Inherent Vice
Thomas Pynchon
Read the cult classic behind the major new film starring Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon and Josh Brolin.
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...
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About Thomas Pynchon
Reviews for Inherent Vice
London Review of Books
Brilliant and brain boggling by turns
Daily Mail
Inherent Vice works brilliantly as both a neon-lit noir and as a psychedelic lament to the Sixties
Sunday Telegraph
The greatest, wildest author of his generation
Guardian
The intellectual game-play is characteristically dazzling...colourful and pleasurable
Financial Times
You don't have to have been there; if you're willing, he'll take you there
Michael Carlson
Spectator
The pioneering work in a genre you'd have to call psychedelic Noir ...Who writes sentences as beautiful as Pynchon?
Sam Leith
Daily Mail
Pynchon leaves the rest of the American literary establishment at the starting gate...the range over which he moves is extraordinary, not simply in terms of ideas explored but also in the range of emotions he takes you through
Time Out
The most important and mysterious writer of his generation
Time
Throughout Pynchon's style is spot-on, capturing what Hunter S Thompson called the high, wild sound of the era, a sense of enthusiasm and boundless opportunity, even though you know the times are changing, and not necessarily in your favour...Pychon continues to draw his inspiration from genre fiction and pulp. Its more fun this way
The Herald