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Inherent Vice Reviews

2025-10-20T20:56:12Z

WikiAdmin: Protected "Inherent Vice Reviews": Page is too prominent ([Edit=Allow only administrators] (indefinite) [Move=Allow only administrators] (indefinite))

==Review aggregators==

:[https://www.complete-review.com/reviews/popus/pynchon2.htm The Complete Review]

:[https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/from-the-archives-reviewing-thomas-pynchon/ ''The New York Times'': Reviewing Thomas Pynchon...]

==Reviews==

'''Please add any relevant reviews as they come in. Blog reviews are fine as long as they're substantial and more than a few paragraphs.'''

[[image:kirn-500.jpg|caption|Illustration: Erik T. Johnson, for ''The New York Times Sunday Book Review''|thumb|right|250px]]

'''05/15/24''' - [https://seattlespectator.com/2024/05/15/totally-booked-inherent-vice-review/ '''The Spectator'''] ''Inherent Vice'' is a perfect period piece not only of the 60s, but specifically of 60s Southern California. Set in a fictional, yet very real, surf bum town of Gordita Beach, on the outskirts of LA, anyone with more knowledge of the area than me will appreciate the incredible attention to detail present in Pynchon’s descriptions and satire of the setting, its culture, and its politics.

'''02/13/14''' - [https://www.berfrois.com/2014/02/albert-rolls-inherent-vices-two-directions/'''Berfrois'''] Albert Rolls: "Inherent Vice is no simple piece of nostalgia, as some critics complained upon its release, but an examination of a problem—that is, the consumerist tendencies — at the heart of the ’60s counterculture, a problem Pynchon recognized at least by the mid-1970s." [http://www.berfrois.com/2014/02/albert-rolls-inherent-vices-two-directions/ Entire review »]

'''02/07/10''' - [http://revcom.us/a/191/inherent_vice-en.html '''Revolution Newspaper'''] "The reviews of Inherent Vice have been mostly positive, though some have been rather dismissive. Entertaining, they say, but nowhere near the depth of Pynchon's big books, such as Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon. A good "beach read." Some have also complained about Pynchon's nostalgia for the 1960s, specifically the late 1960s in Los Angeles." [http://revcom.us/a/191/inherent_vice-en.html Entire review »]

'''02/06/10''' - [http://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/92082/book-review-inherent-vice '''Otago Daily Times'''] Victor Billot: "The humble detective novel is exhumed, deconstructed, and reconstructed by Thomas Pynchon - not recommended for those who like detective novels, in the generally accepted sense, but a strangely appropriate form for the Pynchon ''modus operandi''. An obsessive and labyrinthine style, conspiracies and esoterica, an intimation of great and subterranean powers at work, with so many multiple levels of frantic activity the text resembles an archaeological dig more than a book." [http://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/92082/book-review-inherent-vice Entire review »]

'''10/26/09''' - [http://www.spectator.sk/articles/view/36929/9/book_review.html '''The Slovak Spectator'''] Howard Swains: "Here is an opportunity to place a tick beside the name of one of modern fiction’s most impenetrable enigmas, a writer whose most decorated novel, 1973’s ''Gravity’s Rainbow'', was originally dismissed by the Pulitzer committee as “unreadable, turgid, overwritten and obscene”. Pynchon, who famously shuns all publicity, has maintained a personal profile as oblique and indecipherable as his work, yet he is also among the most influential novelists of his generation. He is a post-modernist’s post-modernist, chronicling and mourning our era of paradox, where supposed advancements and technological progression only serve to hasten its entropy." [http://www.spectator.sk/articles/view/36929/9/book_review.html Entire review »]

'''10/01/09''' - [http://www.straight.com/article-260356/inherent-vice '''Vancouver Free Press'''] Michael Hingston: "Much of Pynchon's recent work has drawn criticism for overindulging in pop-culture references and outright silliness, and those who agree with this assessment will probably find much to dislike about the new novel, too. Reproduced lyric sheets to several made-up surf songs, such as "Soul Gidget" and "Just the Lasagna (Semi-Bossa Nova)" (the latter's opening lines being "Izzit some U, FO? (No, no-no!) Maybe it's wait, I know!"), seem particularly ripe targets for scorn. " [http://www.straight.com/article-260356/inherent-vice Entire review »]

'''09/18/09''' - [http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=529017 '''The Harvard Crimson'''] Jillian J. Goodman: "Perhaps with all his Nazis, conspiracies, and marijuana, Pynchon is actually a creature of excessive faith. Following the clues in a 40-plus-year literary career leads one to the idea that Pynchon will keep on producing, slowly and steadily, until he just keels over. Although he fulfilled the promise Plimpton saw many years and more pages ago, “Inherent Vice” demonstrates that Pynchon is always willing to go back to the well, with the faith that there will still be something there." [http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=529017 Entire review »]

'''09/10/09''' - [http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n17/jone01_.html '''The London Review of Books'''] Thomas Jones: "Possibly the weirdest thing of all about ''Inherent Vice'', however, a perverse bright spot in the smog of despair, is the thought that somewhere out there in one of the beach towns of LA County, never very far away from wherever Doc is carrying out his desultory investigations, somewhere among the dopers and the surfers and the hippie chicks, among the dentists and lawyers and loan sharks, among the voters who put Nixon in the White House and Reagan in the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento, Thomas Pynchon is secluded at his typewriter, at work on ''Gravity’s Rainbow''." [http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n17/jone01_.html Entire review »]

'''09/10/09''' - [http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090911/REVIEW/709109978/1007 '''The National'''] Mark Lotto: "The California dream, we are not surprised to learn, is just another piece of real estate to be bought, developed, divided up, and then sold back at a profit or rented out –that’s the fine print near the bottom of this golden land, that transcendence and escape fuel an economy that cannot be transcended or escaped. With every rent check written, every used car purchased, every feast ordered to feed the munchies, all the free-lovers down by the beach are merely leasing their freedom, like they’re sharecroppers. ''Inherent Vice'' feels very much like a book written during and about the housing bust, where the aspirations and hopes of so many were the helium molecules to inflate the banks accounts of the wealthy few." [http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090911/REVIEW/709109978/1007 Entire review »]

'''08/31/09''' - [http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-inherent-vice-by-thomas2/ '''Blogcritics Books'''] Richard Marcus: "There's a note of sadness that runs through ''Inherent Vice'' that will hopefully have people questioning the neat and tidy image of the sixties that's being packaged these days. Pynchon make no apologies for where his sympathies lie, with those on the other side of today's right wing moral code. Yet at the same time he doesn't let sentiment or nostalgia prevent him from showing the darker side of that lifestyle. Still, you can't help but feel a pang for what was lost and what might have been when you come to the end of this book. Very few people seem to want to tell the truth about the 1960's but Thomas Pynchon isn't one of them. You couldn't ask for a better guide to its demise." [http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-inherent-vice-by-thomas2/ Entire review »]

'''08/31/09''' - [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-miley/huff-post-review-thomas-p_b_273008.html '''Huffington Post'''] Mike Miley: "For those who have yet to be introduced to Pynchon, ''Inherent Vice'' would serve as a wonderful gateway drug to his more difficult work, though starting with Inherent Vice may be a bit misleading because his other novels are much more difficult (though more rewarding). On the other hand, those all-too-familiar with the rigor of reading ''Gravity's Rainbow'' or ''Mason & Dixon'' will delight in kicking back with a margarita and taking another trip with their buddy T.P. Either way you slice it, with ''Against the Day'' and ''Inherent Vice'', it's clear that Thomas Pynchon still has it, and he's not going to let up." [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-miley/huff-post-review-thomas-p_b_273008.html Entire review »]

'''08/20/09''' - [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/books/review/Kirn-t.html?_r=1&em '''New York Times Sunday Book Review'''] Walter Kirn: "If Doc sounds like a literary joke — the Private Eye with drooping lids who can’t trust the evidence of his own senses — then he must be a joke with a lesson to impart, since Pynchon isn’t the type to make us laugh unless he’s really out to make us think. Even in ''V.'' and ''Gravity’s Rainbow'', the colossal novels of ideas that have inspired a thousand dissertations as unreadable as the books are said to be but actually aren’t, he grounds his intellectualism in humor and livens it up with allusions to pop culture while sacrificing none of its deep rigor. He’s our literature’s best metaphysical comedian. The weighty points his work makes about the universe — that it’s slowly winding down as the Big Bang becomes the Final Sigh — tend to relieve our despair, not deepen it, by letting us in on the cosmos’s greatest gags: for example, that the purpose of the Creation was to make itself perfectly unmanageable and purely unintelligible. No wonder so many of Pynchon’s characters revel in chemical dissipation. Entropy — if you can’t beat it, join it." [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/books/review/Kirn-t.html?_r=1&em Entire review »]

'''08/20/09''' - [http://www.northcoastjournal.com/issues/2009/08/20/inherent-vice/ '''North Coast Journal'''] Jay Herzog: "The Manson murders hang in the backdrop of the novel, signifying the end of the hippie dream, but there's such a curious lack of real threat in Pynchon's laid-back world that when violence does finally break out it seems a bit out of place. The death-haunted grandiloquence of ''Gravity's Rainbow'' has given way to pothead paranoia, and it's interesting to see how the fantastic elements always present in Pynchon's work are here framed as someone's stoned fantasy. " [http://www.northcoastjournal.com/issues/2009/08/20/inherent-vice/ Entire review »]

'''08/19/09''' - [http://journalstar.com/entertainment/arts-and-theatre/article_b7bef7fa-8d10-11de-a123-001cc4c03286.html '''JournalStar.com'''] Francis Moul: "This is not an easy book to read. There are many layers of complexity, yet one also finds just plain fun. Keeping the characters straight is an engaging game, and the plot seems to be continually just out of reach. But the end does come, and with it some finality. Or is there?" [http://journalstar.com/entertainment/arts-and-theatre/article_b7bef7fa-8d10-11de-a123-001cc4c03286.html Entire review »]

'''08/18/09''' - [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-1207415/Thomas-Pynchon-Inherent-Vice.html '''Daily Mail'''] Helen Brown: "Pynchon's prose is as densely and deftly rolled as ever, loaded with hip erudition, demented digression, super slick dialogue and wacky wordplay. It perfectly reflects the murky mood of Los Angeles after the Manson murders, when the hippy dream had curdled and fear spread 'like blood in a swimming pool'." [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-1207415/Thomas-Pynchon-Inherent-Vice.html Entire review »]

