Pynchon Wiki: Inherent Vice

Welcome to the Inherent Vice Wiki!

To become a contributor/editor, Create an account.

• Order Inherent Vice (Amazon)

• Listen to Pynchon narrate a 2.5 minute video about Inherent Vice!

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

• Check out our playlist of the artists & songs in Inherent Vice Unlike the Pynchon-provided playlist on Amazon.com, ours provides video & audio of the songs.

This is the newly created 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.

Contents 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:

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

• ThomasPynchon.com
• The Modern Word Pynchon page

The Modern Word: Inherent Vice

The Fictional Woods - a Pynchon forum

• 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
• Thomas Pynchon in Manhattan Beach
• Bill Pearlman's recollections of Pynchon in Manhattan Beach
• The Wall Street Journal: Pynchon’s Drugstore Thriller (July 30, 2009)
• GalleyCat's Jason Boog stitched together vintage footage of 1970s California, private detectives, old-time computers, and some choice passages from Inherent Vice

Featured Articles

"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...

Pynchon and Comics - Sean Rogers: "Ever attuned to the lower frequencies of American culture, the wavelengths where rock and roll and monster movies and The Tube all play out, Pynchon is an author who can ably salt away a few references to comics, too, throughout his works. The guy hips himself to so many things—from 18th century naval battles to Jacobean revenge drama to the intricacies of rhinoplasty—that to happen across nods to underground comics, or moral outlooks articulated by way of classic cartooning like George Herriman’s comic strip Kat, is simply par for a very wide-ranging course." Read the article...

• Songs & Musicians: The Inherent Vice Playlist

• Movies, Actors, Cartoons, &c. in Inherent Vice

• Unreleased Backgrounds: Pynchon's California Trilogy and the CIA

Image Gallery

Below are some of the images you will find on Pynchon Wiki.

Barney-Fife bw.jpg WikiAdmin 22:56, 4 November 2009 8,666 bytes	Surfaris-dot-decca.j… WikiAdmin 09:46, 17 October 2009 62,116 bytes	Zuckys.jpg WikiAdmin 21:12, 16 October 2009 33,546 bytes	Channel Island Estat… Jglassow 13:47, 22 September 2009 19,026 bytes
Example.jpg Jglassow 13:35, 22 September 2009 21,012 bytes	Logo-LondonReview.gi… WikiAdmin 14:07, 19 September 2009 2,937 bytes	Hispano-SuizaJ12.jpg Jglassow 07:37, 26 August 2009 54,170 bytes	Kawasaki Mach III.jp… Jglassow 07:45, 25 August 2009 138,625 bytes
Triumph Bonneville T… Jglassow 07:32, 25 August 2009 82,963 bytes	Kirn-500.jpg WikiAdmin 15:16, 22 August 2009 94,437 bytes	MrNatural.jpg Jglassow 12:44, 19 August 2009 18,608 bytes	1956Fireflite.jpg Jglassow 14:37, 18 August 2009 121,607 bytes
1966GTO.jpg Jglassow 13:27, 18 August 2009 89,697 bytes	DodgeSuperBee.jpg Jglassow 13:10, 18 August 2009 101,324 bytes	442 Olds.jpg Jglassow 12:49, 18 August 2009 188,613 bytes	1953BuickEstateWagon… Jglassow 12:28, 18 August 2009 53,920 bytes
Cobra 289.jpg Jglassow 12:15, 18 August 2009 154,614 bytes	1956 DeSoto.jpg Jglassow 11:42, 18 August 2009 79,159 bytes	1965Impala.jpg Jglassow 10:16, 18 August 2009 200,885 bytes	Buckaroosmall.jpg WikiAdmin 20:18, 17 August 2009 55,536 bytes
59CadillacHearse.jpg Jglassow 06:19, 17 August 2009 77,368 bytes	Morgan.jpg Sjjohnston 22:41, 16 August 2009 149,665 bytes	SS396.jpg Sjjohnston 22:29, 16 August 2009 86,767 bytes	Patek.jpg Sjjohnston 11:42, 13 August 2009 77,211 bytes
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1964 Dodge Dart.jpg Jglassow 06:41, 12 August 2009 26,554 bytes	1969Oldsmobile.jpg Jglassow 12:48, 11 August 2009 19,783 bytes	MercedesSedan.jpg Jglassow 11:04, 11 August 2009 35,916 bytes	Hokusai.jpg Bleakhaus 21:55, 9 August 2009 171,618 bytes
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IVcoverdraft.jpg Bleakhaus 23:03, 22 July 2009 63,927 bytes	IVcoverpenguincatalo… Bleakhaus 23:02, 22 July 2009 28,390 bytes	Cheongsam.jpg Bleakhaus 22:38, 22 July 2009 136,100 bytes	VincentThomasBridge.… Bleakhaus 22:38, 22 July 2009 122,330 bytes
Pynchon-simpsons.jpg WikiAdmin 21:27, 22 July 2009 26,516 bytes	68Elcamino.jpg Bleakhaus 16:04, 22 July 2009 173,616 bytes	Donaldstubble.jpg Bleakhaus 16:04, 22 July 2009 38,957 bytes	59Biarritz.jpg Bleakhaus 15:30, 22 July 2009 149,345 bytes

Thanks, and enjoy...