranoia collection.

"See ya."

I threw the security guard my toughguy look and re-entered the high-90s atmosphere, the ablative material just pouring off me, out of radio contact for three nervous minutes in the ionization layer. How I'd wished the book had been longer. Fearfully watching the damn book reach the halfway point, trying to hoard the pages, slow it down, just a little to hold me over... then, afterburners. Page after page, zooming, like a 356 pinning the tach. Finishing, looking at other novels stalker-like, "They aren't HER." Each a promise of disappointment. There's nothing like this stuff. How lucky we got one more out of the guy.

They're never long enough.

Certainly not long enough for a "Goodbye."

As many have already written, Thomas Pynchon is an acquired taste, like jazz and silent comedy (two other tastes I have joyfully acquired). I first tasted Pynchon, like most readers my age, in his debut novel, "V." Somewhere between the silliness of the "whole sick crew" and the all-too-seriousness of Stencil's Oedipal search, I realized I was reading someone who was a literary personification of a Jerry Garcia dictum: "It's not enough to be the best at what you do. You have to be the only one to do what you do." I was (am) hooked.

Not that Pynchon hasn't let me down. I did not like "Against the Day" after page 250 or so (or once we left the Colorado miners behind), and "Vineland," I thought, was a bad joke. "Gravity's Rainbow" is probably still his best, but for warmth and humanity, "Mason & Dixon" tops it. Many reviewers are already referring to his new book, "Inherent Vice," as his warmest, but I still vote for Charles & Jeremiah.

What "Inherent Vice" is, is a wonderful joyride. It probably doesn't hurt that I was an idealistic hippie in the spring of 1970, somewhat younger than protagonist Doc Sportello, but just as disgusted with what Pynchon calls "flatland." There are the usual Pynchon foibles - too many stupid names, too much loveless sex, too many bad punchlines. But there is something so easy about reading it - and that is certainly unusual for Pynchon. I'm not sure if all readers will have as easy a time as a Pynchon devotee like me, but I don't see how this novel could present any real difficulties. Just remember that plot continuity is not really all that important in any PI novel. Raymond Chandler agrees with me on that last point, and Pynchon is obviously lovingly parodying Chandler and Hammett in "Inherent Vice."

The greatest element of the novel is the aforementioned Doc Sportello, who, although referred to in the third person, is the narrative point of view through which the tale is told. We see all of Gordita Beach and Greater Los Angeles through his pot-clouded senses. Doc shares something with all of the great detectives of the genre like Chandler's Philip Marlowe or Hammett's Continental Op -a code of honor. In Doc's case, he is loyal to the hippie subculture that is trying to eke out an existence by the waves instead of joining the decrepit and meaningless straight world. As one character puts it, the tug is between the hippie lifestyle of "freedom" vs. "that endless middle class cycle of choices that are no choices at all." Doc sees that his and his friends' way of life has a short expiration label, but he does everything in his power to keep it running as long as it can. And, of course, in the spring of 1970 in L.A., it was running out quickly, what with Manson and his family, who are eerily in the background throughout the novel.

I won't give anything away. I will tell you that Pynchon's novel, if not his warmest, is definitely his most comic. I mentioned earler that there are too many flat punchlines. Did I mention that there are hundreds of good ones?

Michael Santa Maria

Listening to Ron McLarty read Pynchon's "Inherent Vice" may be an even richer experience than reading it. McLarty uses his timing to underscore the stoned vibe of the whole book, and of "Doc" Sportello in particular. I would warn any stoners, though, not to listen to this while ripped. There's enough paranoia here to sink a continent.

Enjoyable "beach" reading. File under "pop." The characters lean without straining toward being just interesting enough that you may wish they were developed better, or at least more uniformly. While Pynchon seems to want us to think he wrote the whole thing on a layover, it's clear that he had to forcibly arrest the characters from escaping the iconic hard boiled detective motif and emerging into something resembling dramatic farce. Loses steam in the last 60 pages or so. Finished it on principle, so I didn't care that the ending was diffuse. Definitely a page-turner, though, with hints of the sly Pynchon throughout.