'''08/12/09''' - [http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2009-08-12-inherent-vice_N.htm '''USA Today'''] Carol Memmott: "Readers may not always be clear about what's going on, but that's no crime. Most of the characters are high all the time and aren't sure either. Doc, interviewing suspects and witnesses, sometimes wonders, "Did I say that out loud?" More pressing matters for ''Vice's'' characters include wondering why there's "Chicken of the Sea but no Tuna of the Farm" and "trying to remember where the glue is on the Zig-Zag paper." If you think you don't possess the patience or the gray matter to "get" a Pynchon novel, ''Vice'' is for you. This reader would go so far as to call it a beach read." [http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2009-08-12-inherent-vice_N.htm Entire review »]

'''08/09/09''' - [http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/09/books-inherent-vice/ '''Washington Times'''] Christian Toto: "The author wraps his serio-comic story in a relatively conventional fashion, but it's a testament to his narrative control that he could steer the tale toward a satisfying finale. In the end, "Inherent Vice" emerges as a deeply cynical yet amusing snapshot of the Woodstock generation's final days in the sun." [http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/09/books-inherent-vice/ Entire review »]

'''08/09/09''' - [http://www.nypost.com/seven/08092009/postopinion/postopbooks/inherent_vice_183674.htm '''New York Post'''] Kyle Smith: "In the three novels that made his reputation "V.," "The Crying of Lot 49" and the National Book Award winner "Gravity's Rainbow" Thomas Pynchon used his electric imagination to whip paranoid conspiracies into a froth that bubbled with dread and comedy. Now it's four books later and his fictive powers suggest not tour de force but Tourette's." [http://www.nypost.com/seven/08092009/postopinion/postopbooks/inherent_vice_183674.htm Entire review »]

'''08/09/09''' - [http://www.tampabay.com/features/books/article1024726.ece '''St. Petersburg Times'''] Colette Bancroft: "When you think about it, the tough detective novel is a natural form for Pynchon, given his longtime fictional obsessions with quests, paranoia and conspiracy, and the true nature of the American character. ''Inherent Vice'' makes rich use of the genre, as well as giving Pynchon plenty of opportunity for groaner puns and his beloved shaggy dog jokes (wait till you see what he does with Job 28:18), plus great swaths of flat-out beautiful, lyrical writing. And, despite its twist-and-turn plot, this is the most linear book Pynchon has ever published." [http://www.tampabay.com/features/books/article1024726.ece Entire review »]

'''08/09/09''' - [http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/inherent-vice-by-thomas-pynchon-1767732.html '''The Independent'''] Thomas Leveritt: "Pynchon is both the US's most serious and most funny writer. With his most accessible book to date – half ''Chinatown'', half ''Fear and Loathing'', all searing jeremiad about the modern American soul – he may have come up with something even the British literati can read." [http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/inherent-vice-by-thomas-pynchon-1767732.html Entire review »]

'''08/08/09''' - [http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_13022546 '''Contra Costa Times'''] Gene Maddaus: "There are also references to local history, including a riff on Gordita Beach's troubled past. Egged on by the Ku Klux Klan, locals are said to have burned a black family's house to the ground and then confiscated the land for a local park. That seems to be a clear reference to Bruce's Beach, which was a black resort until the city of Manhattan Beach seized it in 1924 and turned it into a park. According to local historian Jan Dennis, there was an active local chapter of the KKK and black-owned homes were often torched." [http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_13022546 Entire review »]

'''08/08/09''' - [http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/the-fagend-of--the-hippie-dream-1854782.html '''Independent.ie'''] John Boland: "Here's a first a Thomas Pynchon novel that you can actually read and understand. In his 73rd year, the reclusive author who has furrowed the collective brow of generations of literary students with his dense, complex and often baffling fiction has finally come up with a genial and almost entirely comprehensible shaggy dog story in the form of a crime novel." [http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/the-fagend-of--the-hippie-dream-1854782.html Entire review »]

'''08/07/09''' - [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/07/RVTI18ELIO.DTL '''The San Francisco Chronicle'''] Alan Cheuse: "If that wit appeals to you, then you're on the same wavelength - and height - of "Inherent Vice," the title of which, by the way, comes from a term out of the marine insurance business that describes breakage and damage you just can't avoid. Which reminded me of William Burroughs' definition of "Naked Lunch" as what you see on the end of your fork as you're raising it to your mouth, or Joyce's "ineluctable modality of the visible" in "Ulysses" - "what you damned well have to see." Pretty good for a minor Pynchon to conjure up the memory of those two books, yes? Or have I just been smoking?" [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/07/RVTI18ELIO.DTL Entire review »]

'''08/07/09''' - [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204908604574334652562017492.html '''The Wall Street Journal'''] Joseph Bottum: "Such confusion may be a deliberate narrative technique. Doc is so stoned most of the time that it is amazing that he manages to keep anything straight. But somehow, out of all the confusing threads, the detective’s investigation begins to weave something interesting in the last quarter of the book. It’s a pretty strange bit of fabric Mr. Pynchon ends up with—a kind of paranoid blanket, embroidered with conspiracy theories—but it manages to cover the mystery elements and put the story to bed in reasonable shape." [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204908604574334652562017492.html Entire review »]

'''08/06/09''' - [http://www.newsday.com/lifestyle/books/book-review-inherent-vice-by-thomas-pynchon-1.1350231 '''Newsday'''] John Anderson: "Raymond Chandler meets Panama Red in Thomas Pynchon's casual, occasionally hilarious "Inherent Vice" - which makes sense for an author whose works can be measured in kilos (especially the last two, "Mason & Dixon" and "Against the Day"). It also makes sense for an author whose work has long married the perversely dystopic to the poetically giddy, with the same cosmic unease with which ''louche noir'' detectives have long found a home under the insistent Los Angeles sun." [http://www.newsday.com/lifestyle/books/book-review-inherent-vice-by-thomas-pynchon-1.1350231 Entire review »]

'''08/06-12/09''' - [http://www.timeout.com/newyork/books/inherent-vice '''Time Out New York'''] Joshua Rothkopf: "Quickly, the novel grabs you in a sexier way than anything since ''The Crying of Lot 49'', but with its familiar post-Chinatown structure (and an inevitable doozy of a conspiracy) comes an undeniable lightness. Heroin deals and loan sharks come as an underwhelming conclusion from a book that intimates a deeper social indictment; the heaviest it gets here is a Palo Verdes community dad leaning in and insisting to Doc, “We’re in place.” Still, the welcome vibe of the novel has the feeling of cruising around suburbs on a warm night; it may become an L.A. classic." [http://www.timeout.com/newyork/books/inherent-vice Entire review »]

'''08/06/09''' - [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/05/AR2009080503839.html '''Washington Post'''] Michael Dirda: "These majestic works are more than worth the effort, but they aren't what most people would call page-turners or comfort books. Which is just what "Inherent Vice" is. Imagine the cult film "The Big Lebowski" as a novel, with touches of "Chinatown" and "L.A. Confidential" thrown in for good measure. Imagine your favorite Raymond Chandler or James Crumley mystery retold as a hippie whodunit, set in Gordita Beach, Calif., at the very end of the 1960s. Imagine a great American novelist, one who is now a septuagenarian, writing with all the vivacity and bounce of a young man who has just discovered girls. Most of all, imagine sentences and scenes that are so much fun to read that you wish "Inherent Vice" were twice as long as it is. Imagine saying that about a Thomas Pynchon novel." [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/05/AR2009080503839.html Entire review »]

'''08/05/09''' - [http://www.bookforum.com/review/4216 '''BookForum.com'''] Paul La Farge: "An outline of the narrative strands that run through ''Inherent Vice'' would look like a web spun by a spider on marijuana: densely connected in the middle, but lapsing at the edges into loopiness. Suffice it to say that the assembled characters are, for lack of a better word, Pynchonian: there’s the ex-con Tariq Khalil, now affiliated with the Warriors Against the Man Black Armed Militia (WAMBAM); there’s Coy Harlingen, a surf-band saxophonist who may or may not be dead; there’s Fritz, possibly the first hacker to break into the ARPANET (the Internet’s precursor), which at that point consisted of less than a dozen nodes. There are puns and musical numbers and references to the lost continent of Lemuria. And at the center of it all, there’s the Golden Fang, which is certainly a ship but may also be a drug cartel, or a syndicate set up by dentists for tax purposes, or the secret power that controls the world." [http://www.bookforum.com/review/4216 Entire review »]

'''08/05/09''' - [http://www.eyeweekly.com/arts/books/article/68134--inherent-vice '''The Eye Weekly'''] Brian Joseph Davis: "Given that quick rundown, you may detect a hashy whiff of ''The Big Lebowski'' (and its source text, Robert Altman’s ''The Long Goodbye''), but Pynchon uses no protective irony in regard to telling a mystery set in the counterculture. Almost every character is high — and there are pages where you feel high with them, drifting along before snapping back and exclaiming, “oh yeah, I totally get it” — but Pynchon is almost always in control. Every other line is either deadpan funny or sublimely strange, yet doesn’t detract from Sportello’s quest." [http://www.eyeweekly.com/arts/books/article/68134--inherent-vice Entire review »]

'''08/09''' - [http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/65/65pynchon.html '''Bright Lights Film Journal'''] John Carvill: "Think of it this way: if ''Gravity's Rainbow'' resembles a week-long acid binge, ''Inherent Vice'' is more like a single, perfectly rolled joint. On almost every page, there is something truly remarkable; again and again, Pynchon throws out an unexpected turn of phrase, a perfectly pitched joke, or a dazzlingly beautiful image. Each one of these takes root in your mind, where they ripen and bloom like kernels of psychedelic popcorn. You finish ''Inherent Vice'' and your first instinct is to flip back to the start and enjoy it all over again. It brings to mind what Oscar Wilde said in praise of one of his favourite vices, the cigarette: "A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?" " [http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/65/65pynchon.html Entire review »]

