Goofy, Grassed, Grand - Inherent Vice Translates Pynchon To Screen Well!

The Good: Wonderful acting, Distinct setting, Fun-to-watch characters, Good direction
The Bad: Unnecessary narrations, Needlessly complex at points
The Basics: Not as fun as reading Pynchon, P.T. Anderson makes a compelling film with Inherent Vice that captures the ‘70s drug culture in California well.


Without a doubt, the film I was most excited about in 2014 was The Zero Theorem (reviewed here!). While that might seem like a strange place to begin my review of Inherent Vice, it might make more sense when I note that Inherent Vice is this year’s The Zero Theorem. Allow me to explain; in 2013, The Zero Theorem was put into very limited release in the U.S. right around my birthday and my plan was to go see it with my wife on the big screen as part of that personal event. Alas, it was not to be; the film was delayed repeatedly in the U.S. and came out here in even limited release than it was supposed to! In 2014, the earliest showings of Inherent Vice also seemed like they would coincide with my birthday, but the film was delayed until Oscar Pandering Season. The result was a delayed sense of excitement for the film.

Add to that, Inherent Vice lives in the shadow of The Master (reviewed here!), a film that ruined my birthday back in 2012. Seriously. My wife saved up to pay for the day out and we made a whole event of driving to a theater that was actually showing The Master, because of my love of the works of writer/director P.T. Anderson and then the film sucked righteous balls (is, I believe, the delicate, p.c. way of saying it). So, Inherent Vice became a film I was excited about, but I did not attach a temporal limitation on that excitement. Now out in wide release, I finally managed to see the latest film by P.T. Anderson.

Inherent Vice is based upon the novel Inherent Vice (reviewed here!) by Thomas Pynchon and it is worth noting that while I have read and reviewed the book, this shall remain a very pure review of the film alone. That said, it’s a pretty exciting thing for me to see one of my favorite directors tackle the work of one of my favorite authors. While I have so far considered The Big Lebowski (reviewed here!) the most Pynchon-esque film I’ve yet seen, I was eager to see how Anderson would do with actual Pynchon.

And P.T. Anderson got it right more often than not. Before watching Inherent Vice, my only real trepidation with the idea of an adaptation of Pynchon’s works was that Pynchon’s diction is much of the magic of his novels. He can get away with a certain amount of crazy plotting and random twists because his poetics are amazing. Lacking that, how it would translate to screen seemed uncertain, but Anderson, who adapted Pynchon’s novel, respects much of the author’s writing by using voiceover narration surprisingly well. And, Anderson chose one of Pynchon’s more linear narratives to adapt for the screen!

Doc Sportello is laying in bed one night when his ex-girlfriend, Shasta, shows up. She asks the private detective for help with a situation she is in; her married boyfriend, Mickey Wolfmann is in trouble. Wolfmann's wife, Sloane, and her lover are trying to run a scam and they want Shasta’s help. Sloane wants to commit Mickey to an assylum and run off with his wealth and he wants Shasta to assist him in the con, which has led Shasta to a strange moral quandary. Wolfmann’s name comes up prominently in Sportello’s first case the next day when Tariq Khalil (of the Black Guerilla movement) hires him to get money out of a member of the Aryan Brotherhood with whom he’d done business. Sportello heads out to where Channel View Estates are being built by Wolfmann’s company and there he discovers the only operating unit is a “massage” parlor.

But soon, Sportello’s problems multiply as his search for Charlock end with Sportello knocked out and awakening to a interrogation by his nemesis, LAPD detective “Bigfoot” Bjornsen about Charlock’s murder and Wolfmann and Shasta’s disappearance. While Sportello is apparently rescued by his lawyer (who is more a marine law lawyer than a criminal lawyer) and released upon his own reconnaissance, he soon finds himself in the crosshairs of the LAPD, FBI, and various criminal enterprises, including Golden Fang gangsters who own the boat by the same name. As drug-smuggling criminals, corrupt cops and swindlers manipulate Sportello, he is knocked around Gordita Beach as a tool for their various interests.

Inherent Vice, like the book, is filled with characters who are goofy and several who are only incidental to the “main” storyline being presented. Hope Harlington’s investigation into her husband’s “murder” and subsequent windfall deposit into her bank account is seemingly random until Coy Harlington turns up as a target of the Golden Fang. With so many characters, some get severely underused – like Dr. Blatnoyd, D.A. Kimball and Smilax (Doc’s lawyer) – and serve more to deliver plot exposition. Conversely, Sortilege might provide some beautiful narration in the form of Pynchon’s lines as voiceovers, but her part in the movie captures the time and place (1970’s California beach country) and the absurdities of it more than provide a real or viable character (her voiceovers about astrology are cringeworthy, but fit the character fine).

What Inherent Vice does well is showcase the talents of director P.T. Anderson and the actors he chose for the film. Inherent Vice might well prove that The Master was an exception to the rule of Anderson’s greatness as a writer-director. In adapting Pynchon’s novel, Anderson was able to take the essential elements of the story and bring to life a sense of Pynchon’s quirky characters. No matter how ridiculous the plot or characters get at various points in Inherent Vice, Anderson makes the film look great and he makes it all feel very much part of the same, distinct setting and narrative.

