Inherent Vice

Thomas Pynchon’s newest hit the bookstores a week ago. Penguin Press’s description:

Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon — private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog

It’s been awhile since Doc Sportello has seen his ex-girlfriend. Suddenly out of nowhere she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. Easy for her to say. It’s the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that “love” is another of those words going around at the moment, like “trip” or “groovy,” except that this one usually leads to trouble. Despite which he soon finds himself drawn into a bizarre tangle of motives and passions whose cast of characters includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a murderous loan shark, a tenor sax player working undercover, an ex-con with a swastika tattoo and a fondness for Ethel Merman, and a mysterious entity known as the Golden Fang, which may only be a tax dodge set up by some dentists.

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…

Here’s the trailer — narrated by Pynchon himself (but don’t expect to see him!):

(“Twenty-seven ninety-fi— Twenty-seven ninety-five? That used to be, like, three weeks of groceries, man. What year is this again?” Ha!)

There’s even a Wiki set up — and active! — for the new book already.

At Amazon, they’ve got a listing (“Exclusive!”) of the soundtrack Pynchon himself supposedly chose for the book, including:

• “Bang Bang” by The Bonzo Dog Band
• “Can’t Buy Me Love” by The Beatles
• “Desafinado” by Stan Getz & Astrud Gilberto, with Charlie Byrd
• Elusive Butterfly by Bob Lind
• “Fly Me to the Moon” by Frank Sinatra
• “God Only Knows” by The Beach Boys
• The Greatest Hits of Tommy James and The Shondells
• “Happy Trails to You” by Roy Rogers
• “Help Me, Rhonda” by The Beach Boys
• “Interstellar Overdrive” by Pink Floyd
• “It Never Entered My Mind” by Andrea Marcovicci
• “Motion by the Ocean” by The Boards
• “People Are Strange (When You’re a Stranger)” by The Doors
• “Quentin’s Theme” (Theme Song from “Dark Shadows”) performed by Charles Randolph Grean Sounde
• “Something Happened to Me Yesterday” by The Rolling Stones
• “Sugar Sugar” by The Archies
• “Surfin’ Bird” by The Trashmen
• “Telstar” by The Tornados
• “Tequila” by The Champs
• “There’s No Business Like Show Business” by Ethel Merman
• “Volare” by Domenico Modugno
• “Wabash Cannonball” by Roy Acuff & His Crazy Tennesseans
  “Wipeout” by The Surfaris
• “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by The Beach Boys
• “Yummy Yummy Yummy” performed by Ohio Express

Amazon provides links from most of these songs to MP3 previews/downloads and/or pages of information about the artists or songs. But there are also a number of unlinked ringers in the list — tunes which I would be very surprised to find on any real playlist. Tunes like:

• “Just the Lasagna (Semi-Bossa Nova)” by Carmine & the Cal-Zones
• “Skyful of Hearts” performed by Larry “Doc” Sportello
• “Soul Gidget” by Meatball Flag

Pynchon’s in his 70s now; I wonder how long he can keep this up? In any case –for its length, fewer than 400 pages (versus hundreds more for nearly all his other titles) if for no other reason — if you’ve postponed reading anything by the guy, this might be the one to start you off. It’s not likely to be dull.

Update: A couple more items (for now; wouldn’t be surprised to find more later)…

First, Wired has put up an interactive Google Map of Los Angeles-area sites which figure in Pynchon’s work — Inherent Vice and others. And by “interactive” I don’t mean just the usual zoom-and-slide Google Maps controls: you can actually make additions yourself, if you’re suitably well-informed and/or obsessive. (Wired‘s capsule summary of the book, by the way: “The Big Lebowski meets The Big Sleep.”)

Second, the Wall Street Journal‘s “Speakeasy” blog has confirmed that it is indeed Pynchon himself doing the voiceover. They hired a voice-recognition expert, and armed with his affirmative response managed to wrench a confession out of the Penguin Press PR folks. Ah, but is it possible their “expert” is maybe a wishful-thinking Pynchon fan? Nah:

We should point out [voice-recognition guy] Primeau is an unbiased witness, having never read Pynchon (“I don’t know this guy but it looks like he has some history as an author,” he said). Nevertheless, if he hasn’t been taken by the man’s work, Primeau is intrigued by his voice, which he describes as “a tobacco-driven soft rasp.”