I always used to think of "The Crying of Lot 49" as the obvious entry point to the work of my favorite author. It may have had some dense prose, but at least it was short.
A new portal has been opened.
"Inherent Vice" is both short and easy to read, but it's still recognizably the work of Thomas Pynchon even if the pink flaps of the dustjacket are visually jarring as you read the remarkably unconvoluted sentences and short paragraphs. Despite the surprisingly atypical cover ("Mason & Dixon" and "Against the Day" appear so large and beige and sober on my bookshelves), pot-smoking private eye Doc Sportello would have felt at home wandering through any other book in the canon. I'm hoping that some new readers will pick up this quick marijuana-fueled trip through 1970 Los Angeles (a place where Pynchon seems very comfortable) and move on to the harder stuff, especially "Gravity's Rainbow," which may now seem much less daunting than its reputation. (I can't help thinking about James Joyce. How much less intimidating would his comic masterpiece "Ulysses" have seemed to many readers today if Joyce had ended his career with a simple thriller set in Dublin rather than with "Finnegans Wake"?)

I know Pynchon is a genius, but why are these wacky, totally improbable characters, principally a perpetually-stoned hippie private eye in the psychedelic sixties of southern Cal, thought to be so interesting? Just for the sake of craft? The book recalls last year's A Fraction of the Whole (Aussie Steve Toltz), same thing, brilliant writer albeit of a much different time and place, enscripting, as though on a prolonged acid trip, crazy people who could never exist, and as a reading experience exasperating and all but unfinishable. One might not frequent public housing projects much either, but the several outliers in Price's Lush Life are at least plausible, as are Shtenygart's and Chabon's fantasylands.

Inherent Vice was disappointing the way 'average' books can sometimes be disappointing. It left me feeling alone and somehow ignored, like on a really bad date, like the author was more committed to nailing the CA-Detective genre than to offering up something trenchantly human or urgent. And from his previous fiction, that's sort of become the expectation. Glowing urgency, humanity, crisis of identity and power structures and consciousness, all packaged and delivered with some first rate flash and verve.
When he's on, Pynchon glows genius. You read Gravity's Rainbow or Mason and Dixon and you start feeling anxious around books like this one, like maybe the author is now being held at gunpoint in some corporate underground somewhere, forced to crank out mediocre morsels of genre and tired talent.

In the editorial reviews of another Pynchon novel, the store included this blurb from the Seattle Times: "Like Bruegel's painting 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,' [Pynchon's novel] is a portrait of mankind's attempt to transcend our mortality--or at least push up against its very edge." Woah! Duuude! Heavy, huh? And there are many other such panegyrics which proclaim how profound Thomas Pynchon's novels are.

Very well. I shall attempt no judgment as to the validity of this view. Some people apparently think he's the greatest, greatest since Urlugal, and maybe Gravity's Rainbow is the one document that future generations will study when trying to understand the society of this era.

But "Inherent Vice" is not at all profound, and it doesn't attempt to be. It makes no attempt to probe the fabric of our society, and -- unless you think that it's important to observe that all cops are sexually-frustrated morons (the bad guys) -- there's no social message whatsoever to be gleaned from this novel. (If you disagree and instead believe that this is a novel with a deep message, allow me to suggest that you've been spending too much time tied to the Huffington Post.) (Reference to Allman Brothers song.)

It's a farce. It's meant to be a rollicking romp with babes in bikinis, LA hipsters, dopers, cheaters, six-time losers, and girls by the whirlpool, lookin' for a new fool. Yeah, that's it precisely. This is Pynchon's attempt at writing Subterranean Homesick Blues into a novel.

Cool! Groovy! Uptight and out-O-sight! But does it rock? Most important, IS IT FUNNY?

Let's put it this way:
It's about as funny as if Eminem were to release a comedy album.
It's about as funny as if Thomas Friedman were to start writing Doonesbury.
It's as funny as if Cecil Taylor had joined Spike Jones & His City Slickers (reference to a musical group that Pynchon is said to admire).

It's about as funny as a rubber crutch in a polio ward. In fact, that line is similar to the hackneyed humor in much of the book. If you adore Thomas Pynchon and everything he stands for (as you understand it), you'll think that this novel is the greatest thing since milk on Wheaties®. But for the rest of us, it's like . . . you know how when you'd show up at a girl's house for a date, and her dad would start making these jokes (some slightly off-color) to show how cool he was in front of you?