To make Inherent Vice work, the giant cast had to be fleshed out with amazing talents and fans of Anderson’s works like Magnolia (reviewed here!) and Boogie Nights (reviewed here!) will be unsurprised that he has once again assembled a memorable ensemble cast. Leading the cast are Joaquin Phoenix as Doc Sportello and Josh Brolin as Bigfoot. I’ve never been a fan of Phoenix’s performances – save in Her (reviewed here!) – but as the drug-addled detective Doc Sportello, Joaquin Phoenix nails it! Phoneix taps into the depth of his performance arsenal and comes up with completely credible body language and line deliveries for a befuddled, confused, tool of a protagonist and he makes Sportello work in ways I did not anticipate when the casting for Inherent Vice was first announced!

At the other end of the spectrum, Josh Brolin gives a solid performance as Bigfoot Bjornsen. Brolin’s magic is in playing the part entirely straightlaced; Bigfoot is a character who is a parody of a cop who does not realize he is a joke. Brolin balances the serious line-deliveries with utterly goofy physical comedy (Bjornsen has an oral fixation that Brolin brings to life perfectly!).

The rest of the cast, including Jena Malone, Owen Wilson, Benicio Del Toro, Martin Short, Reese Witherspoon, Sam Jaeger, Eric Roberts, and Katherine Waterston do a decent job of balancing expository backstory to make their characters pop with performances that show instead of tell who they are supposed to be. The result is a film that has moments of peril, but is dominated by a fun, weird, sensibility that one used to only look to the Coen Brothers for (on film); now, P.T. Anderson gives them a run for their money and Inherent Vice delivers an engaging experience for moviegoers!

For other films currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
To Write Love On Her Arms
The Last Five Years
The Voices
Love, Rosie
The Seventh Son
Song One
Project Almanac
Match
Vice
American Sniper

8/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Thomas Pynchon Pushes Conspiracies To The Bleeding Edge!

The Good: Some incredible lines, Interesting characters, Some good conspiracy moments
The Bad: The main case, in pure Pynchon form, gets muddied very quickly and stays obscured, Some of the dialogue is not authentic
The Basics: In an engaging novel set in contemporary times, Thomas Pynchon creates a tech-based, economically-motivated conspiracy surrounding the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center attacks.


Before Thomas Pynchon becomes much more overexposed – P.T. Anderson’s next film is an adaptation of Pynchon’s novel Inherent Vice - in the collective conscious in the United States, I am excited to have finished his latest novel, Bleeding Edge. For those who are not familiar with Thomas Pynchon’s writing style, Pynchon is a writer who has meandering narratives and stories that seldom have an actual point. While Bleeding Edge is one of his more coherent novels, it’s another Thomas Pynchon experience where the expected conventions of the genre in which he is writing are completely undermined. The concept of Bleeding Edge is a detective novel that starts as a corporate investigation and leads to a larger conspiracy story. But, in the fine tradition of Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge’s conspiracy is not related to most of the details in the book.

As a result, when I finished reading Bleeding Edge and started to think about the novel, I had to actually go back to the beginning to see what the original point of the book was. It ruins nothing about Bleeding Edge to say that the original purpose of the investigation in the novel is only the start and that the guilty party is known in the book’s earliest pages. Bleeding Edge is not about a private investigator who is investigating billionaire software developer Gabriel Ice; it’s about the conspiracy that investigation leads to . . . and, more than that, the weird personal relationships of the investigator, Maxine Tarnow. Bleeding Edge is like a murder mystery where the first suspect is the murderer and it is revealed pretty early in the book, but the investigation leads to another, more significant crime.

Maxine Tarnow is a private investigator in New York City in 2001 who is estranged from her husband, Horst, and is taking care of their children, Ziggy and Otis. One day in the spring of 2001, documentary filmmaker Reg Despard brings her a case. He is making a documentary about an internet start-up, hashslingrz, which is hiring many workers at great wages after the tech bubble has burst. The suspicious activities make Despard suspicious about the company’s CEO, Gabriel Ice. Investigating Gabriel Ice and hashlingrz, Tarnow discovers that Gabriel Ice is a bad guy who is tied up in a number of shady financial dealings.

After learning about the Deep Web through a company called DeepArcher where she develops a psychological addiction to cyberspace, Maxine finds herself in the company of a shady government operative, Nick Windust. Windust is also investigating Ice and when a programmer is killed, he might be involved. When Despard brings Maxine footage of a dry run of trained killers preparing to shoot down a plane, the magnitude of the crimes Gabriel Ice and Windust are involved in deepens. As the year progresses, Maxine is drawn in deeper and deeper to the conspiracy surrounding the internet, the economy, and the inevitable attack on the World Trade Center that the reader knows is coming.

Bleeding Edge is the first Thomas Pynchon novel set in contemporary times, which is very cool and unfortunately disturbing. The cool aspect is that, for a change, younger readers of Thomas Pynchon are likely to be able to focus on the characters and plot as opposed to being washed up in the eccentricity of the settings Pynchon creates in his novels. There is nothing alien in the concept and world of Bleeding Edge; it’s a familiar, very real world for those who are alive now. The conspiracy that Pynchon uncovers through Maxine is an engaging one that reads as very real and plausible.

In fact, the conspiracy leading up to the September 11, 2001 attacks is linked to economic and political motivations in such a way that those of us who lived through 2001 will be shocked at the elements left out of Bleeding Edge. For a guy who is creating an elaborate conspiracy surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks, the failure to mention the plane that hit the Pentagon and the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania is astonishing. Hell, that Pynchon fails to mention Donald Rumsfeld’s notorious slip where he admitted the U.S. shot down the plane over Pennsylvania is a troubling oversight.