[[image:sportello_tatiana-suarez.jpg|caption|Illustration: Tatiana Suarez, for ''The Village Voice''|thumb|right|250px]]
'''08/04/09''' - [http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-08-04/books/surf-noir-thomas-pynchon-s-inherent-vice/ '''The Village Voice'''] Zach Baron: "Like ''Vineland's'' Zoyd Wheeler (with whom Doc's cousin once played in a band), Doc is eventually forced to discover that though love itself endures, free-love most definitely does not. Already there's the prospect, in the high, 1970 summer of both Willis Reed and Charles Manson, that "a certain hand might reach terribly out of darkness and reclaim the time, easy as taking a joint from a doper and stubbing it out for good." Which, if you know the rest of the sad, Nixonite story, is exactly what ended up happening. Bummer, man." [http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-08-04/books/surf-noir-thomas-pynchon-s-inherent-vice/ Entire review »]

'''08/04/09''' - [http://features.csmonitor.com/books/2009/08/04/inherent-vice/ '''Christian Science Monitor'''] Carlo Wolff: "I suspect that he wrote “Inherent Vice” in hopes of aligning himself with today’s readers; I don’t feel he invested much in his characters, who rarely transcend cartoon level. '''He already has set up an “Inherent Vice” wiki''', a kind of online index with which to track the characters. This will launch on the date of publication in early August, '''modernizing a book that, despite its hipness and creativity, feels strangely old-fashioned'''. It will join other wikis dedicated to his novels, nurturing a sense of community under the banner of metafiction." [http://features.csmonitor.com/books/2009/08/04/inherent-vice/ Entire review »]

'''08/04/09''' - [http://flavorwire.com/32195/reviewing-the-reviewers-inherent-vice '''Flavorwire: Reviewing the Reviewers'''] Heather Schwedel: "Thomas Pynchon’s new novel officially comes out today, and it seems like every book critic in the world has already weighed in. The debate over the book’s merits reminds us of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” ''Inherent Vice'' is a detective noir set in ’70s L.A.; the ''Times'' calls it Pynchon Lite, but the ''Wall Street Journal'' wonders if the book could actually be “a classic Pynchon opus masquerading as a light read.”" [http://flavorwire.com/32195/reviewing-the-reviewers-inherent-vice Entire review »]

'''08/04/09''' - [http://www.slate.com/id/2224020/ '''Slate'''] Jonathan Rosenbaum: "In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the sixties, you weren't there … or … if you were there, then you … or, wait, is it …" Once again, for his seventh novel, ''Inherent Vice'', it sounds as if the author has furnished his own jacket copy, exploiting the doper humor that's often been part of his signature." [http://www.slate.com/id/2224020/ Entire review »]

'''08/03/09''' - [http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aqrE1J9C8Bek '''Washington Post'''] Craig Seligman: "All of which suggests a cold, dark novel -- but as it happens “Inherent Vice” is Pynchon’s sunniest book. He may not have lost his pessimism, but the lethal intensity of the novels he was writing in his 20s and 30s, when his own future was still uncertain, has disappeared. And that’s a problem. For all the corruption and violence and evil that Doc turns up along the way, it never feels like very much is really at stake. The book begins to seem long." [http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aqrE1J9C8Bek Entire review »]

'''08/03/09''' - [http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/29494393/the_bigger_lebowski '''Rolling Stone'''] Rob Sheffield: "''Inherent Vice'' is the funniest book Pynchon has written. It's also a crazed and majestic summary of everything that makes him a uniquely huge American voice. It has the moral fury that's fueled his work from the start — his ferociously batshit compassion for America and the lost tribes who wander through it. A master of pastiche, Pynchon is working this time in the mode of the hard-boiled detective novel à la Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, although it's more like a hard-boiled egg scrambled during a late-night munchies attack —"
[http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/29494393/the_bigger_lebowski Entire review »]

'''08/03/09''' - [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/books/04kaku.html?hp '''The New York Times'''] - Michiko Kakutani: "If “Vineland” read like a user-friendly companion piece to “The Crying of Lot 49,” then “Inherent Vice” reads like a workmanlike improvisation on “Vineland.” Once again the plot is propelled by a search for a missing woman, a former hippie who consorted with an incongruous representative of the capitalistic power grid. And once again there are efforts by the powers-that-be to turn hippies and potheads to the dark side, to turn them into informants through re-education programs or the enticement of money." [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/books/04kaku.html?hp Entire review »]

'''08/03/09''' - [http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/08/03/090803crbo_books_menand?currentPage=all '''The New Yorker'''] - Louis Menand: "Pynchon’s capacity for goofball invention is limitless. A list of characters’ names, drastically abridged, might be enough to suggest the variety, and also the relative fineness, of the narrative texture: Ensenada Slim, Flaco the Bad, Dr. Buddy Tubeside, Petunia Leeway, Jason Velveeta, Scott Oof, Sledge Poteet, Leonard Jermaine Loosemeat (a.k.a. El Drano, anagram of Leonard), Delwyn Quight, and Trillium Fortnight. Not overly fine, in other words. Plotwise, there are probably too many pieces of the puzzle to hold in your head, and it’s not completely clear where, or whether, every piece fits. But that, too, is standard business procedure in the form. Despite Chandler’s demand for greater realism, his own plots could be pretty far-fetched, and they’re not always coherent, either. When Howard Hawks was shooting the film adaptation of “The Big Sleep,” he got in touch with Chandler to ask who was supposed to have killed one of the characters, a chauffeur. Chandler was embarrassed to say he didn’t know." [http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/08/03/090803crbo_books_menand?currentPage=all Entire review »]

'''08/03/09''' - [http://www.buffalonews.com/185/story/751883.html '''The Buffalo News'''] - Jeff Simon: "Lest anyone think “Inherent Vice” isn’t deeply Pynchonesque from its opening sentence (“She came along the alley and up the back steps the way she always used to”), you’ll be immediately disabused of that notion by going back to his amazing first novel “V.,” whose protagonist Benny Profane “schlemiel and human yo-yo” is clearly an East Coast forerunner of “Inherent Vice’s” Doc Sportello. Pynchon’s new protagonist is a short, 1970 hippie and private eye who lives near “Gordita” (read Manhattan) beach in L. A. (shades of Jim Rockford and Harry Orwell), has long hair, smokes every joint he can lay lips on and has no trouble doing a few lines of coke, too, just to be sociable." [http://www.buffalonews.com/185/story/751883.html Entire review »]

'''08/02/09''' - [http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09214/987571-44.stm '''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'''] - Bob Hoover: "Pynchon is brimming over with asides like that one, chucklers that make "Inherent Vice" great entertainment. But, perhaps I need to reconsider, taking into account the man's reputation in some quarters as an American genius. Could his new book really be a symbol-filled allegory about the nature of the modern novel, a Nabokovian joke about fiction and its ultimate meaning? Sounds like I've been smoking some heavy-duty stuff, too. Naw, I think Pynchon's just having a blast, and we are lucky to join in." [http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09214/987571-44.stm Entire review »]

'''08/02/09''' - [http://nymag.com/arts/books/reviews/58182/ '''New York Magazine'''] - Sam Anderson: "Pynchon has always been a cartoonist: He specializes in simplification, exaggeration, and brightly colored types. This means that, paradoxically, his wildest invention occurs right at the edge of cliché. He may have finally fallen over that edge. His types, after 45 years, have themselves become types. The characters in ''Inherent Vice'' are not only paranoid, they walk around constantly talking about their paranoia. Aside from the dopily lovable Doc, everyone is just the standard tangle of phonemes attached to a Pynchonesque hobbyhorse: computers, threesomes, chocolate-covered frozen bananas. Switch those hobbyhorses around and you don’t lose much." [http://nymag.com/arts/books/reviews/58182/ Entire review »]

'''08/02/09''' -[http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-inherent-vice-by-thomas1/ '''BlogCritics'''] - Ted Gioia:
"The small details are half the fun here. For no extra charge, the reader is given a new interpretation of the Japanese movie ''Ghidrah, The Three-Headed Monster'' (1964) which explicates it as a reworking of ''Roman Holiday'' (1953) — full disclosure: I still can't decide whether Ghidrah is supposed to be Audrey Hepburn or Gregory Peck. We find Henry Kissinger on the ''Today'' show, formulating foreign policy: "Vell, den, ve schould chust bombp dem, schouldn't ve?" We learn about a Beverly Hills auto collision repair shop called ''The Resurrection of the Body''. And we find a health food joint off Melrose called ''The Price of Wisdom'', which is located upstairs from Ruby's Lounge — but you will need to check out Job 28:18 to figure that one out."
[http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-inherent-vice-by-thomas1/ Entire review »]

'''08/02/09''' -[http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-thomas-pynchon2-2009aug02,0,6295118.story '''Los Angeles Times'''] - Carolyn Kellogg:
"Still, after getting pretty far out, "Inherent Vice" eventually circles back and ties up all its loose ends. It has a climactic moment, a cushiony denouement -- by gum, closure. If this stands in counterpoint to Pynchon's most acclaimed work, perhaps we should pay heed to the novel's title: "Inherent Vice" refers to a hidden defect that undermines a property's worth, a marine-legal term for a Shakespearean flaw. It could refer to Los Angeles; it could refer to the 1960s. Or it could refer to the author's work itself: With Pynchon's brilliance comes readability."
[http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-thomas-pynchon2-2009aug02,0,6295118.story Entire review »]

'''08/02/09''' -[http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2009/08/02/pynchons_inherent_vice_delivers_manic_requiem_for_60s_70s/?page=1 '''The Boston Globe'''] - Richard Eder:
"The hopes are recalled, reconstituted, and chastened in “Inherent Vice’’ and so are the ’70s shadows that overtook them. As for the beach, in California, it is restricted in some places, turned tawdry in others; though with beauty enough along large stretches, surfboarding still, and lots of bicycling." [http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2009/08/02/pynchons_inherent_vice_delivers_manic_requiem_for_60s_70s/?page=1 Entire review »]

'''08/02/09''' -[http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/674817 '''TheStar.com'''] - Alex Good: "''Inherent Vice'' is also nostalgic in that it takes us back to earlier Pynchon: the tangled intersection of politics, technology, and paranoia, a landscape of secret societies (here it's the Golden Fang or Chryskylodon) and submerged continents. Of course, there's lots of sinister slapstick involving perversely unmusical song lyrics and a bewildering cast of characters with such silly names as Sauncho Smilax, Bigfoot Bjornsen, Japonica Fenway, Special FBI Agents Flatweed and Borderline and sexy stewardesses Motella and Lourdes." [http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/674817 Entire review »]

