Inherent Vice (this time, the novel)

Having just finished reading Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon’s psychedelic noir that spins its yarn in a way that the story eludes you as it escapes into marijuana Haze that Doc seems to dwell in for the full length of the novel. But behind the amusing scenes that are a product of his stoner persona – for instance when he falls asleep on top of a roof while attempting to do a stakeout, a slumber, during which, the very woman he was supposed to be observing is found surrounded by the dead body of her husband and his ex-marital affair and the all too poignant fuzz finding Doc on top of the roof – is a vicious torrent that threatens an era and all it stood for, including a relationship that Doc still holds onto.

Time always proceeds forward; it is a force that cannot be stopped.

“…yet there is no avoiding time, the sea of time, the sea of memory and forgetfulness, the years of promise, gone and unrecoverable, of the land almost allowed to claim its better destiny, only to the claim jumped by evildoers known all too well, and taken instead and held hostage to the future we must live in now forever.”

I think this book is a fairly accessible Pynchon novel. It is very entertaining and although still scattered with contemporary cultural references, reaching to both high and low brow humor, it is still far less daunting than Gravity’s Rainbow (which I won’t even pretend to understand, at least not until I read it a second time, but even then…God…that fucking book, I can’t even map out the storyline, only a couple of parts).

I must admit that reading Pynchon puts me in a paranoid mood, or at least, reminds me of my paranoia that had been lying dormant within the recesses of my mind. The balance of power that seems oddly tipped towards a certain demographic that exists but also doesn’t seem to exist, at least not to those within the inner circle.

But even thinking about this novel, or Gravity’s Rainbow, a word trails into my mind, ‘pretentious’. I am not sure if it such a description is apt; for the Pynchon’s novels or even those who decide to read them. Most certainly, they are not the type of books to read on a beach or start talking about with someone you just met (unless interest from the other party is expressed of course, then by all means do so!). But they are so vividly interesting and so holistically invite you into the world that Pynchon has decided to explore. Pynchon’s use of his encyclopedic knowledge has a reason; it isn’t just to be pretentious (I mean would a pretentious person include so many low brow jokes?).

Inherent Vice has many moments where I laughed out loud, a incredibly rare occurrence for me when I am reading a novel. Other than the earlier scene I described, in the novel, the way Doc and Sauncho meet is when Sauncho, trying to buy a sifter for his marijuana has a sudden moment of paranoia and asks Doc, who is at the same supermarket late at night in order to satisfy a sudden chocolate craving, if he can put his sifter with Doc’s stuff at the checkout, to which Doc responds, “What about all this chocolate man?” So the two end up buying much more groceries than they ever needed. Then there is another scene where Sauncho calls up Doc. He had just watched The Wizard of Oz. So what he asks Doc is, when the movie starts out, the movie is black and white for us, but we imagine that Dorothy sees her own world as color, so when the movie shifts to Technicolor, what kind of psychedelic high-intensity color does she see?

Even if you feel reading Pynchon is pretentious, I think you need not worry about that that much. Just read this entertaining book, I guarantee it will make you laugh.