That's what the agony of this book is.

Why put yourself through that again?

Yo! Pynchon, dude! Go back to being profound . . . or at least esoteric.

If you're a pynchon fan, I suppose this is liable to please you. It's only my second after Devil's Basement, or whatever that was, which I never finished. I'm a big reader & appreciate a lot of styles & genres, but I don't find this guy especially creative or clever or gifted with language.
Just sayin'....

Not *that* smart. Not that captivating. Dialogue seems really contrived. SoCal surf-culture anthropology is interesting; however, I am not sure he masters "surfer" or "stoner" talk for that matter. I wanted, I really wanted this book to be good. This is not "light" Pynchon. This is not-that-good Pynchon. :(.

Those that know, know the writing of Thomas Pynchon can be a rough row to hoe--featuring convoluted, paranoid plotting, byzantine sentence structure, alternation of genres and modes of presentation within a single opus--sometimes even a single page--funny names and multi-layered puns, revisionist history and anachronisms galore. And pizza--plenty of pizza. What most folks who've read Pynchon expect is a rough but rewarding time decrypting encoded messages pointing to vast conspiracies both right and left, and being able to pat themselves on the back for being so wickedly erudite as to be able to follow at least some of the multiple, overlapping plotlines found within each of his six novels. Those that don't know Thomas Pynchon usually bail out on page 150 of Gravity's Rainbow.

But note this down and burn this deep into your collective forebrains--Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon's seventh and funniest novel, is a beach read.

The grand master of literary obfuscation actually did it this time--either he made a conscious decision to express himself via comparatively stable characters and plotline of a more traditional make & model or he said "screw it--it's time to cash in!" Inherent Vice has sentence structures and vocabulary more akin to Tom Robbins than Henry James, an overall shape more like Christopher Buckley than Henry Adams. You'll knock this one back like chugging down a Corona during a Fresno mid-summer heat-wave. Inherent Vice is cool and refreshing and funnier and easier to comprehend than anything else Pynchon's written so far.

And yes folks, in spite of various smack-downs from some of the more self-conscious members of the professional lit-crit establishment, Inherent Vice has meaningful connections to Pynchon's larger collection of cabals and conspiracies including a lot of what appears to be the author's personal back story. There is a major element of autobiography to this novel, a Palimpsest buried in so deep that it's more like a solid concrete foundation--you'll need some heavy-duty construction equipment to work your way through it. Once I opened the book I knew that this stuff had to be ripped from the tattered casebook of Thomas Pynchon, professional cryptic `n sleuth--from cloak and dagger to croak and stagger!!! I was seeing where stuff in Gravity's Rainbow could have come from--what lunch might be like Under The Sign Of The Gross Suckling, places where you'll find boysenberry yogurt and marshmallows on your pizza --or a joint along with your hamburger available during Tommy's Hamburger's 2-4-1 special. No fear dude, this little pamphlet will be plenty re-readable, with loads of evidence of mindless pleasures to unearth as you dig through the narrative rubble.

While many readers of Inherent Vice will note the resonances to The Big Lebowski, & some to the Robert Altman/Elliott Gould "Long Goodbye"--fewer still recalling "Nick Danger, Third Eye" and an even more miniscule slice of that demographic recalling Bonzo Dog Band's "Big Shot"--the key element connecting all these works is Raymond Chandler. If any writing of the last 100 years deserves James Wood's Lit-Crit damning-with-faint-praise pejorative "Hysterical Realism," it's Chandler's Noir with Literary Pretensions. The Firesigns, the Coens and Altman 'n Gould were all making variations, comments and carom shots off of Chandler's high-gloss pulp. As does Pynchon. The nominal Dame of these stories, usually a lady who's doing her best to reinvent herself with a different haircut, clothes, identity, address--is THE figure at the core of Noir.