'''08/01/09''' -[http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/aug/01/thomas-pynchon-inherent-vice-review '''The Guardian'''] - Christopher Tayler: "Behind a lot of Pynchon's complication, there's a simple sadness about lost possibilities and the things that America chooses to do to itself. It's expressed in the closing vision of Californian exurbia in ''The Crying of Lot 49'', and it's here too in Doc's wish, on a misty freeway, "for the fog to burn away, and for something else this time, somehow, to be there instead". Sometimes, reading the book, I found myself wondering if Pynchon, of all people, hadn't undersold the era's apocalyptic paranoia. You get a much stronger sense of fear and confusion from Joan Didion's ''The White Album'' or Robert Stone's ''Dog Soldiers'' - more conservative books in some ways, but also more beady-eyed about the myths of the 60s."
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/aug/01/thomas-pynchon-inherent-vice-review Entire review »]

'''08/01/09''' -[http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-tc-books-review-vice-0729-08aug01,0,7373405.story '''Chicago Tribune'''] - Art Winslow:
"We find ourselves on a cultural tour that is alien and not. The real and fictional points of interest include the Aryan Brotherhood, a right-wing paramilitary auxiliary to the police department, groups such as the Bong Users' Revolutionary Brigades and Warriors Against the Black Man Armed Militia, heroin traffickers, ARPAnet (a precursor of the Internet), FBI agents named Fleetwood and Borderline, U.S. currency with Nixon's face on it, Chick Planet Massage, lost continents, zombie flicks, surf-music bands, Wyatt Earp's mug with its mustache protector, Dagwood and Yosemite Sam, and period television shows from "The Flying Nun" and "Adam-12" to "Dark Shadows" and "Gilligan's Island." Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll abound."
[http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-tc-books-review-vice-0729-08aug01,0,7373405.story Entire review »]

'''08/01/09''' -[http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1914149,00.html '''Time Magazine'''] - Richard Lacayo: "And speaking of Leonard, ''Inherent Vice'' is like nothing so much as an Elmore Leonard novel with metaphysical aims. It has the same deadpan dialogue, the same lowlife panache, the same Venice Beach–to–Vegas locales that Leonard has touched down in. But the earthbound author of Get Shorty doesn't go in for Pynchon's lyrical riffs about the immemorial forces that pull the world's secret levers and keep the dispossessed of all kinds — the poor, the nonwhite, the nonconforming — from coming into their own."
[http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1914149,00.html Entire review »]

'''07/31/09''' -[http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/paulmason/2009/07/is_this_thomas_pynchons_late_s.html '''BBC'''] - Paul Mason: "Said observed that the late style artist typically "abandons communication with the established social order of which he is a part and achieves a contradictory, alienated relationship with it". But Pynchon doesn't need to: he achieved that long ago. This late turn in his literary style achieves something opposite but equally surprising. It is a move towards form, and closed form at that, towards genre, and towards communication. And it is a move away from subtext."
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/paulmason/2009/07/is_this_thomas_pynchons_late_s.html Entire review »]

'''07/31/09''' -[http://www.salon.com/books/review/2009/07/31/pynchon/index.html Salon.com] - Laura Miller: "Hard-boiled detective fiction may not seem like the ideal vehicle for the often cryptic style and subject matter of Thomas Pynchon, but his newest novel proves otherwise. An account of the adventures of a hippie private eye pursuing assorted nonlucrative commissions in a Southern California beach town around 1970, "Inherent Vice" is a sun-struck, pot-addled shaggy dog story that fuses the sulky skepticism of Raymond Chandler with the good-natured scrappiness of "The Big Lebowski." It's an inspired formula; the mystery plot supplies the novel with a minimum of structure (as well as confidence that there's some point to the enterprise) and the genre provides ample cover for Pynchon's literary weaknesses." [http://www.salon.com/books/review/2009/07/31/pynchon/index.html Entire review].

'''07/31/09''' -[http://www.counterpunch.org/cabal07312009.html '''CounterPunch'''] - Alan Cabal:
"It’s a hugely comic novel that ends on a wistful, tragic note lost in the fog, out on the freeway, the procession of the preterite, not sure where they’re going, not sure where they are. It’s a love letter to the Sixties, a wake, an elegy to doomed aspirations and thwarted idealism, but it speaks to our present condition directly and clearly, with an open heart. Nobody does it better."
[http://www.counterpunch.org/cabal07312009.html Entire review »]

'''07/31/09''' -[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/inherent-vice-by-thomas-pynchon-1764863.html '''The Independent (UK)'''] - Andy Martin: "''Inherent Vice'' is Pynchon's hymn to the Sixties, both homage and lament. In the novel we are at the end of the long Sixties, when the Manson gang have already sliced up Sharon Tate, the US military is still napalming Vietnam, and the West Coast counter-culture is suffering from an immense post-coital depression and hangover."
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/inherent-vice-by-thomas-pynchon-1764863.html Entire review »]

'''07/30/09''' -[http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index.ssf/2009/07/fiction_review_inherent_vice.html '''OregonLive'''] - Vernon Peterson:
"But something more serious is the underlying theme of "Inherent Vice." Southern California, America's leading edge and symbol, is not a promise of paradise gone sour. This Eden had a fatal flaw from the beginning. Real estate, a persistent theme in Pynchon's American stories, "Against the Day," "Mason & Dixon," "Vineland" and "The Crying of Lot 49," is the herald of New World doom. The empire has been built on the graves of Native Americans, dispossessed and nearly annihilated from one coast to the other."
[http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index.ssf/2009/07/fiction_review_inherent_vice.html Entire review »]

'''07/30/09''' -[http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2009/08/pynchon-chandler-book-readers '''New Statesman'''] - David Flusfeder:
"The tropes of the hard-boiled genre are here: a detective with a half-mended heart and a propensity to be beaten unconscious at crime scenes; a quest to track the missing; a rich folks' nuthouse; the corrupt LAPD. But whereas Chandler once admitted that whenever he didn't know how to advance his plot, he'd have a man walk through a doorway holding a gun, Pynchon just has his detective fire up another joint. It is in the moments away from the stoned haze of plot that this book is at its best. The sentences have their stately beauty, and Pynchon is poignantly good on the heartsick detective, his "lovelorn rectogenital throb"."
[http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2009/08/pynchon-chandler-book-readers Entire review »]

'''07/29/09''' - [http://www.metro.co.uk/metrolife/books/article.html?Crime_tale%92s_a_rich_diversion&in_article_id=710577&in_page_id=28 '''Metro.co.uk'''] - Alan Chadwick: "Best of all, however, is the way Pynchon maps the psycho-geography and shifting sociopolitical sands of America at the time (drugs; the widening gulf between 'straight life' and counterculture; paranoia; and secret information)." [http://www.metro.co.uk/metrolife/books/article.html?Crime_tale%92s_a_rich_diversion&in_article_id=710577&in_page_id=28 Entire review »]

'''07/28/09''' - [http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/backwash-from-the-woodstock-generation/Content?oid=1928147 '''The Stranger'''] - Paul Constant: "Beneath it all, surfacing sporadically like a cheap serial villain, is the nascent internet, which in the late '60s was called the ARPAnet. One of Doc's friends introduces him to the prototypical World Wide Web, and he increasingly relies on it for information. He wonders why "they"—the men he's positive rule the world from a smoke-filled room—don't make it illegal, the way "they" criminalized acid. Pynchon, doing some of the nimblest, most whimsical work of his career, doesn't provide the answer to that mystery, or many of the mysteries in Vice for that matter, but he shares his infectious excitement about living in a world full of useless, beautiful ideas. For Pynchon, it's not the truth but the search for the truth that matters." [http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/backwash-from-the-woodstock-generation/Content?oid=1928147 Entire review »]

'''07/28/09''' - [http://thephoenix.com/Boston/Arts/87111-Surf-bored/ '''The Boston Phoenix'''] - Peter Keough: "So it's a long way around the block for little reward. And though it's true that Pynchon never pays off in terms of closure or neatly resolved meaning (that being the point), in ''Inherent Vice'', ambiguity deteriorates into inanity. He's either trying too hard or not hard enough. Okay, you could scarcely expect another densely woven, absurdist masterpiece so soon after 2006's magnum opus, ''Against the Day'', which at nearly 1100 pages weighed in as Pynchon's heaviest tome to date. Then again, ''Lot 49'' came out only three years after his groundbreaking debut, ''V.''" [http://thephoenix.com/Boston/Arts/87111-Surf-bored/ Entire review »]

'''07/27/09''' - [http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/the941/2009/07/27/book-review-with-his-seventh-novel-inherent-vice-thomas-pynchon-invents-a-new-genre-marijuana-noir/ '''guardian.co.uk | Creative Loafing'''] - Cooper Levey-Baker: "But despite its uncharacteristic focus and brevity, it’s clear from sentence structure alone that ''Inherent Vice'' could have only sprung from the pen of Thomas Pynchon. One early sentence describing an LA dry spell goes like this: “In the little apartment complexes the wind entered narrowing to whistle through the stairwells and ramps and catwalks, and the leaves of the palm trees outside rattled together with a liquid sound, so that from inside, in the darkened rooms, in louvered light, it sounded like a rainstorm, the wind raging in the concrete geometry, the palms beating together like the rush of a tropical downpour, enough to get you to open the door and look outside, and of course there’d only be the same hot cloudless depth of day, no rain in sight." [http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/the941/2009/07/27/book-review-with-his-seventh-novel-inherent-vice-thomas-pynchon-invents-a-new-genre-marijuana-noir/ Entire review »]

'''07/26/09''' - [http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jul/26/pynchon-churchwell-inherent-vice '''guardian.co.uk | TheObserver'''] - Sarah Churchwell: "Like many a Pynchon protagonist before him, Sportello is on a doomed quest. Pynchon's novels are always more or less picaresque journeys; his characters travel perpetually, but rarely arrive anywhere meaningful. What ''Gravity's Rainbow'' calls "the terrible politics of the Grail" means that quests in Pynchon are inevitable and also inevitable failures. At best, they will be mock-heroic; at worst, they will be tragic, but they will never succeed. ''Inherent Vice'' may be Pynchon's most overtly nostalgic book, featuring a character overcome by a longing he pretends to shrug off." [http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jul/26/pynchon-churchwell-inherent-vice Entire review »]

