Product Description

This title is describes as part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon. Private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog. It's been awhile since Doc Sportello has seen his ex-girlfriend. Suddenly out of nowhere she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. It is easy for her to say. It's the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that 'love' is another of those words going around at the moment, like 'trip' or 'groovy', except that this one usually leads to trouble. Despite which he soon finds himself drawn into a bizarre tangle of motives and passions whose cast of characters includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a murderous loan shark, a tenor sax player working undercover, an ex-con with a swastika tattoo and a fondness for Ethel Merman, and a mysterious entity known as the Golden Fang, which may only be a tax dodge set up by some dentists. In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the sixties, you weren't there...or...if you were there, then you...or, wait, is it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4676 in Books
• Published on: 2009-08-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

Review
'characteristically hilarious and thought-provoking' --London Review of Books

Shorter and easier to read than any of Pynchon's previous novels...characteristically hilarious and thought-provoking' --The London Review Of Books

"Tremendously enjoyable" --Catholic Herald

the pioneering work in a genre you'd have to call psychedelic Noir ...Who writes sentences as beautiful as Pynchon?' --Daily Mail

'phantasmagorical' --Seven Magazine in Sunday Telegraph

`Thomas Pynchon...blended Chandler-esque noir with pastoral comedy' --Independent

Review
'often very funny…may be his most readable novel. Remarkably, it features both a sympathetic protagonist and a recognisable plot, albeit one that is as impossible to summarise as any other Pynchon shaggy dog tale' - The Observer, Sarah Churchwell

‘Pynchon’s unique blend of wackiness and wistfulness permeates every page. He uses words as carefully as Nabokov. Inherent Vice works brilliantly as both a neon-lit neo-noir and as a psychedelic lament to the Sixties.’ - Sunday Telegraph, Mark Sanderson

‘One of America’s most wilful and obscure writers has produced the most enjoyable beach read of the summer.’ - Saturday Telegraph, Tim Martin

‘handled with an affable, zonked-out yet penetrating prose, [it] is as much fun to read as anything you will come across this summer.’ - London Evening Standard, Nicholas Lezard

‘full of superb dialogue and lovely descriptive passages’ - Sunday Times, John Dugdale

‘by far [Pynchon’s] most accessible novel since The Crying of Lot 49, and at least as funny as his zany behemoth Against the Day…this is a loveable, kooky version of noir detective fiction, but with the shadows of genuine darkness at its edges…Inherent Vice is Pynchon on an idiosyncratic frolic, and what a joy it is. He is the only truly Dickensian talent of our time.’ - Scotland on Sunday, Stuart Kelly

‘true believers will be relieved to note, however, that despite its concessions to readability and fun, Inherent Vice has all the trademark Pynchon silliness…beneath all this mayhem and fun, however, Inherent Vice is a serious, even brooding, book’ - The Times, Aravind Adiga

‘a bright, breezy, funny page-turner…Best of all, however, is the way Pynchon maps the psycho-geography and shifting socio-political sands of America at the time’ - Metro, Alan Chadwick

About the Author
Thomas Pynchon is the author of V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, Slow Learner, a collection of short stories, Vineland, Mason and Dixon and, most recently, Against the Day. He received the National Book Award for Gravity's Rainbow in 1974.

Customer Reviews

Surf, sand, stoners, postmodernism
Thomas Pynchon, the reclusive king of American postmodern fiction, likes to keep us waiting: between 1974 and 1990 he published no novels at all. But in the last few years we've been a bit luckier, and given that in late 2006 we got the massive "Against the Day", it's amazing that this summer there's already another Pynchon novel on sale.

"Inherent Vice" is wonderful news for Pynchon fans, but arguably will also bring him a new audience too. All will hopefully be charmed by its Big Lebowski-flavoured story of a private investigator, Doc, operating in LA just as the sixties decade has finished. The plot concerns the various cases Doc takes on (all missing persons of various kinds) and requires concentration to follow, partly because of a multitude of characters ranging from Doc's ex-girlfriend, Shasta Fay Hepworth, to paranoid marine law specialist Sauncho Smilax, to hippy-hating LAPD cop, 'Bigfoot' Bjornsen (addicted to eating frozen chocolate-covered bananas which he keeps in a morgue fridge).

There is the same sense of clever playfulness you always get with Pynchon, though to begin with, you might get lulled into imagining this is simply his fun take on the hard-boiled detective novel of Raymond Chandler & co. But actually this book is probably something more subtle; like his earlier book 'Vineland', which gave such a rich picture of life in Northern California in the eighties, with its paranoia and strange atmospheres, "'Inherent Vice' gets to pose the bigger question about the sixties, which is, where did it get us? And do we all, like Doc, end up 'working for criminals', even when we try not to?

Enjoyable, perplexing, kept making me burst out laughing; a great, intelligent summer book.

Enjoyable, if slight
"Inherent Vice" (apparently a term from Maritime Law) is the new novel from Thomas Pynchon, and is rather uncharacteristic in many ways. At 370 pages it is short by Pynchon's standards, and it is entirely lacking in the density and obtuseness of much of his work. It does not have anything like the scope of, say, "Gravity's Rainbow," nor the stylistic difficulties of, especially, "Mason and Dixon," rather it is a crime novel somewhat in the mould of Elmore Leonard, set in 1969 Los Angeles, just after the Manson murders, which are referred to continually.

The main character is Doc Sportello, a private investigator and habitual imbiber of hashish and other narcotics. He is approximately 29 years old, and espouses hippy ideals while maintaining a healthy distrust for The Man, especially as represented by the LAPD. His favourite words are "Groovy" and "Bummer," depending on the situation. His is an easygoing and well-meaning individual, if somewhat priapic. The plot is set in motion when Doc's ex-girlfriend, for whom he still has feelings- lust, mainly- shows up with an assignment for him, concerning her rich, property-developer new boyfriend, who she believes is under threat. Said boyfriend goes missing, and some other cases turn up which may be related. It's too complicated to go into, but all roads lead Doc to a shadowy entity called Golden Fang, the nature of which promises to hold the key to the mystery.

Unlike most Pynchon novels almost all the mysteries of the plot are eventually explained, and the plot is a fairly standard one for the genre. The tone is relaxed, playfully humorous, and Pynchon's fondness for dubious puns, that somehow seem funny in the context of the book, is much in evidence. It's not a masterpiece, by any means, but it's not supposed to be. It can't be compared to "Gravity's Rainbow" or the like. Of Pynchon's previous work, its nearest relation would be "Vineland." It's not particularly substantial, but I found "Inherent Vice" a good, quick read, funny and likable, and definitely its author's most accessible work, making it a good choice for all those who have always wanted to like Thomas Pynchon, but didn't know how.

Great fun and strangely moving.
A wonderful novel, rich in characters, a terrific (and labyrinthine)plot, textures so rich and so real you'll look up and be genuinely bemused to find yourself in the 21st century and not on Gordita Beach, very, VERY funny... a riot from beginning to end.

Chandleresque in its framework and wildly humerous in its prose, I was surprised to find myself at the end of the novel gazing out of the window with a warm and cogent sensation of having just read something that mattered. Something that was somehow important.

This is an understated novel which carries its weight nonchalantly, like an elephant wandering between palm trees on a beach, but make no mistake, it's a profound one nonetheless.