Thomas Pynchon

Reluctantly investigating a kidnapping threat against his ex-girlfriend's billionaire beau, Doc Sportello tackles a bizarre tangle of nefarious characters before stumbling on a mysterious entity that may actually be a tax shelter for a dental group.

Inherent Vice

✧༺♥༻✧

It's Noir but with reefer instead of the booze.

Nick Whalen

Jim Hagan

A crowning masterpiece, and the best of Pynchon that I have read.

The characters feel full and innately true.

Humour is fantastic. Tied into distinctive and consistent tone.

Dense and mysterious allusions that grapple just at the edge of understanding.

But most of all, some of those lines of prose, man, just tingle that edge of recognition that awakens something that's always there, like, sleeping? In the way the of the best, like, poetry, I guess.

jack

pretty groovy, haha. very nice, maybe my favorite pynchon so far, but perhaps that is just because i am now hip to what he likes to do with these crazy worlds. very fun trip, and really cool having read didion's slouching towards bethlehem not too long ago. maybe not as funny as bleeding edge but definitely more consistent imo. guess i gotta get around to gravity's rainbow sometime soon!

Vladimir

(един стар текст, който утре ще празнува осмия си рожден ден)

Но повече от всичко Inherent Vice е роман за Края. Смъртта присъства на почти всяка страница - дори, когато не е описана в прав текст (това е криминален роман, тук има много изстрели, много трупове), тя се забелязва като едно от онези движения в крайчеца на окото, които хората виждат в изоставените или празни къщи. Inherent Vice е в тон с една от най-модерните тенденции в популярното изкуство: апокалиптичната. Затова и някои от героите се появяват в образа на вампир. Затова в книгата има много приказки за зомбита. Затова потъналите континенти хвърлят неизчезващата си сянка върху историята. 

http://ikosmos.blogspot.bg/2010/10/gl...

Omar AlHashmi

Boy was this book a battle to finish. I got the book when I realized it was Paul Thomas Anderson's next movie. I adore PTA but that still wasnt what made me get it. What made me get it was reading about the author, it intrigued me so I got the book 8 months back I think. 
I started reading it 7 months back when I was in korea. I had read the first 120 pages of the book then stopped due to exams. Came back last month wanting to finish it because the start intrigued me. As I continued reading I noticed I did not understand anything for some reason everything I was reading meant nothing. I dug deep again and started reading it all over again, this time I wrote down yhe characters on the blank pages in the end of the book. This at first made me feel like an idiot for not being able to keep track of all the characters. I got that feeling cleared when I read on some goodreads reviews that they also found his writing style a bit confusing. 
Now about the book. My feelings actually changed while reading. One third of the wag through I was thinking it was a 3/5 then it went to a 3.5 and so on. I was liking it more and more as I went on. This was weird to me since I usually enjoy deep and complex characters. I want to know how they are feeling, what they are thinking. But I could see halfway through that this wasn't the type of book for that style and I should stop looking for it. The feeling that Pynchon gave is the thing that made it. Going through this spider web of characters and stories that in the end tied up neatly. He gave us all of these different minor characters that revolved around the main character Doc Sportello. This case that he has been pursuing as a PI feels like its going nowhere. So many different variables presented at the start, you just feel like there would be no solution. Variables slowly reveal themselves throughout the story and it is all put to an end. The other key feature of this novel is the setting. The author gave us a great vessel for experiencing the sixties with all the weed and surfer cultures they had back then. All in all I enjoted my time with Inherent Vice. I am also hopeful that Anderson will adapt this book well and follow in the likes of The Big Lebowski as they present a similar feeling. 

I give this book a 4.27/5 dont ask me why it just feels like a 4.27

Read the cult classic behind the major new film starring Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon and Josh Brolin. It's been a while since Doc Sportello saw his ex-girlfriend, when suddenly out of nowhere she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer. It all spells trouble to Doc, but before he knows it he is caught up in 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 mysterious entity known as the Golden Fang.

Mark Wadley

Inherent Vice is a very shaggy neo-noir about a hippie PI and a lot of stuff happens but I’m not sure I could explain any of it. At points it feels very much like a distinctly Pynchon take on a Big Lebowski kind of story (which arguably tend to be Pynchonesque to begin with), where the dense plot is almost more of a setting for goofy character moments.

On the whole I liked it, but I had a hard time getting really into it so it took me like two months to get through. I could see the second or third reading being more rewarding, though, so this might be one I need to come back to.

Donald

Second review:

Now that I've had some time to think about IV, I present a few theories.

1. The Golden Fang is a distraction, but what is it distracting Doc (and us) from? The Federales, the coming of Reagan, the LAPD, an even more sinister and mysterious plot? Or maybe the GF was a distraction from how pitiful all the characters' lives are...

2. Pynchon's work, especially IV, makes fun of conspiracy theory and paranoia. It describes the world as it is - too chaotic and complex for any group or force to control it, even if some may want to. Conspiracy theory is tempting because it is too easy. It gives us answers, names, faces, and eternal, external enemies, but it is a mystification.