In Inherent Vice, that "Dame" is Shasta, ex-girlfriend of hazy P.I. and protagonist Doc Sportello--a L.A. beauty queen who wanted to make it big in the movies but settled for money from her rich, married-to-someone-else real-estate-mogul boyfriend, Mickey Wolfman. Wolfman has been kidnapped in the immediate wake of the Tate-LaBianca Murders, leading to many a nervous mishap among hypersensitive members of the L.A.P.D. Naturally, as in Raymond Chandler's Pulp Fictions, things get really complicated real fast and the rot leads all the way to the top of L.A.'s food chain. The symbolism of Shasta can be spotted by anyone who knows what Pynchon was writing about in Vineland. By the time you've zipped through Inherent Vice's 369 pages, you'll probably want to start all over again to figure out what you missed. The name on the cover changes nothing, this is still a beach read.

Who'd 'a thunk it?

I tried reading 'Against the Day' first, but was scared off by the length of it; gave 'Gravity's Rainbow' a try, but was scared off by the density of it; 'Inherent Vice', on the other hand, was an accessible and fun entrance into this author's legendary catalog.

I was really shocked reading this book. I kept waiting for the punchline - 'ha this wasn't written by pynchon' or 'joke's on you.' I'm a huge fan of Pynchon. Loved V, Vineland, Crying of Lot 49, ... even Mason Dixon (gravity's rainbow is a whole another conversation). I pre-ordered and counted down the days until publication of this book. Man , was I disappointed. This is like a cheap knock-off of Pynchon or the ikea version of an eames chair. Cliff Notes feels less derivative and one dimensional than this. I guess Pynchon is showing his age.

Finally, a Pynchon book of reasonable length! A book you can lift! Any work by Thomas Pynchon requires considerable effort on the part of the reader and this one is no exception, but the entertainment factor is high. Pynchon's broad range of knowledge about the most esoteric of subjects always amazes--it's as if he knows everything I know and a hundred times more. Gravity's Rainbow is still my favorite work.

This is an old man's book. An old man trying to create a time that might have been, but certainly remembered through rose-colored glasses. Chickies, dope, sex and rock 'n roll and oh maybe a mystery. How disappointing! Not to mention the dialogue was contrived and no-one really talked that way!

The thread of a 70s, druggie P.I. is good, but it goes nowhere very slowly. And as much as I appreciate Pynchon's fun of playing with multiple universes, it has no place in this novel (even if he masks it as a drug trip). Instead of this novel, stick to Robert... Crais' P.I., Elvis Cole, for P.I. reading.

the readers for mason and dixon and against the day exhibit an attention to detailed nuances of the language that i found i couldn't really pickup on in a first reading -- but the reader for inherent vice actually dampens the text -- he just hurries through the words as if the plot actually mattered -- as opposed to the narrative voice and texture. it is really disappointing -- i wouldn't recommend it, but i would recommend the book -- there are just so many lovely touches in it, language-wise, that the reader muddies. he just hasn't spent enough time with the text before doing his performance. too bad.

Wow. I guess it's not fair to review a book you couldn't finish, but I feel compelled to rant about how annoying and irritating Pynchon's style was. I've never read anything from him before, and I don't question his talent, but unless you are an original hippie who lived through the heyday of the "free love" movement, then I doubt you could enjoy this book. I know I didn't. I really tried to get into the characters and give this one a chance, but it ends up sounding like the ramblings of an intoxicated person and you are the sober one patiently waiting for a point to be made. It never arrives. There is an interesting plot in this book but it gets strangled by Pynchon taking poetic license to try and recreate life in the 60's. I get it. Everyone was stoned. You know how annoying it is listening to a stoned person ramble on about nothing? That's what reading the first half of this book is like. I decided my life is too valuable to waste time reading something I don't enjoy, especially when so many good books are waiting in the wings. Sorry Pynchon, but I just could not take it any longer. You got my $15 bucks, so you are ultimately the winner, but you're just not my style. I really did try to like it. Peace and Love my brother......

I am always determined to finish a book, no matter how awful it is. This book has stalled me out for 2 months. I literally dreaded picking it up to finish the last 30 pages. I have finished it now, and have no idea whatsoever what was going on. The first novel ever that has left me completely clueless. The characters are a wasted lot. This book makes the classic NAKED LUNCH by Burroughs completely coherent. Where is Kerouac when you need him? I love the beats. I love the sixties & all the psychedelia that went along, but this book just brings me down. I am in the process of writing my own novel and stuff like this that becomes best sellers really makes me question the sanity of this world we live in. The only redeeming thing in this whole mess is the mention of Jonathan Frid (Barnabas from Dark Shadows) doing some kind of nightclub act in Vegas (fictional). The dialog is pure torture. Enough said. Proceed at your own risk...hey it takes all kinds...

