Thomas Pynchonpost-surreal political hippie/punkslinger of prose full of history, hilarity, piss, vinegar and exquisite, oftendistracting detailhas written an old-fashioned detective novel, Inherent Vice (Penguin), and it’s lessthan a thousand pages long.
Are you still sitting down? It’s actually less than400 pages long.
The place: Los Angeles.
Our protagonist: Larry “Doc” Sportello, licensedprivate investigator and unrepentant head.
The year: unclear until page 113, when we find Docwatching a Milwaukee Bucks game on TV, and Bucks star Lew Alcindor has changedhis name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, so it must be 1971.
The immediate crimes: murder, possible kidnapping,extortion.
The bigger-picture crimes: a drug-and-“rehab” (read:reprogramming) trade, phony U.S. currency adorned by President Nixon’s face,said to be legal tender in some parts of Southeast Asia.
To quote Doc, something here is ungroovywhich isreally saying something like the Velvelettes, because the “here” of Inherent Vice is a smog-filled,corruption-riddled, slightly zombified cityscape of disillusionment, fleetingfriendships, cynicism, creeping executive-branch fascism, and out-in-the-openvigilante fascism, a place that stands as not just a monument to phoniness buta lurid advertisement for the false. Droning in the background: Reagan, Nixon,’Nam, the Manson Family murders, Watts, COINTELPRO, sex merchants, shoppingmalls and the accelerating demise of rock ’n’ roll.
Pynchon enlivens this dismalpost-post/slightly-south-of-Summer-of-Love setting with some of his renowneddevices: cool characters with funny names [Sauncho Smilax (an attorney, ofcourse), Buddy Tubeside (alternative medicine specialist, natch), Droolin’Floyd Womack (you guessed it: R&B singer) and Doc’s best friend Denis(pronounced to rhyme with “penis”)]; wild neologisms like “stewardii” and“plasticratic yachtsfolk”; original song lyrics more plausible than ever; andcheap pop-culture reference points (“Dark Shadows” and “Gilligan’s Island” arequoted and deconstructed at length, and surf instrumental bands real andinvented blare throughout).
What’s exciting and fresh about this book is thatPynchon uses it to provoke, inspire, anger and amuse with an economical,easy-to-follow narrative style not employed since his short stories of the1960s. In a casual, conversational voice largely absent from his ornatemasterpieces Mason & Dixon and Against the Day (although he makes slyreference to both herein), with dangling participles and end-of-sentenceprepositions aplenty (not to mention a downright quirky way with punctuationand dialogue attribution), Pynchon lets his prosaic guard down, and the bookexplodes with energy.
Doc Sportello may be the closest we come to aPynchon self-portrait. Utterly lovelorn, slightly drug-damaged, approaching anage 30 that feels like 50, master of the smart-assed comeback but slowand inno hurryto comprehend the big picture, Doc keeps himself busy making sure hismore vulnerable and innocent associates are safe. Making money seems low on hislist.
At first, Doc is the primary suspect in the murderof the ostensible bodyguard of real estate mogul Mickey Wolfmann, who’s run offwith Doc’s ex, one Shasta Fay Hepworth. Quickly sprung when it becomesimpossible to pin the murder on such an honest, underpaid, undernourishednotto mention innocentguy, Doc blows up at his L.A.P.D. nemesis Bigfoot Bjornsenupon finding that Bigfoot has impounded Doc’s car:
[Bigfoot:] “I’ve upset you.”
[Doc:] “Nobody calls my car a murderer, man.”
A good-natured guy who drifted into the P.I. lifebecause he perceived private dicks to be smarter, cooler and more principledthan the police, Doc floats through some terrifying episodes involving whitesupremacist gangs, martial arts experts, sadistic psychiatrists and the trulycomplex Bigfoot, exhibiting infectious humor and surprisingly little paranoia,given his near-hourly cannabis consumption.
For every laugh in this book, and there arecountless, there is a Cheshire Cat’s caveat that this story never really ends.Forty years after Inherent Vice takesplace, corruption, crime and cruelty still run rampant in L.A., but a shred of tenderness remains, amorsel that Thomas Pynchon elevates to epic dimensions through wild imaginationand death-defying dedication.
Are you stillsitting down? Good, now get to readin’.
