Reading Inherent Vice

Further link in that article to this earlier webreport, "Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay":

http://www.theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html

The voice in the trailer is so not the voice in the Simpsons clip, even assuming that one of them is actually Pynchon.

I was just going to say they sound alike! One sounds older than the other but maybe the Simpsons one is slightly speeded up?

would you all recommend this book to someone who admires some aspects of pynchon but is annoyed by the generally annoying ones - is an elmore leonard filter the solution - sounds like it could be

What do you mean by the annoying ones?

just got this for my birthday, will prob. start reading this afternoon

This is shaggier than an Elmore Leonard book, with a lot more characters and the usual random Pynchon shifts between realism and goofiness, but yeah, I think this might be accessible to people who like Elmore Leonard.

Our library doesn't have it yet, but it has spiked a marked increase in requests for "Gravity's Rainbow." I've tried to push "The Crying" and "Vineland" as well, to no avail.

PS: I almost checked out a collection of early short stories, "Slow Learner," that I'd never heard of. Worthwhile?

i dont really like elmore leonard it sounded like leonard + pynchon

last story in it, 'the secret integration', is fantastic and joyful — the early stuff, apart from fleshing out a buncha shoulda-never-gone-past-undergraduate-level theses on 'entropy', is of little value

the introduction, autobiographical, in which pynchon basically writes off his entire writing career of the 60s, is probably the most referenced bit of it nowadays. it's interesting that it exists, i guess?

"I counted."

I've had trouble getting a clear run at this, so I'm only 90 or so pages in, but I'm loving the shaggy dogness so far. A ridiculous lurid twist in every paragraph seems kind of fitting, I almost punched the air when Beware of the Golden Fang appeared.

I've been paused at "I counted" b/c I'm like, there's no way this can get better.

This New Yorker review tries to put the book in the Chandler context and is pretty much spoiler-free.

ehh, it's kinda hardboiled 101 stuff. which kind of makes me think there's just not that much to say about this record

1 - read chandler essay
2 - read pynchon novel
3 - quote liberally from both
4 - collect check

The friend who linked the New Yorker piece on her blog noted that its author had apparently not seen "The Long Goodbye" or "The Big Lebowski," which are both better points of reference than "The Simple Art of Murder."

tracer i would have said much the same except i have a grudging fondness for louis menand

lebowski is actually a really apt comparison, sadly /:

hey, it's really him

http://shelf-life.ew.com/2009/08/11/thomas-pynchon-speaks-inherent-vice-trailer/

swallowed this fucker more-or-less whole -- finished in about 24 hrs.

really very funny & enjoyable. the chandler reference in the new yorker review is only relevant in attempting to include IV into the formal definition of hardboiled noir via the protagonist -- there wasn't a lot of chandler here beyond the common geography. i haven't read any leonard but i imagine there's a greater similarity. i was reminded at some points of ross mcdonald, but for all the shaggy freaks and lemuria references and cointelpro shit, i kept thinking of the illuminatus trilogy, of all things.

On what page does "I Counted" turn up? I'm a bit worried I either missed it, failed to get it, or just forgot about it because I read a chunk of this while a bit drunk last week.

He says it at least a couple of times, in response to something like (to Bigfoot) "You are one fucked-up hombre" "How do you know?" "I counted."

Really underwhelmed by this so far. It feels as dismayingly weak as one of those terrible late episodes of the Simpsons. I saw one blog which suggested it would make a good film if it were entirely cast by muppets - which could work.

I can only really justify it as a book about failing memory - 72-y-o TRP trying to get down all the details of his 1969 LA idyll - the surf, the songs, the food - before his own doperhead memory finally flakes out.

Re noir - I suppose The Long Goodbye is the missing link between this and Chandler.

On what page does "I Counted" turn up?

p18 is the first time.

He says it at least a couple of times, in response to something like (to Bigfoot) "You are one fucked-up hombre" "How do you know?" "I counted."

Haha, oh yeah, I remember laughing out loud at that at the time now.