The only other disturbing aspect of Bleeding Edge is how much the dialogue is inauthentic. Pynchon writes many lines with question marks in the middle of the sentences and making statements into questions and odd colloquialisms not authentic to the time and place. I’m not talking about Rocky Slagiatt’s over-the-top Italian mobster accent; Pynchon writes that fine. But a number of the bits of dialogue are written similar to the broken narrative voice, which is troubling and inorganic.

That said, Bleeding Edge is fleshed out with intriguing characters. Maxine Tarnow is an intriguing protagonist who is smart enough to be credible and has enough darkness in her past (her license was pulled) to be as badass as she becomes. The weird romantic obsession Maxine has with Windust is a cool one and the way it leads to a reconciliation of sorts between her and Horst fits in with the overall weirdness of Thomas Pynchon’s narrative style.

Like most Pynchon novels, the narrative in Bleeding Edge wanders. The concept of the book is focused on Gabriel Ice and hashlingerz, but soon the novel spirals around Ice’s wife, her conspiracy theorist mother, and software programmers who are building the framework of virtual online lives in DeepArcher. The roundabout path and all that it leads to gets farther away from a single, coherent conspiracy idea. Instead, Bleeding Edge fleshes out all of the corrupt individuals Gabriel Ice is associated with and how they are trying to manipulate the tech industry and world politics.

The religious and political aspects of characters in Bleeding Edge are flush with post-September 11 paranoia and that reads as very true (save the neglected elements of the time and place the novel is set in). Government surveillance of Jews and Arabs in Bleeding Edge is common and the motivations behind it is convoluted, but realistic. That makes Windust, who comes into the story fairly late, interesting and a credible foil for Maxine.

Like most Pynchon works, Bleeding Edge is more about the journey than the destination. Pynchon is not about spelling out all the details to a specific conspiracy; he’s about taking the reader on a roundabout journey filled with implications and loose ends. The initial investigation into Gabriel Ice rounds back to Reg and a video that leads into a very different direction. The refreshing aspect of Bleeding Edge, compared to most of Pynchon’s works, is that the novel stays focused on Maxine. That makes it less confusing or pointless than many of Pynchon’s other novels.

For those who want to get into Pynchon, especially for those who discover him through the film Inherent Vice, Bleeding Edge is one of his two most focused books with a single narrative perspective and protagonist, making it a more accessible work than some of his others.

For other works by Thomas Pynchon, please check out my reviews of:
V.
The Crying Of Lot 49
Slow Learner
Gravity's Rainbow
Vineland
Mason & Dixon
Against The Day
Inherent Vice

6.5/10

For other novel reviews, please visit my Novel Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Thomas Pynchon Writes A Paperweight When He Goes Against The Day!

The Good: Poetics of the writing, Lucid passages that make sense.
The Bad: Jumbled plot assembly, No characters to strongly empathize with, Long passages of boring writing/events
The Basics: Even as a fan of the works of Thomas Pynchon, I cannot find enough value in Against The Day to recommend it, much less waste my time writing about it.


The only thing worse than investing years of free time in reading a book by a favored author who asks the reader for some trust with their work is when that trust is betrayed. With the works of Thomas Pynchon, Pynchon frequently asks his readers to trust him with the way his narratives meander around anything remotely approaching a structured plot, interesting characters or, lacking that, a point at all. Pynchon has earned my trust in the past because despite his wending and waffling, his books tended to have a beautiful poetry to the language or a purpose I could respect.

Against The Day does not.

I think the best statement I could make on the subject of Against The Day is that when the novel was released in softcover in 2007, I eagerly spent some money to buy a copy. I just this morning finished the 1085 page book and in the worst tradition of literary crap, I have no idea what it was I just read. Seriously. I have not been this disappointed since Finnegan’s Wake (reviewed here!).

Even though it is pointless to bother with such things as a plot description, here goes: Against The Day loosely follows the crew of the airship Inconvenience and its crew, the Chums Of Chance, flying around the world. Evading mysterious adversaries (who may just be a rumor) and doing nothing in particular while soaring around, the Chums Of Chance get into trouble pretty much wherever they land. The book takes massive detours for the story of a dynamiting anarchist and how one of the people who killed him married his daughter and the mathematical cabal known as the Quaternionists.

Not bound together by any set, stable, groups of characters, Against The Day wobbles along, meandering from one adventure to the next with people only marginally related to the characters previously presented until it soars off into an utterly unsatisfying end.

On the website I used to write reviews for (where I was when I began reading Against The Day, come to think of it!), length was rewarded more than substance. I suspect that the editors at Penguin Publishing, which released Against The Day, had the same idea. But for evaluating Against The Day, brevity might be best. Despite poetic or amusing moments like Pynchon’s poignant observation of “It was the U.S.A., after all, and fear was in the air” (373), Against The Day is largely unmemorable and unworthy the attention of readers looking for enjoyment or insight into the human condition (though later on that same page, Pynchon’s Wolfe makes a beautiful statement on outsiders).

Lacking a narrative that engrosses, a statement that Pynchon has not made before, interesting characters, or any original form compared to his other works, Thomas Pynchon’s Against The Day is a bloated waste of time, life, and paper.

For other works by Thomas Pynchon, please check out my reviews of:
V.
The Crying Of Lot 49
Slow Learner
Gravity's Rainbow
Vineland
Mason & Dixon
Inherent Vice

2.5/10

For other book reviews, be sure to check out my Book Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Thomas Pynchon's Perfect Novel: V. Satisfies!

The Good: Excellent characters, wonderful diction and vocabulary, engaging plot, funny
The Bad: In truth, none, other than being occasionally confusing
The Basics: A perfect novel exploring compelling characters who weave in and out of situations they create or find themselves in.