3. At the end of the book, nothing changed. Every character carries on how they were in the beginning, despite all the crazy stuff in the middle. This might be reaching, but this could be read as an indictment of the 60's counterculture. Crazy stuff happened, man, but in the end all this craziness was just played out on the surface. The fundamental structure of society never changed, a-and as long as that stays the same, so do "we".

4. To pick up where the first review began: there are no sympathetic characters in this novel. Don't believe what you hear - Doc is no schlemiel!


----

First review:

I was disappointed by the first few chapters, but I ended up liking this book a lot. The prose doesn't leave my jaw on the floor like V. did, but it's definitely a story only Pynchon could tell. I don't know if I was sympathetic to any of the characters, which is an odd feeling to have at the end of a book.

Back to the short stories now...

Melody Izard

Despising this, but soldiering on.

What was that? All foggy and smoky and feel a bit stoned and violated. I could not waste a precious second to re-read something that befuddled me in the first place and made me feel sorry for the characters in the second place so I missed some stuff I know. But its done. And maybe Pynchon is not for me.

Matthew Chasco

The PynchonWiki site has an Inherent Vice Diagram that helps keep track of characters. It's a valuable reference especially if you spread out your reading sessions.
I found the book engaging and if you're into that postmodern flavor you'll dig this. Reading it before watching the movie adaptation is strongly recommended.

John Balek

This was my introduction to Pynchon. I bought a copy of Gravity's Rainbow over 5 years ago, read the first 80 pages, and haven't touched it since. I should also mention that I watched the 2014 film before reading this book.

With this being my first Pynchon novel, I think a lot of my enjoyment came from reading Pynchon's style for the first time. While many people say it is pretty played down, compared to his other works, I really enjoyed this book.

As a fan of 70's culture this was the perfect book. I love a setting like this and I think it is done in a really unique way. This comes from the fact that this book was written in 2009 and not during the 70's because of this Pynchon can write with a level of hindsight. References to all sorts of elements of 70s pop culture are rampant.

While I enjoy this, I do think it goes a little over the top at time. It can feel like Pynchon is relying too heavily on references and readers previous knowledge of culture of the time to paint a scene. Many elements feel like extreme conveniences, which plays into the surreal style of the book but also feels a little too overdone. There are only so many times you can read about Doc watch the Lakers or listen to the same Beach Boys song before it feels overtly cliché.

This referencing element never gets to the point of a Ready Player One or Stranger Things where it feels lazy but it is definitely noticeable. Pynchon is a much better writer than those other works and that is really where this book shines.

I love the concept of this book. A detective who is constantly under the influence. Being in situations where you need your wits about you but instead, stumbling through scenarios coming to conclusions almost with complete ease. Inherent Vice is a thrill to read and I was drawn in to the characters and dialog; feeling immersed in the world.

One of the other great highlights of this book is how well it describes psychedelic trips. I have never read a book like this that paints these situations in such a well crafted and relatable way. While this book is very much based in a realistic world, there are times where plot points happen that see highly convenient or absurd making you wonder "did what I read really happen in the book or was it all a hallucinations?"

Some readers might take this as wasting their time, especially in a detective mystery where you are trying to uncover the mystery yourself but I love this out of the box take on narratives. I don't think this book is that "out of the box" especially compared to other books I've read but I still found it to be enjoyable. 

Along with the pop culture references, this book also references absurdist, out of the box, unique almost to fault writing style popular in the 70's. Authors like Philip K Dick, Philip Jose Farmer, and I'm sure Pynchon himself utilized this ethos in the post psychedelic 60's to gain mainstream success. This book reminded me a lot of The Illuminatus Trilogy! by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. While it is clear Pynchon is a better writer I did enjoy the story of The Illuminatus Trilogy! better.

I think the plot is one of the weaker point to Inherent Vice while it was a lot easy to follow than I expected, that could have been due to having watched the movie first, I did start to loose interest in it in the latter half. It almost becomes clear that the plot is not necessary the primary point of this book. It is more about living in this highly referential take on 70's LA. While I started to loose an interest in the plot I still found it fun to follow these characters around and see how they interact with this world.

I'm excited to read more Pynchon in the near future. I should really dust off that copy of Gravity's Rainbow and finally get to work on it.

Zoe Smolen

Daryl Houston

Although the rear cover of the book says that Pynchon's working here in an unaccustomed genre, it felt like pretty familiar territory to me: People with funny names become embroiled in criss-crossing hijinks, often at odds with the authorities. Also: drugs (guess I'd call the unaccustomed genre here "stoner noir"). It was an ok book, better in the last 100 pages than elsewhere. The thing I think I've finally put together about Pynchon is that it's hard for me to get in the heads of any of his characters, and without that access, it's hard for me to feel like I have much of a stake in their plights, which tends to make his books hard for me to really engage with. There's plenty of humor here, and a handful of moments of real humanity, but mostly it reads like Pynchon riffing on The Big Lebowski.

Inherent Vice

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