Word: pynchon
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...complain that somebody was poking at his shell. Over time Salinger's exemplary refusal of his own fame may turn out to be as important as his fiction. In the 1960s he retreated to the small house in Cornish, and rejected the idea of being a public figure. Thomas Pynchon is his obvious successor in that department. But Pynchon figured out how to turn his back on the world with a wink and a Cheshire Cat smile. Salinger did it with a scowl. Then again, he was inventing the idea, and he bent over it with an inventor's sweaty...
...this first novel ‘V’—which suggests that no matter what his circumstances, or where he’s doing it, there is at work a young writer of staggering promise.”So began the literary career of Thomas Pynchon, whose latest novel, “Inherent Vice,” we gather here today to celebrate. Since George A. Plimpton ’50 wrote the above praise some 46 years ago, Pynchon has indeed succeeded in turning staggering promise into staggering achievement. His third novel, 1973?...
...Granted, there's not much here that's new. Pynchon, 72, has been playing variations on these themes since the genius trifecta of his early days: V., The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow. Even the grace notes are familiar. Inane, invented song lyrics? Got 'em. Festive foodstuffs? Pass the chocolate-covered frozen bananas. Funny names? How about a drug dealer called El Drano? It's an anagram for his real name, Leonard. Which, let's be clear, is pretty funny...
...Vice is like nothing so much as an Elmore Leonard novel with metaphysical aims. It has the same deadpan dialogue, the same lowlife panache, the same Venice Beach-to-Vegas locales that Leonard has touched down in. But the earthbound author of Get Shorty doesn't go in for Pynchon's lyrical riffs about the immemorial forces that pull the world's secret levers and keep the dispossessed of all kinds - the poor, the nonwhite, the nonconforming - from coming into their...
...same, don't expect that by the end of this book you'll be vouchsafed a clear picture of just what those forces are. Pynchon doesn't do closure. What he does, and brilliantly, is open windows onto a universe where we're all in custody, but we're none of us sure who put on the cuffs...