'''07/24/09''' - [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/5893305/Inherent-Vice-by-Thomas-Pynchon-review.html '''Telegraph.co.uk'''] - Tim Martin: "Unlike much of Pynchon’s other work, however, ''Inherent Vice'' wears its learning lightly, intermixing it with dialogue that zings, jokes that never overstay their welcome and a stream of hilariously bad puns and wickedly acute observations. Who would have thought it? One of America’s most wilful and obscure writers has produced the most enjoyable beach read of the summer." [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/5893305/Inherent-Vice-by-Thomas-Pynchon-review.html Entire review »]

'''07/06/09''' - [http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-59420-224-7 '''Publishers Weekly'''] - David Kipen: "Pynchon sets his new novel in and around Gordita Beach, a mythical surfside paradise named for all the things his PI hero, Larry “Doc” Sportello, loves best: nonnutritious foods, healthy babies, curvaceous femme fatales. We’re in early-’70s Southern California, so Gordita Beach inevitably suggests a kind of Fat City, too, ripe for the plundering of rapacious real estate combines and ideal for Pynchon’s recurring tragicomedy of America as the perfect wave that got away."
[http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-59420-224-7 Entire review »]

[[#top|top of page^]]

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Inherent Vice - Page by Page

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Main Page

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[[Image:IV-book-lg.jpg|350px|right]]<big>'''Welcome to the ''Inherent Vice'' Wiki!'''</big>



If you wish to contact us or suggest edits, [https://thomaspynchon.com/contact/ '''use this Contact page.''']

* '''Purchase ''Inherent Vice''''': [https://amzn.to/4m01IPx Paperback] | [https://amzn.to/4nHAX3Z Hardcover] 

* [https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=Thomas+Pynchon+Inherent+Vice&_sacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2334524.m570.l1313&_odkw=Thomas+Pynchon+Against+the+Day&_osacat=0 Search EBay for ''Inherent Vice'']
* '''NEW!''' Check out [https://incrementvice.com/ '''Increment Vice'''], a podcast that explores Paul Thomas Anderson's film ''Inherent Vice'' ''one scene at a time''. Lots of great commentary.

* Check out [https://inherent-vice.com/ '''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. [http://thomaspynchon.com/inherent-vice-film/ Read more...]

*[http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/PENGN-EMS/InherentVice._V218759443_.pdf '''Read - or download - a PDF of the first chapter of ''Inherent Vice''!''']

*[[Songs_mentioned_in_Inherent_Vice|'''Check out our playlist of the artists & songs in ''Inherent Vice''''']] which provides audio, video, and lyrics of the songs.

<likebutton>http%3A%2F%2Finherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com%2Fwiki%2Findex.php%3Ftitle%3DMain_Page</likebutton>

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

==Pynchon Narrates ''Inherent Vice'' Promotional Video==

'''''Can flying pigs be far behind?'''''

{{#ev:youtube|RjWKPdDk0_U}}

Penguin Press confirms that the video is narrated by Pynchon. [http://shelf-life.ew.com/2009/08/11/thomas-pynchon-speaks-inherent-vice-trailer/ Source]

[[Comments_and_Questions_re_the_Promo_Video|'''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:{{IV_Alpha_Nav}}

==Page by Page Annotations==
{{Inherent Vice PbP}}

== Pynchon Wiki Help and Contributor Guidelines==

[[Help:Contents|'''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 '''[[Special:Allpages|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 <code><nowiki>[[Category:IV]]</nowiki></code>.

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

* [[Help:Contents|More help for this wiki available here.]]

==External Links==

* [https://www.thomaspynchon.com/ ThomasPynchon.com]
* [https://inherent-vice.com/ ''Inherent Vice'' Diagrammed]
* [https://shipwrecklibrary.com/the-modern-word/pynchon/spermatikos-logos/ Shipwreck Library (was The Modern Word) Pynchon page]
: [https://shipwrecklibrary.com/topics/the-modern-word/ Shipwreck Library: ''Inherent Vice'']
* [https://pynchonoid.blogspot.com/ Pynchonoid Blog]
* [https://inherentvice.wordpress.com Inherent Vice blog] A blog filled in while reading Inherent Vice
* [https://twitter.com/viceinherent Inherent Vice on Twitter]
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inherent_Vice Wikipedia ''Inherent Vice'' page]
* [https://www.wired.com/special_multimedia/2009/pl_print_1708 Wired Magazine Unofficial Thomas Pynchon Guide to Los Angeles]
* [https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v31/n24/bill-pearlman/short-cuts Bill Pearlman's recollections of Pynchon in Manhattan Beach]
* [https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204619004574318360877609486 ''The Wall Street Journal'': Pynchon’s Drugstore Thriller (July 30, 2009)]
* [https://u-town.com/collins/?cat=16 iv – a site about Inherent Vice]
* [https://literarywiki.org/index.php?title=Main_Page Literarywiki.org] - wiki annotations to works by Pynchon, Umberto Eco, and many others.

==Featured Articles==
[[image:PT-Anderson.png|left|thumb|caption|Paul Thomas Anderson|180px]] '''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."

[https://www.cinemablend.com/new/Paul-Thomas-Anderson-Inherent-Vice-Described-Big-Lebowski-Meets-Long-Goodbye-42566.html Read the article...]



[[image:logo-LondonReview.gif|left]] '''"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! [https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v31/n17/thomas-jones/call-it-capitalism Read the review...]


* [[Songs mentioned in Inherent Vice|Songs & Musicians: The ''Inherent Vice'' Playlist]]

* [[Movie_references_in_Inherent_Vice|Movies, Actors, Cartoons, &c. in ''Inherent Vice'']]

* [[Pynchon's California Trilogy and the CIA|Unreleased Backgrounds: Pynchon's California Trilogy and the CIA]]

<div style="clear:both;"></div>

==Image Gallery==
Below are some of the images you will find on Pynchon Wiki. {{Special:Newimages}}

Thanks, and enjoy...

MediaWiki:Sidebar

2025-10-08T03:20:38Z

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2025-07-22T18:33:11Z

WikiAdmin:

Pynchon on Shuffle

2025-07-22T18:32:34Z

WikiAdmin:

<h4>Music is backbeat for novelist’s twisting tales</h4>

By Mark Feeney

(This article was first published in ''The Boston Globe'' on September 20, 2009)

[[Image:IV-Pynchon_Cover-for-Article.jpg|350px|left]]Music hasn’t really mattered much in American fiction. There are exceptions, of course. Eudora Welty’s bravura short story "Powerhouse" reimagines Fats Waller. Don DeLillo’s ''Great Jones Street'' lampoons rock so shrewdly it could be called ''Negatively 4th Street.'' John Updike’s most famous hero, Harry Angstrom, prefers Perry Como to Frank Sinatra and marvels over the Bee Gees being "white men who have done this wonderful thing of making themselves sound like black women." And so on.

Yet those are anomalous instances. There is one American writer, however, whose fiction is the literary equivalent of a vast box set: a blissful, bizarro anthology of rock, jazz, pop, blues, country, show tunes, novelty numbers, you name it. Thomas Pynchon’s novels are like a giant jukebox just waiting to happen. Some of the songs are real, some are imaginary. All of them Pynchon makes his own. No other American writer has put so much music into his fiction.

McClintic Sphere, in ''V.,’’ bears a marked resemblance to Ornette Coleman. The Paranoids (a name not lightly bestowed by Pynchon) sing their way through ''The Crying of Lot 49.'' ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' has so many songs in it, both actual and made up, it’s practically a libretto disguised as a novel. The parents of Frenesi Gates, the heroine of ''Vineland'', named her after their favorite Artie Shaw recording. ''Against the Day'' takes its epigraph from Thelonious Monk.

Above all, there’s the way Pynchon’s characters frequently break into song. Are his novels simply an excuse to get his lyrics before the public? It’s hard to resist something like Meatball Flag’s "Soul Gidget," which Pynchon describes as “one of the few known attempts at black surf music.’’

''Who’s that strollin’ down the street,''

''Hi-heel flip-flops on her feet,''

''Always got a great big smile,''

''Never gets popped by Juv-o-nile'' _

''Who is it?'' [Minor-seventh guitar fill]

''Soul Gidget!''

If ever a song cried out for Casey Kasem to recount its back story, it’s "Soul Gidget." (Miss Sandra Dee? Miss Sally Field? Please meet Ms. Pam Grier.)

"Soul Gidget" wafts out of a car radio in Pynchon’s latest novel, ''Inherent Vice''. The novel also provides readers with the putative lyrics to the theme song of the TV western ''The Big Valley'', a "semi-bossa nova" called "Just the Lasagna" (sung by Carmine and the Cal-Zones), and a country swing tune called "Full Moon in Pisces." Some novels have a table of contents. ''Inherent Vice'' should have a playlist.

Set in certain highly countercultural environs of Southern California in the spring of 1970, “Inherent Vice’’ has almost as much music in it as there is marijuana - which is saying a lot. The novel’s hero, Doc Sportello, is a stoner private eye who lives by the beach south of Venice and gets involved in a case so complicated he practically needs a roach clip to tease out its strands.

A prime suspect, Coy Harlingen, plays tenor sax with a surf music band named the Boards. Doc overhears him playing a version of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Desafinado’’ and later encounters him at the area’s most famous jazz club, the Lighthouse, in Hermosa Beach, where Coy has gone to listen to Bud Shank.

Having made it big, the Boards live in a Topanga Canyon mansion they share with a visiting British band called Spotted Dick. If the Boards are a Day-Glo version of the Ventures, then Spotted Dick is King Crimson with their Mellotron stuck on pause.

Both bands are inventions, as are Meatball Flag, Carmine and the Cal-Zones, and bluesman Droolin’ Floyd Womack. Sometimes Pynchon mixes and matches real and fictive. Jonathan Frid, the star of the then-popular vampire soap opera ''Dark Shadows'' supposedly has a Vegas lounge act. "Everybody in the business loves him - Frank, Dean, Sammy - at least one of them’s in the audience every night," a friend tells Doc.

