Word: pynchon
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After the vast tundra of his last book, Against the Day, which was a thousand-plus pages, with more than a hundred or so scurrying characters and a shape-shifting plot that went everywhere and nowhere, Thomas Pynchon has decided to give his fan base a break. His seventh novel is practically beach reading. Inherent Vice (Penguin Press; 369 pages) is a comic-noir detective tale set in Los Angeles around 1970, not long after the Manson murders added their special note to the already twitchy local vibe...
...also a Pynchon novel, meaning it's a wizardly bit of philosophical burlesque, with densely packed speculations on the hidden hands that shape history and with notions of reality that are elastic enough to allow for astral twins, could-be zombies and old spirits rustling at the margins. The Pynchon wiki sites have been poised for months to group-grope every sentence for hidden meanings. They won't be disappointed. (See the top 10 reclusive celebrities...
...even if this is second-tier Pynchon, it's still entertainment of a high order. It was only a matter of time before he would write a private-eye novel. Each of his books has been built around a character - or two or 12 - on a quest into the heart of a mystery that is never quite solved. The difference here is that Pynchon finally makes one of those characters a licensed gumshoe, albeit one with an incongruous hippie backstory. "Doc" Sportello is an ambling longhair with links to the surfer world and an appetite for controlled substances that would...
...sometimes a no-nonsense drug cartel. Pynchonesque multitudes crowd into the picture. Tight-lipped federales, stoner lawyers, ex-con neo-Nazis with a big thing for show tunes - they tumblesault in every page or two, each bearing, maybe, a piece of the puzzle. (See a 2006 TIME article on Pynchon...
...That’s the nature of our belief, after all; that’s what we’ve been trained to do. Kids these days, up on their Pynchon and following “The Wire,” think of the world as studded with allusions, teeming with hidden meanings. We lap up explanations and cure-alls; we accept the experts’ forecasts (never mind that they got us here); we tape on our rose-tinted glasses, cross our fingers, squeeze our eyes shut, and hope with all our hearts for change—the kind...