I guess I can understand how this might be disappointing if you have great expectations for this because its connection to Pynchon's own past, but I found its pulpy meanderings and self-indulgence to be extremely refreshing -- but that may have more to do with my acquired taste for pulp.

xp

As a hardboiled detective, Doc isn't much of a detective or very hardboiled, though there is one amusing scene where he is mistaken for a badass. His dope-clouded consciousness won't support the classic succession of quick scenes in which the PI detects and questions. That's part of the joke, but it means the narrative never achieves the speed or economy of the best works in the genre.

I can see a Ross Macdonald comparison both in the L.A. setting and in Doc's Archer-like compassion for the mysterious sax player and his family.

god i want to read this but my to-read stack is just out of control at the moment. someone convince me to leapfrog about five or six other novels.

do it! leapfrog!

i really can't afford a hardcover (or food) (or rent) right now, so that does make things a bit easier to take.

Have you considered petty crime? It fits nicely and inconspicuously inside a trenchcoat or other long jacket.

for what it's worth, Doc hasn't been hardboiled to the point of weary cynicism like other classic private dicks in the genre, but he's by no means soft

well, maybe a little soft in the head

The later Lew Basnight episodes in Against The Day are a lot closer to traditional hardboiled detective fiction than this. When I first heard about the concept for this book I initially thought Pynchon was going to pick up his story where he left off.

there's really no femme fatale in this, is there?

It's true that Doc does carry a gun sometimes and is not adverse to putting himself in dangerous situations (though some of those decisions come across as more befogged than brave). He's not a wuss by any means.

I'm reading the latest Elmore Leonard now and there are some comparisons to be made in terms of the weird, shady, characters and the ear for street-level speech. But Leonard's dialogue is far better.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2009/08/pynchon-lotion.html

by all accounts he's not any kind of crazy total recluse: he just doesn't do publicity, for the most part, and is perhaps a little cagier than most about being ex-directory

used to know someone who went to school with his niece and saw him at, like, open days and stuff

This niece?!?

I am tempted to put together a spotify playlist of these:
http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Songs_mentioned_in_Inherent_Vice

Well that's one way of rebelling against your reclusive, rarely photographed famous uncle I suppose.

(That Spotify playlist is a great idea, do it!)

Bigfoot's Fatso Judson namecheck was a nice touch, I thought.

"Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" covered by The Bonzo Dog Band"

^ now i think about it, this doesn't actually exist, does it?

Blog post about Pynchon and comics: http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2009/08/12/pynchon-and-comics/

A friend of mine has a good story about meeting Pynchon. He was working at Kim's Video (RIP) and Pynchon came in to buy Simpsons DVDs with credit card.

The Bonzo cover does exist - it's included in this Spotify IV playlist I just put together: http://open.spotify.com/user/stevietee/playlist/3FMKzyb1IUEJJtGjVqaaZL

niiiice

good luck, USA

god i love the bonzo dog band.

I was amazed to discover, incidentally, that Dark Shadows actually existed!

I think maybe I was too, um, sober for this movie.

extry

http://thefilmstage.com/news/watch-the-deleted-and-alternate-scenes-from-paul-thomas-andersons-inherent-vice/

We saw it in a very small cinema, with not a lot of people attending. However the middle-aged man, who had come alone, sitting behind us was laughing uproariously all the way through; even at parts that were only tenuously funny/quirky. Maybe he'd read the book or something? We couldnt' work it out.

maybe his idea of what's funny is different to yours.

it could even be possible that every other human being has a different mind to your own.

really going out of your way to be a patronising shit, ronan. do you always project this much?

really enjoyed this, difficult to hear the dialogue but not difficult to follow (inasmuch as following mattered)

A cinema in London that does overnight film marathons is doing one of films that influenced Inherent Vice: Chinatown, The Big Lebowski, The Naked Gun, The Long Goodbye, Zabriskie Point, and ending with the film itself. Not sure of all the through lines, but there are worse ways to spend 12 hours (if I was a younger man).

