Inherent Vice

A new novel from Thomas Pynchon, the world’s most reclusive writer, is always cause for celebration. If you know anything about Pynchon, you know he writes dense, allusive, postmodern puzzles of fiction where the journey is the reward and the plot is pitched between an all-enveloping paranoia and a cartoonish landscape of chaotic indeterminacy. Those who haven’t read him might suppose Pynchon gains traction from the mystery surrounding his person: He has never submitted to interviews, has never commented on his mature work, and the last known photograph of him is from the late 1950s, when he was in his 20s. Pynchon is now 72, and his new novel—only his seventh over a 46-year writing career—has just been released. Sadly, this is a rare treat for Pynchon fans and presents an opportunity for Pynchon neophytes to become acquainted with the man and his writing. Or at least his writing.

For those who require a primer, each of Pynchon’s earlier novels explores a formative moment in the American experience:

Mason & Dixon (1997) illuminates the friendship of the eponymous characters as they cut a surveyor's line through the virgin American heartland almost 250 years ago, rendering it into North and South, and all that connotes, and forever damning its future.

V (1963) and Against the Day (2006) explore the transformative experiences of the industrial revolution leading up to and including World War I.

Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), Pynchon’s masterpiece, examines the carnage of World War II and the creation of a deceptive and sinister post-war world.

The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) and Vineland (1990) Pynchon reveals how a sinister governmental counterforce that used command and control techniques to counteract  subversive expressions of freedom and individuality.

This brings us to Pynchon’s new novel, Inherent Vice. It’s his lightest and most accessible to date, with Pynchon’s major themes (history as conspiracy, cultural entropy, etc.) appearing in spectral form rather than in the flesh. A shaggy dog/noir story set at the end of the 1960s, it follows private investigator and pothead Doc Sportello (reminiscent of The Big Lebowski’s “The Dude”). Sportello is visited by old flame Shasta Fey Hepworth, who hires him to uncover a possible kidnapping plot against her new lover, real estate mogul Mickey Wolfmann, who seems to own half of L.A. Soon Wolfmann and Shasta are both missing, and Sportello embarks on a quest to find them.

We’re in familiar Pynchon territory here (and familiar noir territory, too), as the author subverts noir tradition. The more information Sportello (and the reader) uncovers, the more complicated, convoluted, yet hilarious the case becomes. The plot quickly grows to involve nearly every sector of the L.A. establishment (crooked cops, real estate barons and hangers on, the moneyed class) and anti-establishment (hippies of all types). Of course, this being noir, nothing is as it seems, and betrayal is the true coin of the realm. This being Pynchon, that holds doubly true.

At the heart of the divergent plots is something called the Golden Fang. Pynchon keeps its identity mysterious, indeterminate. The Golden Fang may be a luxury yacht used for drug smuggling, money laundering, kidnapping and torture; or it could be a holding company used by dentists in connection with a tax dodge; or possibly a South Asian heroin cartel, or a funny farm for the rich, or all these things.

Whatever it is, the Golden Fang has its teeth sunk into the era’s feel-good zeitgeist and Sportello can sense it sucking the country dry: “Was it possible, that at every gathering—concert, peace rally, love-in, be-in, and freak-in, here, up North, back East, wherever—those dark crews had been busy all along, reclaiming the music, the resistance to power, the sexual desire from epic to everyday, all they could sweep up, for the ancient forces of greed and fear?”

Inherent Vice laments the erosion of the social, political and ethical possibilities inherent in the protests and upheavals of the 1960s. It shows Pynchon can deliver a rousing, hilarious and streamlined neo-noir tale that touches on his perennial themes without getting entangled in them.

Listen to Pynchon read from Inherent Vice here.