| Product Summary | | Format: Hardcover | | ISBN: 9781594202247 | | Publisher: PGNPR | | Publish Date: 8/4/2009 | | Buy.com Sku: 211075654 | | Item#: | | Dimensions (in Inches) 10H x 6.25L x 1T |
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| | | Part noir, part psychedelic romp, and all Pynchon, "Inherent Vice" spotlights private eye Doc Sportello who occasionally comes out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era, as the free love of the 1960s slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog.
Annotation:
Billed as somewhat of a departure from the erudite, postmodern-encyclopedia style with which he made a name for himself, Thomas Pynchon's eighth novel, INHERENT VICE, hangs charmingly and precariously on a noir plot involving a kidnapping schemed up by a femme fatale, told from the perspective of private dick Doc Sportello. Sportello, as the proprietor of LSD Investigations (Location, Surveillance, Detection, that is), prefers to survey the world through the gauzy tint supplied by a nice marijuana buzz. He lurks around Los Angeles circa 1969, bumping into all kinds of shady characters and trotting out an elegantly knotted wad of psychedelic sub-plots, footnoted paranoia, and conspiratorial allusions to all kinds of culture. Sometimes Doc's trying to get information out of a hustler or a surf-rock sax player. Sometimes he's puzzling the meaning of the Golden Fang--does this mysterious boat really exist, or is it all hype, an elaborate tax shelter or a heroin trafficking ring? Sometimes he's contending with the listlessness left in the wake of the quickly dissipating optimism of the 1960s. Sometimes he's just trying to keep track of his feelings for the ex-girlfriend who's popped back up and gotten him into this whole mess. As he did with his second book, THE CRYING OF LOT 49, Pynchon has once again crafted a complex, beautifully dense book with a mystery (or two, or 20) at its heart that may or may not ultimately be of much importance. Pynchon infuses all this with his particular sense of humor, making this as enjoyable as it is confounding.
| Praise| "[S]elf-consciously laid-back and funky....a slightly spoofy take on hardboiled crime fiction....Pynchon's capacity for goofball invention is limitless." - Louis Menard 08/03/2009 "[A] deliciously composed dark comedy....charming and pleasing." - Alan Cheuse 07/29/2009 "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." - Michiko Kakutani 08/03/2009 "[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." - Richard Eder 08/02/2009 "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...." - Laura Miller 07/31/2009 |
| Author Bio| Thomas Pynchon | | Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr, was born and raised in a Roman Catholic family on Long Island, one of three children. His father was an industrial surveyor. He graduated from high school in 1953 at the age of 16, second in his class, and went to Cornell University on scholarship as an engineering physics major. After two years, he left Cornell to serve in the Navy, returning to Cornell in the fall of 1957, when he changed his major to English. His first novel, V, was published in 1963, and won the William Faulkner Foundation Award for best first novel of the year. (When questioned in an interview about the novel's alleged difficulty, Pynchon asked, "Why shouldn't things be difficult?") Pynchon is considered one of the giants of American fiction, and is famous for, among other things, being reclusive and unwilling to give interviews. |
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