Mostly, though, the musical references are time-machine verifiable. A jukebox plays Del Shannon’s "Runaway." Another plays the Archies’ "Sugar, Sugar." The Rolling Stones’ "Something Happened to Me Yesterday" comes on the car radio, as does Pink Floyd’s "Interstellar Overdrive." Surf-guitar god Dick Dale merits several mentions, as do the Beach Boys, the Bonzo Dog Band, and, ahem, Ethel Merman.

Pynchon is nothing if not eclectic. A character praises the Greek singer Roza Eskenazi, comparing her "pure soul" to Bessie Smith’s. Another character confesses to an obsession with Lawrence Welk’s "Champagne Lady," Norma Zimmer. In a nod to Verdi, a very bad seafood restaurant serves Eel Trovatore. Even less to Doc’s taste is "the drawling brass and subhip syncopation" of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.

This was, after all, a time of great (and sometimes awful) musical ferment. Although rock clearly dominated popular music, it had yet to run the table. Billboard’s top 10 best-selling singles of 1970 included B.J. Thomas’s "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," the Carpenters’ "(They Long to Be) Close to You," and the Partridge Family’s "I Think I Love You." Doc might want to give Herb Alpert another listen.

The novel’s loveliest musical moment comes with Doc driving at night on the Santa Monica Freeway. He’s singing along to the Byrds’ "Eight Miles High" on the radio. He keeps singing even after the signal gets lost inside a tunnel. “When they emerged and the sound came back,’’ Pynchon writes, “he was no more than a half bar off."

None of Pynchon’s references feel forced. They’re part of the texture and flavor of the novel, just as the music was so much a part of the texture and flavor of the time. In an iPod, download world, listeners get sealed off, happily lost in their own shuffle. There is much to recommend that. Listeners become their own A&R men. Selectivity and eclecticism are now, at least in theory, the musical order of the day. But also there’s something lost: a quality of shared aural experience and musical mutuality in a world where, as Pynchon writes, “everybody’s radios [are] lasing on the same couple of AM stations."

And if the radio’s not enough, just reach for another LP. “Like a record on a turntable," a cop tells Doc, "all it takes is one groove’s difference and the universe can be into a whole ’nother song."

Pynchon’s famously dark vision of the world as vast conspiracy - paranoia strikes deep? no, it rules - has a sunny corollary: The fell knittedness of conspiracy is mirrored in, and (sometimes) defeated by, the knittedness of human community. The clearest manifestation of that community in ''Inherent Vice'' is musical. Unlike the nation at large, which has just one anthem, this community has a whole bunch of them - heard on a car radio, coming out of a hi-fi system, being whistled on the sidewalk - and the best part? Most of them you can dance to.

''Mark Feeney can be reached at mfeeney@globe.com'' [Since this article was retrieved from Archive.org, this email may not work.]

Songs mentioned in Inherent Vice

2025-07-11T20:38:34Z

WikiAdmin: /* Other Resources */

==Songs, Music and Artists in ''Inherent Vice''==

This is a playlist to ''hear'' the music referenced in ''Inherent Vice''. The songs are organized below by the page on which they are found. Enjoy...

There is a [https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2n9lMjugDWY1RN7RecHGdm?si=pRCHwmssTdeiMXuoY4sZmw Pynchon Wiki Playlist of Thomas Pynchon's "Inherent Vice" on Spotify] if you use that streaming service.

==''Inherent Vice'' Playlist==
1: Country Joe and the Fish 
[https://youtu.be/eRl6-bHlz-4?si=OVLoKy6kmZBczAYm Look/Listen to Country Joe playing "Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die"] or [https://youtu.be/QBUOKnLdJpc Listen to CJ & the Fish's "Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine"] 
3: "Can't Buy Me Love" by The Beatles: [https://youtu.be/srwxJUXPHvE Listen...] 
10: "Sugar, Sugar" by The Archies [https://youtu.be/j3plj_Xplus Listen...] 
11: "Runaround Sue" by Dion [https://youtu.be/LcILsIE0j-I Listen...] 
36: Dick Dale: [https://youtu.be/cztu-juq1mw Dick Dale & the Deltones performing "Misirlou"] 
37: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimi_Hendrix Jimi Hendrix], [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Bostic Earl Bostic], [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_getz Stan Getz], [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Allen_(musician) Lee Allen] 
37: The Chantays [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chantays Wikipedia] [https://youtu.be/ZFucCXherLg Look & Listen...] 
37: The Trashmen [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trashmen Wikipedia] [https://youtu.be/sJgERVTOnD8 Listen...] 
37: [https://youtu.be/tEufRt3HY9Y Listen...] (mentioned in anachronism, as they apparently started out in the 1980s?) 
55: "The Great Pretender" by The Platters [https://youtu.be/RBj2HN2uuNA_ Listen...] 
56: "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" The Bonzo Dog Band's cover of Cher's original [https://youtu.be/nY-UQkI7V1s Listen...] 
69: "Pretty Woman" by Roy Orbison [https://youtu.be/Am38jAK38DU Listen...] 
72: "Wouldn't It Be Nice" by The Beach Boys [https://youtu.be/6Vv_dkDwZeQ Listen...] 
75: "Fly Me to the Moon" by Frank Sinatra [https://youtu.be/Y2rDb4Ur2dw Listen...] 
77: "The Crystal Ship" by The Doors [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QehH-JWobEQ Listen...] 
77: "Blueberry Hill" by Fats Domino [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6H_sxI6jG8 Listen...] 
78: "Little GTO" by Ronny and the Daytonas (not ''specifically'' called out, but obliquely referenced in the "golden oldie" by the Boards): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozcIn8a9lM8 Listen...] [https://lyrics.wikia.com/Ronny_%26_The_Daytonas:G.T.O. Lyrics...] 
81: "People Are Strange" by The Doors [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sezc05A4s2g Listen...] 
92: Iron Butterfly [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIVe-rZBcm4 Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LHNmG0X4t4 Listen to "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" (1968)] 
95: Blue Cheer [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Cheer Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as1NcX31szs Listen to "Summertime Blues" (1968)] 
101: The Surfaris "Wipe Out" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4IfxAQ4TqQ Listen...] 
103: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Electric_Prunes The Electric Prunes] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amQtlkdQSfQ Listen to "I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night"] 
108: "The Ice Caps Are Melting" by Tiny Tim (This Tiny Tim song is actually called "'''The Other Side'''"; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAqhKKvlZmM Listen...]) 
121: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearls_Before_Swine_%28band%29 Pearls Before Swine] 
124: The Chantays "Pipeline" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fc57tYou4U Listen...] 
124: "Surfin' Bird" by The Trashmen [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB2uuGKBQeg Listen...] 
124: "Bamboo" by Johnny & The Hurricanes [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjUMfLBS0Qs Listen...] 
124: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_%26_the_Showmen Eddie & the Showmen] 
124: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEcL_ELHqyo "Mr. Moto" by the Bel Airs] 
125: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0EZv2GWTKg "Thelisa" (1962) The Hollywood Saxons] 
125: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIUzVGtxQCY "Western Movies" by The Olympics] 
125: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_JFLb1IItM "Tequila" by The Champs] 
129: [https://youtu.be/uTfDUyUkVYE?&t=115 Pink Floyd w/founder Syd Barrett playing "Astronomy Domine"] 
130: George Formby [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUbB1qe6BR0 Look/Listen to Formby playing "Leaning on a Lamp Post"] 
130: Herman's Hermits [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman%27s_Hermits Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKu3N6o5qvE Covering Formby's "Leaning on a Lamp Post"] 
130: Pat Boone [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Boone Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8JoXzhwlJU Pat Boone's "Love Letters in the Sand"] 
131: "Donna Lee" (Miles Davis) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Lee Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvK9u_UYL3o Listen...] 
134: "Here Come the Hodads" by the Marketts [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketts Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3UnklXwdFE Listen...] 
135: "Eight Miles High" by The Byrds [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Il9q397lL0 Listen...] 
146: Frank Zappa [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Zappa Wikipedia] 
148: "Runaway" by Del Shannon [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KJ9oykwb6A Listen...] 
153: "Happy Trails" by Roy Rogers [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXFil77aj1o Listen...] 
155: Wild Man Fischer [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Man_Fischer Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw6H_uxjq0o Wild Man Fischer on "Rowan and Martin"] 
156: "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rabbit_%28song%29 Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANNqr-vcx0 Look/Listen] 
156: "This Guy's in Love with You" by Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppYnbbu1OmA Listen] 
159: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Carlos_Jobim Antonio Carlos Jobim] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWxyzVbiT98 "The Girl from Ipanema"] 
160: "Desafinado" by Stan Getz & Astrud Gilberto, with Charlie Byrd [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=991uASejkY8 Listen...] 
160: "It Never Entered My Mind" by Rodgers & Hart (show tune from the musical ''Higher and Higher'') [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBUfDRRdW5I Listen to Chet Baker perform this tune] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGIAVTf2dTQ Peggy Lee sings] 
160: "Alone Together" by Dietz & Schwartz [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZZh1HbFoW8 Listen to Ella Fitzgerald perform this tune] 
162: "Samba Do Avião" (by Antonio Carlos Jobim) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xNO4NjTnfM Listen...] 
165: Tommy James and the Shondells [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_James_and_the_Shondells Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS0niyiKlcw Listen to "Crimson and Clover"] 
176: Theme from ''Dark Shadows'' [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSbCqp_a3iE Watch/Listen to the ''Dark Shadows'' opening sequence and theme] 
193: "Something Happened to Me Yesterday" by the Rolling Stones [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjMXESf5ia8 Listen...] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Happened_to_Me_Yesterday Wikipedia] 
198: Floyd Cramer [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Cramer Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKwq6UW9bnU Floyd Cramer "On the Rebound" (1961)] 
220: Liberace [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberace Wikipedia] 
220: "Grande valse brillante" by Chopin [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grande_Valse_Brillante_(Chopin) Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjLTCRmuLCY aListen to Liberace performing Chopin's "Grande Valse Brillante"] 
221: "There's No Business Like Show Business" sung by Ethel Merman:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIiQMsDQ0Uo Listen!]
222: Mick Jagger [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mick_jagger Wikipedia] 
223: Frank Zappa [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Zappa Wikipedia] 
224: “One Fine Day” by the Chiffons [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvyOqKhKWQ4 Listen...] 
225: Ernest Tubb [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Tubb Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFFMiItHJLw Look/Listen to Tubb performing "Walkin' the Floor Over You"] 
225: Jim Reeves [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Reeves Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nECoA-uVGfw Look/Listen to Reeves performing "I Love You Because"] 
225: Web Pierce [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Pierce Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y4OkVT08rc Look/Listen to Pierce performing "There Stands the Glass"] 
227: Merle Haggard [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabash_Cannonball "The Wabash Cannonball"] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffHcGlF0xDw Look/Listen to Haggard performing "Mama Tried"] 
229: Les Paul [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Paul Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkGf1GHAxhE Look/Listen to Les Paul & Mary Ford performing "How High the Moon"] 
232: The Monkees [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkees Wikipedia] 
232: Elvis Presley [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_presley Wikipedia] 
233: "Wunderbar" by Cole Porter, from "Kiss Me Kate" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqiXIwrujCc Look/Listen to this 1958 TV performance with Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson] 
233: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., "Haunted Heart" by Dietz & Schwartz [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZYsBN6NRyM Look/Listen to Jo Stafford performing "Haunted Heart"] 
234: "Viva Las Vegas" by Elvis Presley [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ihOQNPKG1A Elvis singing "Viva Las Vegas"] 
239: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Pack The Rat Pack] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZD-lu9ewBg Check out the Rat Pack (Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, and Frank Sinatra)] 
239: Marty Robbins [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Robbins Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bwoGbpYXRw Look/Listen to Robbins perform "El Paso"] 
240: Pat Boone [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Boone Wikipedia] 
243: Elvis Presley [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_presley Wikipedia] 
244: Dolly Parton [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_Parton Wikipedia] 
244: Roy Acuff [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Acuff Wikipedia] 
247: "(You're not Sick) You're Just in Love" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Berlin Irving Berlin Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMHS6D8tFvE Ethel Merman singing this] 
247: "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" by Tiny Tim [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_Tim_(musician) Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skU-jBFzXl0 Look/Listen to Tiny Tim performing "Tiptoe Through the Tulips"] [https://lyrics.wikia.com/Tiny_Tim:Tip_Toe_Through_The_Tulips Lyrics...] 
249: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roza_Eskenazi Roza Eskenazi] 
249: Bessie Smith, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpVCqXRlXx4&feature=related Listen...] 
271: "All Shook Up" by Elvis Presley [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATDJ8VPJG5s&ob=av2n Listen...] [https://lyrics.wikia.com/Elvis_Presley:I%27m_All_Shook_Up Lyrics...] 
276: Vivaldi [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Vivaldi Wikipedia] 
278: "That's Amore" by Dean Martin [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS6-b7CONDI Look/Listen to Martin singing this tune] [https://lyrics.wikia.com/Dean_Martin:That%27s_Amore Lyrics...] 
289: Bonzo Dog Band [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKXsrWrmbAg Look/Listen to the Doo Dahs perform "Death Cab for Cutie"] 
299: "Interstellar Overdrive" by Pink Floyd [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEIr7QtFIb4 Look/Listen to the Floyd perform "Interstellar Overdrive" (with Syd Barrett)] 
300: "Tears on My Pillow" by Little Anthony & The Imperials [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxjQ3M_v7xc Listen...] 
318: Mike Curb's score from ''The Big Bounce'' (1969). Listen to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mPpueWQsxo "Nancy's Theme"] from ''The Big Bounce''. 
330: "Elusive Butterfly" by Bob Lind [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lind Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxUQy5Mo7V8 Listen...] 
331: Glen Campbell [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Campbell Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw_uYRLiVqk Listen to a Glen Campbell medley!] 
332: "Yummy Yummy Yummy" by Ohio Express (covered by Herb Alpert) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsGBickkZiI Listen the Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass] 
338: Rocio Durcal [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roc%C3%ADo_D%C3%BArcal Wikipedia] 
352: Theme from ''Hawaii Five-O'' [https://youtu.be/CpxJsy8nfjA?&t=28 Listen...] 
356: "Something in the Air" by Thunderclap Newman [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJae3Q2l-BY Listen...] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderclap_Newman Wikipedia] 
360: "We Should Be Together" sung by Shirley Temple and George Murphey [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF-VJsw33Os Look/Listen...] 
363: Dick Dale [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Dale Wikipedia] 
364: "Help Me Rhonda" by the Beach Boys [https://youtu.be/CCYTRjViAGg?&t=28 Look/Listen to a 1965 Beach Boys performance of this tune 
365: "Volare" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah637P0_cts Listen to Dean Martin sing this, with lyrics] 
365: "Java Jive" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTeovqsn4MQ Listen to the Ink Spots sing their hit version of this tune] 
368: "Super Market" by Fapardokly [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fapardokly Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvzF-1YB0FM&t=1670s Listen...] 
368: Elephant's Memory [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant%27s_Memory Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8ekzvxc4Ws Listen to them perform "Mongoose" (1970)] 
368: "Stranger in Love" covered by The Spaniels [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spaniels Wikipedia] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apaPd1QBETg Listen to the Spaniels sing "Stranger in Love"] 
368: "God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSzuvhaqu4A Listen to the Beach Boys perform this, with Brian Wilson on lead vocal]

