Pynchon Wiki: Inherent Vice

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Welcome to the Inherent Vice Wiki!

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Purchase Inherent Vice:
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NEW! Check out Increment Vice, a podcast that explores Paul Thomas Anderson's film Inherent Vice one scene at a time. Lots of great commentary.

Check out Inherent Vice Diagrammed, a visual guide to Pynchon’s 2009 detective novel. This free resource helps readers keep track of the Inherent Vice’s 130 characters, the plots, and the action. It offers a unique approach to visualizing complexity in fiction. Detailed character-relationship diagrams form the heart of the website, and help readers see — and keep track of — the big picture.

Paul Thomas Anderson's "Inherent Vice" — described as a "dark crime comedy" — opened December 12, 2014 in selected cities; general release on January 9, 2015. Read more...

Read - or download - a PDF of the first chapter of Inherent Vice!

Check out our playlist of the artists & songs in Inherent Vicewhich provides audio, video, and lyrics of the songs.

This is the Wiki for Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice. Besides using the Alphabetical Index and the page-by-page annotation, you can also take a look at Inherent Vice covers, read the reviews, or entertain some theories on the source of the title.

1 Pynchon Narrates Inherent Vice Promotional Video
2 How to Use this Wiki
3 Alphabetical Index
4 Page by Page Annotations
5 Pynchon Wiki Help and Contributor Guidelines
6 External Links
7 Featured Articles
8 Image Gallery

Pynchon Narrates Inherent Vice Promotional Video

Can flying pigs be far behind?

Penguin Press confirms that the video is narrated by Pynchon. Source

Read — and participate in — a discussion of this video »

How to Use this Wiki

There are two major ways to use this wiki. The first is the Inherent Vice Alphabetical Index, used to keep track of the myriad characters, real and imagined, as well as events, arcana, and lots of other stuff. The second is the Spoiler-Free Annotations by Page, which allows the reader to look up and contribute allusions and references while reading the book, in a convenient and spoiler-free manner.

Apart from those, it's up to you.

Alphabetical Index

Information on the characters, events, and everything else in Inherent Vice, organized alphabetically:

Inherent Vice Alpha Guide

A·B·C·D·E·F·G·H·I·J·K·L·M·N·O·P·Q·R·S·T·U·V·W·XYZ TOP↑

Page by Page Annotations

Chapter 1 pp. 1-18	Chapter 2 pp. 19-45	Chapter 3 pp. 46-49	Chapter 4 pp. 50-54	Chapter 5 pp. 55-67
Chapter 6 pp. 68-88	Chapter 7 pp. 89-110	Chapter 8 pp. 111-123	Chapter 9 pp. 124-153	Chapter 10 pp. 154-162
Chapter 11 pp. 163-185	Chapter 12 pp. 186-206	Chapter 13 pp. 207-234	Chapter 14 pp. 235-255	Chapter 15 pp. 256-274
Chapter 16 pp. 275-295	Chapter 17 pp. 296-314	Chapter 18 pp. 315-342	Chapter 19 pp. 343-350	Chapter 20 pp. 351-363
		Chapter 21 pp. 364-369

Pynchon Wiki Help and Contributor Guidelines

Click here for help with editing and creating pages.

We have a few conventions we ask that you follow:

When creating a new page, first check to make sure a page/article about what you want to write about hasn't already been created, by checking the list of all Wiki pages on this Inherent Vice Wiki. If a page already exists, please modify that one.

When creating a new page, if its information pertains to one (and only one) specific Pynchon novel, please categorize it with the appropriate identifier. For example, a page pertaining to Inherent Vice, should use the syntax [[Category:IV]].

To open a discussion on an individual listing of the Alpha Index, create one using the entry on Peter Tait as an example. Basically, give it a name that identifies the alpha listing (eg [[Name Discussion|DISCUSSION]]) and notice that the visible name will be "DISCUSSION" in full caps, so it stands out a bit.

More help for this wiki available here.

External Links

Shipwreck Library: Inherent Vice

Pynchonoid Blog
Inherent Vice blog A blog filled in while reading Inherent Vice
Inherent Vice on Twitter
Wikipedia Inherent Vice page
Wired Magazine Unofficial Thomas Pynchon Guide to Los Angeles
Bill Pearlman's recollections of Pynchon in Manhattan Beach
The Wall Street Journal: Pynchon’s Drugstore Thriller (July 30, 2009)
iv – a site about Inherent Vice
Literarywiki.org - wiki annotations to works by Pynchon, Umberto Eco, and many others.

Featured Articles

Paul Thomas Anderson

Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice Described As The Big Lebowski Meets The Long Goodbye
This April 15, 2014 update on Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of Inherent Vice really whets the appetite! The Big Lebowski meets The Long Goodbye... What's not to like?
Audience member of an early screening: "Mix together The Big Lebowski and Altman‘s The Long Goodbye, turn it into a two-and-a-half hour PT Anderson epic and you’re getting close to the awesome experience of Inherent Vice. Even Joaquin Phoenix‘s performance has echoes of 70′s Elliot Gould with a touch of The Dude. But don’t get me wrong, this film is its own animal. A drug-fueled detective story filled with great psychedelic music and beautiful, grainy cinematography, it’s both hilarious and confounding at times. But Anderson does an incredible job of making the incredibly complex plot both comprehensible and entertaining. Even though he’s apparently said he’s still tinkering, it felt like a finished film and will definitely go down as one of my favorites of his."

Read the article...

"Call It Capitalism" by Thomas Jones, for the London Review of Books, is a thoughtful, knowledgeable and insightful review of Inherent Vice, linking it to Pynchon's themes from The Crying of Lot 49 to Mason & Dixon. A must read! Read the review...