Perhaps the essential writer who forces one to actually be awake and alert while reading is Thomas Pynchon. Frankly, the man's a genius and his words are amazing and brilliantly crafted. The thing is, you have to pay attention and he requires some serious ability to recall things. That is, as I believe I've said in reviews of his other works (The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland, Gravity's Rainbow, etc.), he writes like a movie packed with detail, using a camera that will routinely focus on something aside from the primary action. When it focuses away from the characters or the action, whatever it latches onto may get a full exploration and history. In V. there is a digression like that involving a painting.

V. is essentially a novel focusing on two primary characters, who are foils. Benny Profane, a schlemiel (which is defined by my dictionary - New World Dictionary College Third Edition, in case you're curious - as "an ineffectual, bungling person who habitually fails or is easily victimized." I read it as "loser," which for the most part fits Benny), who spends his time drifting and Stencil, an obsessed man who is searching the world, and in the novel mostly New York and Malta, for V.

On the plot front, the novel literally follows Benny from the Navy to the sewers of New York to Malta in the company of some eclectic enlisted men, the Whole Sick Crew, and finally Stencil. Stencil's plot is a search for who or what V. is. The initial appears in a letter from his dead father and he has been searching some twenty years to decipher its meaning. His plot leads to near continuous divergences. As he searches, the past is revealed to him in long chapters populated by characters otherwise disconnected from the novel. It is primarily the Stencil plotlines that take the reader to three distinct times: 1899 (the year Godolphin, who has a relationship with V. is part of a scheme to steal the painting "Birth of Venus"), 1917 (the year his father died), and 1956 (the present in the novel). His obsession with V. is a significant chunk of the novel which involves seemingly pointless sidestories and full casts of characters interacting and doing their own things with information Stencil seeks only on the periphery, sometimes only in the subtext.

On the vastly more important level, the characters are interesting and compelling. They evoke empathy and when that is not possible, curiosity. The characters live in intriguing times, doing interesting things. The reader explores a world filled with the horrors of war, the build-up to conflict and the horrors war leaves behind. Yet, the true journeys in this novel are psychological, focusing on the elements that make a man passive and the other obsessive. As Stencil searches selfishly - and often carelessly - for evidence of V., Profane often stumbles into situations, relationships and responsibilities. One makes his destiny, the other seems at its mercy.

The advantage of V. is that it never gets tiring or tired. Whenever the lives of Stencil or Profane ramble too far, there is a diversion, a segue into a different time or place. There, the reader is taken on a journey that does relate back to the lives of our anti-heroes. In fact, my favorite chapter of the novel is Chapter Seven, "She Hangs on the Western Wall," which focuses on the events of 1899. But the whole novel works that way with an interweaving of characters that sometimes it helps to have notes on!

Pynchon is perfect in his language. Reading V. is a fun event, even during an excruciating nose job scene! The deeper themes of self control Vs. society are woven masterfully utilizing characters who are layered and intriguing. Pynchon is a poet; V. his perfect epic poem which provides the reader with much to think about, read, reread and analyze.

All you need is to be awake and open to language and ideas.

For other works by Thomas Pynchon, please check out my reviews of:
The Crying Of Lot 49
Slow Learner
Gravity's Rainbow
Vineland
Mason & Dixon
Inherent Vice

10/10

For other novel reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2010, 2002 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Drawing A Line In Pynchon's Work: Mason & Dixon Is Long, But Unsatisfying.

The Good: Good dialog, interesting characters
The Bad: Far too convoluted in plot, long and feels long
The Basics: Hard to stomach in length and long stretches of uninteresting plot-work. Not as good as his other novels or characters.


Mason & Dixon is a big book, there's no other way to say it. It's thick, it's heavy, the plot which should be simple - the tale of famed explorer/cartographers Mason and Dixon charting their important dividing line - turns out to be anything but and the characters are well rounded and quite thoroughly explored.

Somewhere between his last novel and Mason & Dixon Thomas Pynchon fell more in love with dialog, for this novel has a noticeable increase in people actually talking to each other (as opposed to, say, Vineland where the bulk of talking is actually people spinning hugely long stories to one another).

That said, he also discovered an even more unique dialect than he's had in his previous novels and it would be nice if his characters were saying something to each other that we, the readers, could understand! Dixon speaks often incomprehensibly and it is a serious detraction to the novel. To add to the problem, the narrator occasionally speaks in dialect and it is unclear who that is.

More than simply being about Mason and Dixon, the novel is about the eclectic people they meet as they are surveying and cutting their line across the country. They're an interesting enough bunch, but not so much as to warrant the volume of this novel. Cameos include colonists such as Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.

The first section of the novel deals with Mason and Dixon charting around the Cape of Good Hope and it's a confusing section. That is to say, in the first portion of the novel, it's difficult to tell what is actually occurring. The plot there is obscured and simple actions are obscured in heavy dialog.

This is a problem in that by the time Mason and Dixon actually make it to North America to begin cutting their swath across the continent, the reader is bored and flat out confused.

It's a difficult novel, even for a Pynchon fan and it's not anywhere near as imaginative or enlightening as his other works. Gravity's Rainbow rocks in terms of lyrical quality, V. tells an interesting story, and Vineland has great characters that resonate even long after you've read it. Mason & Dixon isn't any of those things. It's still better than most of the crap on the bookshelves today, but it's not the superlative work that we've come to expect from Pynchon.