==Other Resources==
* [[Pynchon on Shuffle|Pynchon's Use of Music in ''Inherent Vice'' - Mark Feeney, ''The Boston Globe'']]

Songs mentioned in Inherent Vice

2025-07-11T20:37:51Z

WikiAdmin: /* Inherent Vice Playlist */

Pynchon on Shuffle

2025-07-11T20:29:41Z

WikiAdmin:

<h4>Music is backbeat for novelist’s twisting tales</h4>

By Mark Feeney

(This article was first published in ''The Boston Globe'' on September 20, 2009)

Music hasn’t really mattered much in American fiction. There are exceptions, of course. Eudora Welty’s bravura short story "Powerhouse" reimagines Fats Waller. Don DeLillo’s ''Great Jones Street'' lampoons rock so shrewdly it could be called ''Negatively 4th Street.'' John Updike’s most famous hero, Harry Angstrom, prefers Perry Como to Frank Sinatra and marvels over the Bee Gees being "white men who have done this wonderful thing of making themselves sound like black women." And so on.

Yet those are anomalous instances. There is one American writer, however, whose fiction is the literary equivalent of a vast box set: a blissful, bizarro anthology of rock, jazz, pop, blues, country, show tunes, novelty numbers, you name it. Thomas Pynchon’s novels are like a giant jukebox just waiting to happen. Some of the songs are real, some are imaginary. All of them Pynchon makes his own. No other American writer has put so much music into his fiction.

McClintic Sphere, in ''V.,’’ bears a marked resemblance to Ornette Coleman. The Paranoids (a name not lightly bestowed by Pynchon) sing their way through ''The Crying of Lot 49.'' ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' has so many songs in it, both actual and made up, it’s practically a libretto disguised as a novel. The parents of Frenesi Gates, the heroine of ''Vineland'', named her after their favorite Artie Shaw recording. ''Against the Day'' takes its epigraph from Thelonious Monk.

Above all, there’s the way Pynchon’s characters frequently break into song. Are his novels simply an excuse to get his lyrics before the public? It’s hard to resist something like Meatball Flag’s "Soul Gidget," which Pynchon describes as “one of the few known attempts at black surf music.’’

''Who’s that strollin’ down the street,''

''Hi-heel flip-flops on her feet,''

''Always got a great big smile,''

''Never gets popped by Juv-o-nile'' _

''Who is it?'' [Minor-seventh guitar fill]

''Soul Gidget!''

If ever a song cried out for Casey Kasem to recount its back story, it’s "Soul Gidget." (Miss Sandra Dee? Miss Sally Field? Please meet Ms. Pam Grier.)

"Soul Gidget" wafts out of a car radio in Pynchon’s latest novel, ''Inherent Vice''. The novel also provides readers with the putative lyrics to the theme song of the TV western ''The Big Valley'', a "semi-bossa nova" called "Just the Lasagna" (sung by Carmine and the Cal-Zones), and a country swing tune called "Full Moon in Pisces." Some novels have a table of contents. ''Inherent Vice'' should have a playlist.

Set in certain highly countercultural environs of Southern California in the spring of 1970, “Inherent Vice’’ has almost as much music in it as there is marijuana - which is saying a lot. The novel’s hero, Doc Sportello, is a stoner private eye who lives by the beach south of Venice and gets involved in a case so complicated he practically needs a roach clip to tease out its strands.

A prime suspect, Coy Harlingen, plays tenor sax with a surf music band named the Boards. Doc overhears him playing a version of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Desafinado’’ and later encounters him at the area’s most famous jazz club, the Lighthouse, in Hermosa Beach, where Coy has gone to listen to Bud Shank.

Having made it big, the Boards live in a Topanga Canyon mansion they share with a visiting British band called Spotted Dick. If the Boards are a Day-Glo version of the Ventures, then Spotted Dick is King Crimson with their Mellotron stuck on pause.

Both bands are inventions, as are Meatball Flag, Carmine and the Cal-Zones, and bluesman Droolin’ Floyd Womack. Sometimes Pynchon mixes and matches real and fictive. Jonathan Frid, the star of the then-popular vampire soap opera ''Dark Shadows'' supposedly has a Vegas lounge act. "Everybody in the business loves him - Frank, Dean, Sammy - at least one of them’s in the audience every night," a friend tells Doc.

Mostly, though, the musical references are time-machine verifiable. A jukebox plays Del Shannon’s "Runaway." Another plays the Archies’ "Sugar, Sugar." The Rolling Stones’ "Something Happened to Me Yesterday" comes on the car radio, as does Pink Floyd’s "Interstellar Overdrive." Surf-guitar god Dick Dale merits several mentions, as do the Beach Boys, the Bonzo Dog Band, and, ahem, Ethel Merman.

Pynchon is nothing if not eclectic. A character praises the Greek singer Roza Eskenazi, comparing her "pure soul" to Bessie Smith’s. Another character confesses to an obsession with Lawrence Welk’s "Champagne Lady," Norma Zimmer. In a nod to Verdi, a very bad seafood restaurant serves Eel Trovatore. Even less to Doc’s taste is "the drawling brass and subhip syncopation" of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.

This was, after all, a time of great (and sometimes awful) musical ferment. Although rock clearly dominated popular music, it had yet to run the table. Billboard’s top 10 best-selling singles of 1970 included B.J. Thomas’s "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," the Carpenters’ "(They Long to Be) Close to You," and the Partridge Family’s "I Think I Love You." Doc might want to give Herb Alpert another listen.

