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- Edition:
- Unabridged (Penguin Audio)
- Length:
- 14 hours, 32 minutes
- File Size:
- 399 MB (12 files)
- Published:
- August 2009
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Review by Scott Esposito, eMusic
The literary world was somewhat astonished late last year to find that Thomas Pynchon was publishing another book. The 1000-page Against the Day had just come out in 2006, and Pynchon's fans are accustomed to waiting a good ten years between their hits. So a new book only three years after the last one was big news — but this isn't your normal Pynchon novel.
In Inherent Vice, the author returns to his beloved, smoked-out Southern California of the late '60s to write a hard-boiled detective novel — something he's never attempted before. The book has the usual proliferation of bizarre plot devices (Godzilla on Gilligan's Island; money with Nixon on it; a lost continent in the Pacific called "Lemuria"), but it's also the most straightforward, focused novel that Pynchon has ever written. More than anything, it's his homage to a time and place he loved, and Pynchon evokes that beach-bum So Cal feel by following private eye Doc Sportello as he smokes his weed, picks his Afro and smacks up against a host of notable Californians while acting as the unlikely rescuer of a missing billionaire.
The book may be light in comparison to tomes like Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon, but Pynchon still is Pynchon, which means its erudition, style and sheer inventiveness beats most writers hands down. For hardcore fans, Inherent Vice is a bemusing change of pace; for the uninitiated it might just be a gateway to more. It's a perfect read for end-of-summer days, a lightly baked mystery full of slapstick humor and goofy charm.
Quotes from the Critics
"[S]elf-consciously laid-back and funky....a slightly spoofy take on hardboiled crime fiction....Pynchon's capacity for goofball invention is limitless." - New Yorker
"[A] deliciously composed dark comedy....charming and pleasing." - National Public Radio
"INHERENT VICE not only reminds us how rooted Mr. Pynchon's authorial vision is in the '60s and '70s, but it also demystifies his work, underscoring the similarities that his narratives--which mix high and low cultural allusions, silly pranks and gnomic historical references, mischievous puns, surreal dreamlike sequences and a playful sense of the absurd--share with the work of artists like Bob Dylan, Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac and even Richard Brautigan." - New York Times
"[Pynchon] writes with a rich mastery of the era's detail: rock groups now forgotten, odd hangouts (a Japanese greasy spoon that offers the best Swedish pancakes in Los Angeles), surfing, motorcycle brands, and the generosity of forbearance among the '60s generation." - Boston Globe
"Hard-boiled detective fiction may not seem like the ideal vehicle for the often cryptic style and subject matter of Thomas Pynchon, but his newest novel proves otherwise....Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of "Inherent Vice" is that, while a few key elements of this baroque construction go unaccounted for, a surprising number of plot strands are more or less neatly tied up by the novel's end. The story isn't easy to follow, but it can be followed...." - Salon
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