Inherent Vice

I finished Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice last night and enjoyed the book thoroughly. I read his Crying of Lot 49 last year and found this book, as most did, more accessible and funnier. Much like Lot 49, the plot is intricate with many characters and all of it groped at through a marijuana/acid/heroin style California fog during the transition from the free love hippie dippie 60’s to the not so much free love hippie dippie 70’s. Is this book about the naivety of the 60’s?, is this book about the end of 60’s innocence and altruism?, with a prelude to a more corrupt, cynical, post baby boomer “who has the most toys wins” as George Carlin put it, 70’s-80’s-90’s tricade?, is this book about the fine line between reality and drug fueled reality a la Descartes?, or is this book skin deep and just a detective romp set among drugs and sex and cops and…wait for it…vice?     

I would love to see the movie version directed by Paul Thomas Anderson but with two small children and babysitting rates tantamount to supermodel rates, I may have to wait to rent it but we’ll see.

I was listening to Marc Maron’s WTF podcast yesterday and his guest was Paul Thomas Anderson and he was very engaging, funny, and very everyman, if you will, cursing and talking about his Dad getting drunk and dealing with his kids. One interesting thing I learned is that he was a student in a class of David Foster Wallace. Also, both he and Marc Maron enjoyed Don Delillo’s White Noise, which I read just before Crying of Lot 49 in a postmodern lit frenzy.

In talking about his work Anderson posed the question “What is the difference between ambition and survival?” Not the finest line but a line nonetheless. I might start that ambition won’t initiate the fight or flight response but survival, yeah that’ll kick the ole fight or flight into gear. Not to say ambition can’t feel that way. Isn’t that what Bigfoot has and Doc Sportello lacks in Vice? Maybe ambition IS a vice?