For other works by Thomas Pynchon, please check out my reviews of:
The Crying Of Lot 49
Slow Learner
Gravity's Rainbow
Vineland
Inherent Vice

4.5/10

For other novel reviews, please be sure to check out my index page by clicking here!

© 2010, 2002 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


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Ending Before It Begins: The Crying Of Lot 49 Is Wonderful Pynchon Weirdness.

The Good: Funny, quirky, highly original, fun, philosophical, excellent diction, thematic intensity
The Bad: Convoluted plot, thematic intensity
The Basics: A unique read perfect for anyone tired of the unchallenging literary works or "popular" fiction.


Thomas Pynchon is one of those authors who writes books where it's more likely you'll get an answer to the question "Who was in it" as opposed to "What's it about." After several reads of his novels, it's easy to still be confused about what happened. In short, Pynchon writes about characters, individuals, in a style that is distinct and, oftentimes, confusing.

The Crying Of Lot 49 is one of Pynchon's more linear novel in terms of plot. Whereas his masterpiece V. or his epic Gravity's Rainbow may consume a reader with the simple act of putting the events together in a reasonable chronological order, The Crying Of Lot 49 tells a story from start to middle. It remains remarkably focused on Oedipa Maas who is charged with executing the estate of a former lover. In the estate, some confusing stamps emerge pointing to the possible existence of a phantom postal service working within the United States. Is there? Who knows, the novel ends annoyingly close to answering the question. The title of the book comes from the auctioneering term "to cry" (auction) a lot. Lot 49 is where the stamps for the underground post office may or may not be.

If you understand that the novel is about a quest to place relevancy on something, trying to bring meaning and order to the world or our experiences, it reads much quicker. That is, if you understand that the protagonist could be grasping at straws, it makes the book go quicker because you're not stopping constantly to evaluate the plot and ask yourself "is this real or not?" The major interpretive leap here is that what you're reading might be a character attempting to put order to things, which is something the reader usually does. In this case, we must question Oedipa Maas' judgment.

Pynchon's strength is clearly in his narrative style, a realistic-sounding, fast paced monologue that easily sweeps the reader away. This is fiction doing what it can at a high caliber of quality and attention to detail. In fact, perhaps the most annoying thing about reading Pynchon's works, even his relatively slowball The Crying Of Lot 49, is that he has an amazing grasp of details and he expects, demands, the full attention of the reader. The demands Pynchon places on the reader while weaving the powerful theme of the nature of reality vs. conspiracy, random vs. constructed are considerable.

More than work, Oedipa's journey into the U.S. culture of individual strangeness and paranoia, is a lot of fun. She meets some real characters and you'll enjoy meeting them too if you have some patience! Included along the way are a lecherous, pedophile husband, a band of musicians who have individual quirks and a former child actor who desires nothing more than to seduce Oedipa. Some of the best moments in the novel have nothing whatsoever to do with the quest for the truth, instead they are peripheral events that create a confused mindset for Oedipa (and the reader) that make her desire for order a much more understandable thing.

While this lacks the scope - read: LENGTH - of Gravity's Rainbow, The Crying Of Lot 49 is a complex work moved by an interesting protagonist in a world far more bizarre than most of us usually encounter.

For other works by Thomas Pynchon, please check out my reviews of:
Slow Learner
Gravity's Rainbow
Vineland
Inherent Vice

8/10

For other book reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here for a thorough listing!

© 2010, 2002 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.




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The Gravity of American Literature: Gravity's Rainbow Reduced To 500 Words!

The Good: Funny, impressive in scope, brilliant in character!
The Bad: Twisted plot, hugely winding sentences
The Basics: High recommendations for the serious reader, Gravity's Rainbow is not for the literarily feint-of-heart. It is an investment, but a worthy one, of your attentions.


Gravity's Rainbow is one of those post-modern novels that seems like way too much and in a lot of ways, it is. Thomas Pynchon doesn't do short. His books are long, his sentences are long, his scope is enormous.

Gravity's Rainbow is the diction-powered epic of Tyrone Slothrope and about 85 other characters. It's hard to say just what happens in the novel because it's a dense book. It's also interesting, filled with a lot of humor, satire, and more than anything a deep appreciation for the English language.

Gravity's Rainbow is the meandering hunt for Rocket 00000 in World War 2. The protagonist, Tyrone Slothrope, is surrounded by a supporting cast of weird characters including an insane General, a seductress and an entire array of sexual fetishists. While Slothrope's sexual exploits seem connected to the location of Rocket 00000, the connection seems to be vague.

The thing about Gravity's Rainbow is, the novel never seems to latch onto actually searching. The best way to describe Pynchon's narrative style is in cinematic terms. Pynchon has a habit of focusing on one character, following them around and then panning abruptly to another character in the shot and following them for a while. And he doesn't necessarily come back to the original subject.

Instead of a concrete plot, what often happens is that Slothrope will head in one direction and someone near him will come into focus. In that moment, Pynchon - as the author - will latch onto them. Much of the novel seems to be almost extraneous backstory of characters who have minimal time in the book. Once the reader understands that, the novel becomes a pleasure, instead of a difficulty, to read. The key is to enjoy the trip.

Our temptation is to say that the novel is about Tyrone Slothrope, but that's not fair to the majesty of the novel. Gravity's Rainbow is often a trip through World War II that utilizes history and fiction in a convincing blend that tells a tale about how people relate and how they desperately go about meeting their needs. In fact, the sexual fetishes that are exhibited throughout the novel aren't simply gratuitous or shocking. Instead, they explore the need of humans and the contact they seek to relate.

