These readers will, no doubt, be more flummoxed than others, because it's the very nature of a genre novel that it keeps its promises, fulfilling certain pleasures of expectation and discovery, including standard types of characters and standard kinds of premises and challenging but satisfying denouements.įrom its opening pages, Pynchon's novel seems set to offer at least some variation of such fulfillments. mayhem and mystery and thought it looked like something fun to try writing himself.įor years now, Pynchon's books have provoked reactions that, generally, correspond to these two theories: Either you're convinced that he's a literary genius and you're willing to write a doctoral dissertation to prove it, or you're convinced that he's a literary wing nut and you're amazed that people keep reading his books. Having returned home from his latest midnight-bag-of-burning-dog-poop gag on Dick Cheney's front stoop (Cheney and Pynchon are, according to a recent Wikipedia entry, next-door neighbours living in converted missile silos in the western suburbs of Undisclosed Location, America), this theory goes, Pynchon caught this double feature about the often very funny intersection of hapless hippie-dippie druggie dudedom and hard-boiled L.A. Theory two: It's an idea Pynchon came up with late one night after watchingįletch. Inherent Vice, by Thomas Pynchon, Penguin Press, 369 pages, $35.
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