"Pynchon beach read" - no longer an oxymoron.
If you haven’t read Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice yet, you should, if only to make sense of that neon cover that keeps popping up everywhere. It seems that every newspaper in the country is reviewing the book and trying to determine if this commercial book lives up to Pynchon’s literary legacy. Inherent Vice is a noir-like story of pothead private eye named Doc Sportello, described by a New York Times review as a detective that “nods off during stakeouts, draws blanks while quizzing witnesses and can’t seem to turn down the volume on the surf music playing incessantly inside his head.” Years of drug use has certainly taken its toll on our protagonist, creating a narrative that can’t stay on one track for long. While some reviewers enjoy the relative accessibility of Inherent Vice versus Pynchon’s previous novels, others complain that the book is not complex enough and tire of the incessant drug humor. John Kraft, an English professor at Miami University in Ohio, isn’t sure how “literary” to consider the book – he tells the Wall Street Journal, “It’s a very entertaining book, but it will take re-reading for me to figure out whether there’s a lot more than that.” You may just have to decide for yourself.
“If Doc sounds like a literary joke [...] then he must be a joke with a lesson to impart, since Pynchon isn’t the type to make us laugh unless he’s really out to make us think.” – Walter Kirn, New York Times
“It’s a kind of southerly remake of Vineland [...] but played, this time, more for cheap thrills than for any fresh historical insights.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum, Slate
“A wizardly bit of philosophical burlesque, with densely packed speculations on the hidden hands that shape history.” – Richard Lacayo, Time
“A terrific pastiche of California noir [...] and a poignant evocation of the last flowering of the ’60s.” – Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
“Inherent Vice does not appear to be a Pynchonian palimpsest of semi-obscure allusions.” – Louis Menand, The New Yorker
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