The impressive thing about this is that the novel does come together in its own way and Pynchon packs in so very much information about the characters. The sheer number of details he provides about the fetishes, experiences and relationships between the characters is impressive.

This is not a novel for the feint of heart or those who do not like to be challenged. This is a dense work. Unlike Finnegan's Wake, though, this is a long piece that ultimately goes somewhere and says something.

For other works by Thomas Pynchon, please check out my reviews of:
Slow Learner
Vineland
Inherent Vice

9/10

For other book reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2010, 2002 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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Not Just Weird, Stoner Weird, Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice Is An Atypical Mystery!

The Good: Great language, Sense of movement, Interesting characters, Wonderful narrative voice
The Bad: A lot of threads to keep track of.
The Basics: With his latest novel, Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon creates a funny and complicated mystery populated by stoners and government agents in early-1970s California.


I hate people who write the flaps of books when they write things that illustrate a clear lack of understanding of the book or author they are writing about. I mention this at the outset of my review of Inherent Vice because the book jacket made it sound like a mystery novel would be a departure for Thomas Pynchon. This is utterly ridiculous as anyone who has read The Crying Of Lot 49 well knows. In fact, most of Pynchon's novels do seem to be about characters trying to put it all together in one form or another. In the case of Inherent Vice, the book is just a bit more coherent than most of Pynchon's other works, so those looking for a more linear narrative are actually left with far less guesswork than usual! For those who have not fallen in love with the works of Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice is about on the same level as Slow Learner (click here for that review!) or Vineland (click here for my review of that novel) for coherency.

Last year, one of my earliest goals this year was to finish a Thomas Pynchon novel, though I figured that I would actually managed to get through Against The Day, which I began in January. That book, however, proved a bit dense for me with devoting time to travel and a new relationship. So, when August came around and I discovered Pynchon had a new novel on the market, Inherent Vice, I figured it's shorter length might well provide me with the means to complete my goal. A day after the goal expired, I finished the book and had time to contemplate it.

It's very Pynchon.

By that, I mean that Inherent Vice is exactly what one might expect from Thomas Pynchon. Those who read his works can expect quirky characters, fairly graphic and peculiar sex, and a plot that is confusing, convoluted or both. In the case of Inherent Vice, the novel is remarkably straightforward in that it is focused pretty tightly on its protagonist, Larry "Doc" Sportello, and his story diverges more through the weird turns of the case he is investigating than feeling like one is reading a book with a story that never seems to come into focus. As a result, this becomes one of Pynchon's works that is very easy to get into and easy to follow compared to his other works. But those without tolerance for eccentric dialogue and characters who are doing little outside getting wasted will find nothing to enjoy in the book. Oddly, I have a personal stance that is strongly against drugs and the banalities of drug culture, but Pynchon's prose is so wonderful (on its own, it can make one feel intoxicated) that the novel flows along in such a compelling fashion as to be enjoyable even to those who have a moral stance against the actions of most of the characters.

Doc Sportello is a P.I. in the early 1970s in Gordita Beach, California. He is constantly harassed by a police detective, "Bigfoot" Bjornsen and one night, his ex, Shasta Fey walks back into his life with a case for him. Out of sentimentality and curiosity, Doc begins to investigate the disappearance of Shasta's new beau, Mickey Wolfman, a billionaire land developer with a tie collection of all of the women he's had naked. Shortly after he begins his investigation, Doc finds himself at a site where a raid leaves Mickey's protection dead and Doc himself the prime suspect. While Doc, drugged at the time, is able to exonerate himself easily enough, he finds himself drawn deeper into a case that is no simple disappearance.

The case takes an especially personal turn when Shasta goes missing as well. This puts Doc on the trail of a seemingly-deceased saxophone player, Coy Harlington, who appears to be very much alive and working for the government to stop subversives. Doc finds himself relying on promiscuous stewardii, a prison neo-Nazi, a California computer hacker who has tapped into the government's ARPAnet, and his Justice Department girlfriend. Between pot trips and car rides up and down the beaches of California, Doc starts to see a pattern of people secretly working for the government which exposes the powers behind the power and puts Doc in danger more than he ever imagined!

Inherent Vice is surprisingly coherent for a novel by Thomas Pynchon and as a result, it tends to remain remarkably tight on Doc following leads to their next logical conclusion. There are remarkably few sidestories, which is an accomplishment for Pynchon and so long as one accepts that this one story blooms into a frayed wire of tangents, the book is exceptionally readable. While most of Pynchon's books take the reader on a journey with only middling potential to actually go somewhere, Inherent Vice actually has a remarkably recognizable beginning, middle and end. Most readers, though, would do well to take notes because there are so many characters with different initial and ultimate affiliations that it helps to keep them all straight.

While Doc follows the leads surrounding the disappearance of Mickey Wolfman, he discovers Coy Harlington and that tangential case soon provides Doc with insight into his primary case. Chief among the overlapping elements is the Golden Fang. The Golden Fang takes on different meanings as Doc digs into the case and it develops from a gang of neo-Nazis to a smuggling ship to a nefarious dental organization back to the boat. Those willing to enjoy such convolutions will find Inherent Vice is an enjoyable ride into the obscure and weird.