Finally screened on the 4th. Kind of loved it, if not to the degree of the prior two PTA's. Really enjoyed how un-jerked off the homages were in addition the neat balancing act of capturing the feel of 70s Burnout cinema while neatly sidestepping the obvious moralizing inherent (tee-hee) in same.

One seemingly obvious influence that's gone without mention (unless it has) is "The Rockford Files". Doc's visit to Mrs. Wolfmann, and some of the interactions between him and both Bigfoot and Penny felt like Rockford through a Psychedelic filter.

Absolutely, yeah - unannounced drop-ins at humble beachfront homes, creeping around recently-constructed office buildings, fistfights in platted deserts.

That said, I also noticed the "almost complete disinterest in place or setting through the rest of the film" sic mentions upthread, at least outside (aside from the empty development and the Golden Fang block) - some of the blocking and framing was so weirdly tight that I started wondering if they were shooting around non-period details. But it's more fun to try to cram it into some grand thematic vision - I'm still trying, tbh.

This was such an embarrassment of riches--the narration, "does he eat pussy," Brolin and the frozen banana, Phoenix's scream at seeing the picture, "Harvest," Short, the fake anti-Commie movie, that aching Ouija board flashback sequence--that I feel kinda guilty for not out-and-out loving it. I stopped giving a shit about the plot after a certain point, but I didn't really consider this a flaw; if anything, always barely knowing what the fuck was going on adds to the whole stoned and confused vibe of the thing (I should add to the things I liked about the movie those little notes that Phoenix was always making to himself when he was faking detective work). But the looseness of the thing + the 2.5 hour running time just meant that I got really restless and fidgety after a while, so much that I didn't even delight as much in seeing Martin Donovan again as I should have. I dunno, maybe reading the book first would have had me more invested in it?

TWBB still my fave Anderson, and by far my fave Anderson 2.0 (as someone referred to his recent work above). This one and The Master both had a roughly similar effect of dazzling me for a good chunk of their running time but ultimately leaving me wanting when all was said and done.

I finally saw this a couple of weeks ago & enjoyed it so much I'm entertaining the notion of reading Pynchon

but in terms of the film, Phoenix & Brolin were to me at their absolute peak of perfection. Could not stop watching every single moment of them both, and I thought Phoenix was amazing in The Master so I'm
kinda thrilled that he upped his game even more

saw this less than a year ago and already time to rewatch
= the sign of a great film

xp VG the book Inherent Vice is quite fun and imo similar to the movie, not as dense and knotty as other Pynchon. Crying Of Lot 149 is also great, and short.

joaquin's vast array of confused expressions was something to behold

i think if you enjoy the movie you should enjoy the book even more. (the book is actually funnier imo) now if you hate the the movie you should stay the hell away from the book...

movie gave me a Chinatown/Lebowski vibe, more w/r/t futile investigations & red herrings etc

joaquin's vast array of confused expressions was something to behold

really loved the opening, with doc running a hand lamely along shasta's departing car, sloooooooowly succumbing to an expression of total paranoid dread, and getting hit in the face with the neon title

also iirc some v good faces as eric roberts (also slooooooooooowly) describes his bad hippie dream. for free.

i thought this was wonderful. joanna newsom is a totally great actress! the woman playing jade was incredible! yeah PTA has woman problems but he does cast well. god knows what he was up to casting belladonna but she was great too.

I really like Pynchon, especially Vineland and Lot 49, and I /hated/ this. We rented it on iTunes and couldn't be bothered to watch it to the end. Just felt way too forced and dull. Phoenix is fascinating but he's super annoying to watch art length. That sense of meaning being just out of reach, which works so well in Pynchon's prose where there's goofy jokes and all those amazing sentences to keep you going - Phoenix making googly eyes is not a substitution for that.

(Sorry)

Re reading this shit. So good.

A game of "drink whenever someone rolls their eyes at how dumb Doc is" would be fun.

"there's a problem with Ouija boards" - best part of the movie for me. A little joyful moment in the middle of the madness, a little (valid) paranoia still there tugging at you. Brilliant realization of a distinctively Pynchon moment, good job PTA.

yeah PTA has woman problems

Yeah.