Let me start by saying that I have never read Pynchon before. I read a book review about "Inherent Vice" and ordered the book. The fact is that this book is just very difficult to read. It could not hold my interest at all. A stoner PI trying to solve a mystery in SoCal in the late '60s?? That is the plot?? The characters are contrived and not at all believable. I gathered that the book is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but it is just not funny. Thomas Wolfe is much better.If you want a goofy book to read that is laugh-out-loud hilarious, try "The Stingray Shuffle" by Tim Dorsey.

This was my first Pynchon read and it probably gonna be my last. As a Scandinavian I try to keep up with American literature and pick out half a dozen US books every year. I heard much positive things about Pynchon so my expectations were high. I also lived in Southern California for a year so I was thrilled to read a story that takes place in LA. But the book was a big disappointment. It is a bad detective story (read Stieg Larsson instead) and the writer's comments about American society are without any depth (read Philip Roth instead). I think this is not meant to be a book; Pynchon wants this to be a film. Every chapter (or sometimes part of chapter) will be a great scene. But a book not written to be a book will fail, and this one does fail - big time.

While this may make a decent movie (which is rumored to be in production), it's a terrible novel. It's like a novelization of the Big Lebowski where every detail is described in a painfully boring manner. There is no meter to the writing so it's a slow read and practically nothing that occurs is important to move the plot along. Perhaps if you lived in L.A. during the late 60's/early 70's, this book would be interesting, but for everyone else it offers nothing. In every chapter the protagonist goes through the same routine: he smokes a joint and stumbles across a clue that leads him to the next chapter. It glorifies hippies and condemns the right-wing Man, but by doing this it really just does a disservice to liberals by portraying them as a bunch of negative stereotypes. This is one of the only books I've read that I dreaded picking up because not only was it pointless, but it also had no entertainment value. None of the characters seemed to matter, and they were all described in such lavish detail it was never apparent whether they would play a major role or not. Pynchon would spend a page or two describing a character and then never bring them up again. It was impossible to remember them all, impossible to remember what mattered about them.

I usually don't write reviews but I felt obligated to warn people to stay away from this one. This book shouldn't have been published.

I so rarely abandon anything... and here is my second stab at Pynchon back to the library after less than 1/4 way through (I bailed on Against the Day as well).

From allusions that ring as false as a jet contrail in an 1880's western movie to stilted dialogue, this book was just irritating.

If you buy into that ridiculous post-modern credo that difficult and obscure equals profound and "important" you might be able to stomach this drivel. If you prefer "homages" to detective novels to the real deal, knock yourself out.

On the other hand, try some James Lee Burke, and see how the real detective deal scans.

Wow, where should I begin? I have never read a book by Thomas Pynchon before, and after this piece of garbage, I will not seek another one out. I should have known when there was a full 2 pages of reviews by every magazine and professional reviewer praising what a wonderful book this is. I am beginning to think the "professionals" just like crap. It is as if this author was stoned the entire time he wrote this. There is not a single coherent thought in it. Hunter S Thompson would wander of the topic, but at least he would return, this "writer" seems to forget to. The story if you want to call it that is weak at best, and you can't possibly care about any of the characters or what happens to them. The Author is the type that critics love to refer to as edgy but in this case as it is in most what they really should say is the writing is horrible! The last book that I read that was this bad was from another critic's darling Thomas McGuane's 92 Degrees In The Shade, another example of a writer who somehow gets a book published that he wrote completely stoned.
NEVER BUY BOOKS THAT CRITICS RAVE ABOUT, THEY ALWAYS SUCK!!!

This is my first experience with Pynchon and I have to say that this is one of the most useless novels I have ever read. There is really nothing redeeming about it. If you want to read good noir about LA then pick up James Ellroy. He is a true artist. Anything in his LA Quartet is far superior to this.