The key to understanding most of the book comes from a willingness, an eagerness, to appreciate Thomas Pynchon's narrative style. Inherent Vice is preoccupied with doped-up characters who are trying to extract meaning from their surroundings, but often become confused or distracted by other things around them. As a result, Doc will attempt to get answers from characters who are smoking weed and they'll get distracted by some memory of Gilligan's Island or the like. Characters frequently don't finish sentences and while the stoned out Doc interacts with the very literal, very sober Bigfoot, the humor takes the form of an uncomfortable narrative technique where Doc's inability to focus causes him to lose virtually every useful opportunity to get good leads in his case. Most frequently, the characters-under-the-influence speak with uncertainty embodied by virtually every line of hippie/stoner dialogue ending with a question mark.

This is not to say that all of the humor takes a lot of brain power to get and one has to be engaged to get it all. Some of the most pleasant moments come with some of the most ridiculous, but obvious moments of humor. So, for example, after Doc actually does something right and helps someone, "The Princess phone rang, and it was Hope Harlington. 'God bless you, Doc.' 'I sneeze or something?' 'Seriously.' 'Really. Like sometimes I forget if I did or not? and then I have to ask. It's embarrassing'" (362). Exchanges like that are common throughout Inherent Vice but the situation - a hippie stoned almost constantly working as a private detective - is what delivers the most consistent and enduring humor throughout the novel.

And for his part, Doc Sportello is one of Pynchon's best protagonists, if by no other virtue than he is trying to do a good thing and the reader spends enough time with him to actually care about his fate, if not the case. Sportello is a generally good hippie who is harassed by the law and tries to make good. He calls his family weekly, he cares about people like Shasta and his girlfriend and he just happens to smoke a lot of weed and get laid throughout. The idea that he is fighting the forces or order and control is surprisingly noble, despite his methods.

Outside a tolerance for sentences that do not seem to go anywhere, all one needs to get through Inherent Vice (outside time) is an understanding that if two words pop up next to one another that don't seem to make sense, they are probably the name of a specific variant of marijuana. You (like I) don't have to know anything about the specifics of the strain, just know that Sportello is getting high. If you accept that, and that Pynchon is having fun but going somewhere, you'll enjoy Inherent Vice. Anyone who wants a very different detective story and who has a love of great writing that puts you in an entirely different mind-set will enjoy Inherent Vice. This is not a beachreading detective story; it's for an engaged mind, even if many of the characters in the book aren't.

For other books with strong mystery components, please check out my reviews of:
Because It Is Bitter, And Because It Is My Heart - Joyce Carol Oates
Bad Twin - Gary Troup
Juneteenth - Ralph Ellison

8/10

For other book reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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Short Story Evolution Theory For Lit. Majors: Slow Learner By Thomas Pynchon!

The Good: A few decent stories, well-written with interesting characters.
The Bad: Short (only five stories), "The Secret Integration" is ponderous and dull.
The Basics: A decent literary outing, Slow Learner introduces readers to the narrative stylings of Thomas Pynchon without them having to commit to a novel!


I have, by and large, hated reviewing novels written by Thomas Pynchon. It is worth noting that I do not hate the writings of Thomas Pynchon, but rather I loathe reviewing his works. So far, I've only moved the review of Vineland (click here for that) from my old reviewing site. It's an important distinction, that I love his writing but not reviewing it, if for no other reason than Pynchon is one of my favorite novelists of all time and quite probably my favorite living novelist. So, why then would I loathe reviewing his works?

The reasoning is simple: describing a novel by Thomas Pynchon is like describing bite by bite what a pot pie is. Like the flavorings of a pot pie, which change with every bite with the combination of fillings, every few pages or each chapter in the average novel by Pynchon changes what the story is about. They are dense books, often about nothing or conversely about so many things that trying to describe them on a plot level is virtually impossible. The characters in many of Pynchon's books tend to have names that are similar and reading his novels is usually about enjoying a love of words more than actually having a story or characters to follow.

So, it was with some pleasure that I picked up Slow Learner, the early short stories of Thomas Pynchon. With five stories over the course of less than two hundred pages, I figured that there would be little that could screw up my sensibilities and I would be able to read and review the book with greater ease. And, for a change, Pynchon made it pretty easy for me!

Slow Learner is a collection of Pynchon's short stories from early in his career and his notes on the stories make for easy comprehension and take a tact I have always agreed with; namely that living authors could do the world a favor and share what they meant by what they said for future generations. Over the course of the first twenty-three pages, Pynchon comments on what he feels he got right and wrong in the short stories and it makes for a worthwhile reference for scholars of his works.

For those interested in the book, the five short stories include:

"The Small Rain" - The adventure of Nathan "Lardass" Levine, an enlisted man whose unit is called to establish a communication's network into hurricane-stricken Louisiana. Having wandered his way through a day of hard work - mostly by avoiding it by hitching a ride on a ship fishing dead bodies out of the bayou - Levine ends up in a college town seducing a local co-ed.

"Low-Lands" - Cindy, the wife of Dennis Flange (mariner-at-heart), throws Dennis out of their house when Pig Bodine, an old friend of Dennis, shows up one night. Having skipped work to drink with his friend the garbage man, Dennis is pleased to see Pig after seven years. Cindy, for her part, finds Pig's resurgence to be the last straw in their childless marriage and kicks Dennis out. So, Dennis goes to the dump with his friend, gets drunk and allows himself to be whisked away by a gypsy woman to a subterranean garbage lair.

"Entropy" - Meatball Mulligan's lease has expired, so he's squatting in his apartment building for the second day of a nonstop party when a friend arrives, having been kicked out by his wife for a fight about communication. As the party rages on, in the apartment above, a naturalist named Callisto attempts to revitalize a dying bird with the warmth from his body while the woman he shares the greenhouse-like lair with becomes obsessed with the temperature outside not changing from thirty-seven degrees Fahrenheit. Downstairs, people come and go randomly, all trying to pair off as part of the day while Meatball watches.