The novel’s loveliest musical moment comes with Doc driving at night on the Santa Monica Freeway. He’s singing along to the Byrds’ "Eight Miles High" on the radio. He keeps singing even after the signal gets lost inside a tunnel. “When they emerged and the sound came back,’’ Pynchon writes, “he was no more than a half bar off."

None of Pynchon’s references feel forced. They’re part of the texture and flavor of the novel, just as the music was so much a part of the texture and flavor of the time. In an iPod, download world, listeners get sealed off, happily lost in their own shuffle. There is much to recommend that. Listeners become their own A&R men. Selectivity and eclecticism are now, at least in theory, the musical order of the day. But also there’s something lost: a quality of shared aural experience and musical mutuality in a world where, as Pynchon writes, “everybody’s radios [are] lasing on the same couple of AM stations."

And if the radio’s not enough, just reach for another LP. “Like a record on a turntable," a cop tells Doc, "all it takes is one groove’s difference and the universe can be into a whole ’nother song."

Pynchon’s famously dark vision of the world as vast conspiracy - paranoia strikes deep? no, it rules - has a sunny corollary: The fell knittedness of conspiracy is mirrored in, and (sometimes) defeated by, the knittedness of human community. The clearest manifestation of that community in ''Inherent Vice'' is musical. Unlike the nation at large, which has just one anthem, this community has a whole bunch of them - heard on a car radio, coming out of a hi-fi system, being whistled on the sidewalk - and the best part? Most of them you can dance to.

''Mark Feeney can be reached at mfeeney@globe.com'' [Since this article was retrieved from Archive.org, this email may not work.]

WikiAdmin:

'''Fairfield, Vehi''' 
102; Sortilege's guru; 306

'''fantan''' 
81; similar to roulette, fantan (or Fan-Tan) was once a favorite pastime of the Chinese in America. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan-Tan Wikipedia entry]

'''Fapardokly''' 
Merrell Wayne Fankhauser (b. 1943) is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist who was most active in the 1960s and 1970s with bands including the Impacts, Exiles, Fapardokly, HMS Bounty, Fankhauser-Cassidy Band, and MU. "Super Market" appeared on Fapardokly's 1966 album ''Fapardokly''; "triple-tongue highway classic" 368; [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiIRj62VbB0 Check out some Fapardokly on YouTube...]

'''Fazzo, Fabian''' 
238; gent who looks like "a banker in an old movie" at the Kismet in Las Vegas; Chief Operating Officer, Kiscorp, 362

'''feng shui''' 
Ancient Chinese system of aesthetics believed to use the laws of both Heaven (astronomy) and Earth (geography) to help one improve life by receiving positive qi. Traditional feng shui practice always requires an extremely accurate Chinese compass, or luo pan, in order to determine the directions in finding any auspicious sector in a desired location; mirror at Golden Fang HQ, 168

'''Fenway, Crocker''' 
171; Japonica's wealthy father; 314; "Prince of Palos Verdes" 341

<div id="japonica">'''Fenway, Japonica'''</div>
170; at Golden Fang HQ for "Smile Maintenance"; a Cybernet Organism / Kozmic Traveler visiting other worlds v. Real Japonica, 173; her car, Wolfgang, 175; [[Plants of Inherent Vice| See: Plants of Inherent Vice]]

'''FFO''' 
154; music club on Sunset, where Spotted Dick is playing; Funds From Operations (FFO): a term used in real estate investment trusts (REITs) to define the cash flow from their operations.

'''Fields, W. C. (1880-1946)''' 
9; American comedian, actor and juggler. Fields created one of the great American comic personas of the first half of the 20th century: a misanthropic and hard-drinking egotist who remained a sympathetic character despite his snarling contempt for dogs, children, and women; Elmina's father's routine, 112

'''Fiona''' 
129; Smedley's Farfisa organ

'''Five-pointed star cut''' 
~170; Article in "2000 Hair Styles" read by Doc in waiting room. Actually cutting a star from fabric or paper with one cut (esp. Betsy Ross and first US flag).

'''Flaco the Bad''' 
12; acquaintance of Doc's; 100; 256

'''flatland''' 
The Los Angeles flatland is the area of Los Angeles and Orange counties that is inland, at the foot of the San Gabriel, Santa Monica and Santa Ana mountains and the Palos Verdes peninsula, as contrasted with the "hipper" beach communities; 4

'''Flatweed, Special Agent''' 
72; FBI agent, partner of Special Agent Hugo Borderline; with Penny Kimball; with SA Borderline, in Las Vegas, 220, 222; at Kismet Lounge, 243-244

'''Fleming, Art (1924-1995)''' 
American television host, most notably the original host of the TV game show ''Jeopardy''!; "Art Fleming look on his face" 48

'''''Flintstones, The''''' 
An animated American television sitcom that ran from 1960 to 1966 on ABC, produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions; "page right out of history" 235; the Flintstones theme begins:

:Flintstones. Meet the Flintstones.''' 
:They're the modern stone age family.''' 
:From the town of Bedrock,''' 
:They're a page right out of history. 

'''''Flying Nun, The''''' 
9; The Flying Nun (ABC sitcom '67-'70) starred Sally Field (who also played surf bunny Gidget in an earlier sitcom) as a young nun with a talent for catching the wind like a wave. Despite the reference to Bigfoot playing "comical Mexicans," the series actually took place in Puerto Rico. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Nun,_The Wikipedia entry]

'''"Fly Me to the Moon"''' 
75; Popular standard song written by Bart Howard in 1954. It was titled originally "In Other Words", and was introduced by Felicia Sanders in cabarets. The song became known popularly as "Fly Me to the Moon" from its first line, and after a few years the publishers changed the title to that officially. The song has also been recorded by Nat King Cole and, probably most recognizably, by Frank Sinatra who recorded the song on his 1964 album ''It Might as Well Be Swing'' accompanied by Count Basie. The arrangement by Quincy Jones has become the rendition by which most people recognise the song. Jones changed the time signature, which was originally 3/4 waltz-time, to 4/4 and gave it a 'swing' feel. Sinatra's recording was a hit and was played by the astronauts of Apollo 10, on their lunar-orbital mission and again on the moon itself by the astronaut Buzz Aldrin during Apollo 11. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_me_to_the_moon Wikipedia entry]

'''Folsom''' 
271; Folsom State Prison is located east of Sacramento in Northern California, probably best known because of the Johnny Cash song "Folsom Prison Blues."

'''Fonda, Henry (1905-1982)''' 
American film and stage actor, best known for his roles as plain-speaking idealists. Fonda's subtle, naturalistic acting style preceded by many years the popularization of method acting; ''Fort Apache'' (1948), 171

'''Fortnight, Trillium''' 
216; "dishevelled girl in a tiny skirt" referred to Doc by Boris Spivey and Dawnette, teaches music theory at UCLA; marries Puck Beaverton, 246; admitted to Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas with concussion, cuts and bruises, released in the custody of her parents several days later, 366. A trillium is a rather fragile type of wildflower; [[Plants of Inherent Vice| See: Plants of Inherent Vice]] Trillium is introduced to Pynchon readers in [http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_14#Page_308 ''Vineland'' (p. 308)], where she greets Zoyd and Prairie when they arrive a Mucho Maas's townhouse. Mucho is a character introduced in Pynchon's second novel, [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_1 ''The Crying of Lot 49''].

'''Freak Brothers''' 
[[image:freak-brothers.jpg|right|200px|thumb|caption|Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers]]
Gilbert Shelton's series of "Underground Comix"—"The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers"—was one of the most popular "Comix" of its time among fans of the form. Featuring the stoned adventures of Freewheelin' Franklin, Phineas T. Freakears, Fat Freddy Freekowtski and the ever popular Fat Freddy's Cat. Famous for [among other things] Freewheelin' Franklin's dictum: "Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope."; 33; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabulous_Furry_Freak_Brothers Wikipedia entry]

<div id="freaks">'''''Freaks'''''</div>
196; 1932 American horror film about sideshow performers, directed and produced by Tod Browning and released by MGM, with a cast mostly composed of actual carnival performers. The film was based on Tod Robbins' short story "Spurs". Director Browning took the exceptional step of casting real people with deformities as the eponymous sideshow "freaks," rather than using costumes and makeup; "Code of the Freaks": "If you offend one of them, you have offended them all"
Also mentioned in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=F#freaks Gravity's Rainbow].

'''Frid, Jonathan''' 
233; Barnabas ... the vampire guy on ''Dark Shadows'', in Las Vegas, singing "Haunted Heart"

'''Fritz''' 
See Drybeam, Fritz

'''Fromme, Lynette "Squeaky" (b. 1948)''' 
283; American criminal, former member of the Manson Family, convicted of attempting to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford in 1975. She is currently serving a life sentence in prison; "righteous-ass bitch" 293

<div id="frootloops">'''Froot Loops'''</div>
Brand of breakfast cereal produced by Kelloggs. The cereal pieces are torus-shaped (hence "loops") and come in a variety of bright colors and a blend of artificial fruit flavors. Kellogg's introduced Froot Loops in 1963. Originally, there were red, orange, and yellow loops, but green, then purple, and finally blue were added by the 1990s; 308; A stoner treat, they are also eaten in [http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_1#frootloops Vineland].

''''fro pick''' 
3; An "Afro" pick, aka a comb for the Afro hairstyle; this doesn't mean Doc has an Afro, only that he borrowed one "for protection."

'''Frothingham, Rhus''' 
275; LA deputy DA with whom Penny Kimball shares a cubicle at the Hall of Justice; 282; [[Plants of Inherent Vice| See: Plants of Inherent Vice]]

'''Fuller, Buckminster ("Bucky") (1895-1983)''' 
62; an American architect, author, designer, futurist, inventor, and visionary. Fuller wrote more than thirty books, coining and popularizing terms such as "Spaceship Earth", ephemeralization, and synergetics. He also worked in the development of numerous inventions, chiefly in the fields of design and architecture, the best known of which is the geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as fullerenes or buckyballs were named for their resemblance to geodesic spheres.251

'''Full Moon in Pisces''' 
241-242; song Lark is singing at the Kismet

'''Furies, the''' 
156; opening for Spotted Dick at FFO - 3 basses and no lead guitar

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