Humble Thoughts

Those who have read, or are aware of the writings of Thomas Pynchon – reclusive author extraordinaire – know his style to be anything but conventional. Inherent Vice is no different. 

With a career of nearly 50 years, Pynchon is not a novelist in the basic sense of tradition. He revels in paranoid plotting, odd ball character names (ie. Lieutenant Bigfoot Bjornsen, Sauncho Smilax, Dr. Blatnoyd), labyrinth sentence structure, and manic shifts from mad-cap to melancholy.

In Inherent Vice, Pynchon waxes the nostalgia of an era at its death rattle: the ‘60s counterculture. Set in 1970 Los Angeles, the embodiment of such fading peace and love is presented by way of Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello, an affable, drug-prone private dick who stumbles onto a nefarious crime ring as he works on a case brought to him by his ‘ex-old lady’ Shasta. Seems her current flame, billionaire Micky Wolfmann, has disappeared and it’s through Doc’s hazy field of sight, traversing a bizzaro cast of FBI agents, zombified surf bands, a fascist cop with a penchant for chocolate covered bananas, and a mysterious conspiracy known as the Golden Fang, that he must see his way through.

Set-up as a decade specific, noir-centric piece of lit, containing copious dialogue of ‘groovies’ and ‘far-outs’ while the omni-present Mansion Family trial lurks the back pages, this is also a funny read, too.

Chapters are littered with pop culture shout-outs, satirical song lyrics, politics, sex, chemically enhanced indulgences, and a wild road trip to Vegas in-between.

Surely some readers will note the novel’s kinship to filmic pieces such as The Big Lebowski or Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye. As luck would have it, a big screen adaptation has been in the works for the past two years, with director Paul Thomas Anderson behind the helm (coincidentally a stand-in for late director Robert Altman on his final film, 2006’s A Prairie Home Companion).

With Joaquin Phoenix cast as Doc, advance buzz has touted Vice as a very different Paul Thomas Anderson experience – apparently very faithful to Pynchon’s inimitable words, it stretches a beguiling tone of broad comedy, suspense, romance, and a touch of menace. It is slated for December release.

As for the book itself, reading Pynchon is a little like reading Shakespeare. You just relish the diction. Here characters are multiplied unnecessarily for the colour they give the story while the plot trots behind trying to keep up, just about succeeding in catching everyone. By the time you have emerged from its 369 pages, you will probably want to start all over, just to make sure it wasn’t all a paperback hallucination.