"Under The Rose" - At the turn of the century (the 1900s!) Porpentine and Goodfellow are British spies out to thwart the apocalypse by German agents, Moldweorp and his associates. With rumors of a meeting that will escalate the conflicts in Africa to a head, Porpentine and Goodfellow head to Cairo with Goodfellow's latest fling to try to find the meeting, thwart the chaotic agenda of Moldweorp and save Europe!

"The Secret Integration" - In the late '50s, four children plan unspecified hi-jinx to disrupt a small suburban community. Tim, Grover (the boy genius), Etienne, and Carl (the new Negro on the block), are friends complete with a haunted secret hide-out in the Massachusetts suburb they live in to hang out at. Tim recalls previous years' adventures and a night spent with a kid in A.A. who is trying to keep a visiting black man sober, while their parents fight integration.

The stories are fairly varied and the most fun is easily "Under The Rose," even though the whole spy story is somewhat vague and involves Porpentine pretending to be a buffoon as his cover. "The Secret Integration" is long and pointless and by the fifth gag with Grover using words none of the rest of the gang knows, it gets old.

The fundamental problem with the stories in Slow Learner is that they are by and large the same story told using different settings (with the exception of "The Secret Integration"). They are fairly pointless vignettes with disaffected individuals who are swept up by events around them and they more or less peripherally are involved in them. In other words, Pynchon's protagonists are largely not the movers and shakers of any particular scene. So, for example, Porpentine is an aged spy who is partnered with the younger and more effective Goodfellow and he is an honor-bound spy in a world where androids are taking over the spy business (points to Pynchon for creativity!).

This is fine, so long as one is not reading in any attempt to become enlightened or empathize with characters. Most of them are seamen who drink a lot and have a love affair with the sea and are disconnected from everyone else in the story with them. As Pynchon's introduction mentions, most of the stories were written while he was in the military and the characters are largely womanizing jerks.

What is worthwhile is the presentation of the stories for the strength of Pynchon's narrative abilities. Even without terribly likable characters, the interplay between the party and the (essentially) biosphere in "Entropy" is played out well and while not much actually happens in "The Small Rain" or "Low-Lands," the stories are engaging enough to be read and enjoyed. Pynchon can tell a story and he has a pretty amazing sense of description and his pacing is excellent. In fact, whenever Pynchon gets tired with having a narrator describe something, he fast forwards to something more interesting, usually dialogue. This kind of whip-around style is very much Pynchon's style and in the context of the first four short stories, it makes Slow Learner at fast read at the very least.

Slow Learner will be enjoyed by people looking for short stories for the love of language more than the love of plot or characters. Indeed, the most character-driven story ("The Secret Integration") is Pynchon's least successful in this collection. For love of language, Pynchon continues his tradition of long lines with quirky descriptions, many of which have nothing to do with what his stories seem to be about. People looking for a point, need to keep right on walking.

For other books with surreal aspects, please check out my reviews of:
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Juneteenth - Ralph Ellison
Orlando - Virginia Woolf

5/10

For other book reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2010, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


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Coherency In Pynchon: Vineland Succeeds For All Audiences.

The Good: Characters, Lyrical Quality, Plot
The Bad: Ease of Resolution
The Basics: A finely weaved tale of the worlds most dysfunctional family ever. If not for its simplistic resolution and the occasional pointless thread, would be a perfect novel.



There are few novelists whose libraries I read entirely. Thomas Pynchon, in his own unlikely way, has become one of them. I read Pynchon's works with the full understanding that oftentimes, there is not a coherent narrative. Vineland is one of the few exceptions to that rule and it is one of Pynchon's most accessible works to all readers.

The bad news is that Vineland sets up three hundred fifty pages of conflict and it resolves it in five. One of my wisest writing teachers in college said, "Simple conflicts are easily resolved in writing" and while it sounds stupid, it's remarkably true; you can't effectively draw out a simple conflict. On the flip side, one cannot resolve a complex conflict effectively as Pynchon attempts to do in Vineland.

All of the rest is positive. Vineland begins with Zoyd Wheeler and his daughter Prairie viewing Zoyd's yearly act of insanity for a disability check. It immediately begs the question, "Why is Zoyd doing this?" which is answered throughout the novel in a retrospective from 1984 to the late 60s, early seventies.

Basically, the novel is the story of hippie persecution by the government - personified by a t.v. junkie named Hector and an opportunistic, career minded Judicial Department Special Agent named Brock Vond. But how everyone got where they did is thoroughly explored as Prairie and Zoyd split up and flee, resulting in Prairie ending up with a ninjette and a businessman getting a history lesson on a mythical place in California where it was once great to be free.

For Prairie, it's a search for her mother Frenesi Gates, for Zoyd it's a quest to do right by his family and his past and for the occasionally visible Frenesi, the search is for understanding the world she's been dumped into.

The novel is funny and irreverent, completely criticizing the Reagan downsizing, recession-induced counter-hippie mentality and coupling it with a broad array of cultural references both blatant and subtle.

The appeal of Vineland is more than just its usual Pynchon narrative technique; this is a unique story and it's an interesting one. The characters are brilliant and weird.

For other works of literature, please check out my reviews of:
The Sound And The Fury - William Faulkner
Letters From The Earth - Mark Twain
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison

9/10

For other book reviews, please check out my index page!

© 2010, 2001 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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