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? 

Thoughts on Don DeLillo’s White Noise (1985)

I couldn’t help but find myself comparing the end of White Noise to Camus’ The Stranger.  The terseness of the shooting scene, the insensitive harming of another with the inhumane, animalistic self-reflection…it was just very Camusian for lack of a better word. 

But the ending wasn’t the best part, not by a long shot. The weirdness of the novel, the only intimations as to deeper meaning, the fact that it made you think, made you define… “What is nature?”… These were the best parts of the book. 

A toddler that won’t speak, a maybe genius teenager who runs with an asking-for-it Guinness record attempter, a wife named “Babs,” Hitler Studies, photographic-memory-having colleagues,  a pervert colleague who hits on the aforementioned “Babs,” and of course, the airborne toxic event. 

And all of it “caged” in death (just like the snakes). Or should we say the fear of death? Just as death gives life context and delineation, death gives White Noise life and delineation. What is the airborne toxic event if not nearness to THE ownmost possibility? What is Dylar if not to push away THE ownmost possibility?  Why run the stadium stairs if not to meet THE ownmost possibility? Yes, death my friends, does it make life rare? Does it turn your years of life from a ubiquitous carbon to a rarefied diamond? 

I don’t think DeLillo knows…and that’s a good thing. That he asks in the first place is more important. Does he believe? The nuns believed, if only in a perfunctory way so that we couldn’t believe…capisce?

Is Delillo saying we need both sides of the belief coin? Maybe, just like we need both sides of life and death.

As I read the book I also couldn’t help but reflect on my undergraduate years, those years shaped by the coins with sides like Martin Heidegger and Leo Buscaglia. Heidegger taught me we are beings-unto-death facing an ownmost possibility that ends all others and Buscaglia taught me that “I don’t brood over death, I’m too busy living.”

So it’s like Delmar in O’Brother Where Art Thou?

Pete: Wait a minute. Who elected you leader of this outfit?

Ulysses Everett McGill: Well Pete, I figured it should be the one with the capacity for abstract thought. But if that ain't the consensus view, then hell, let's put it to a vote.

Pete: Suits me. I'm voting for yours truly.

Ulysses Everett McGill: Well I'm voting for yours truly too.

[Everett and Pete look at Delmar for the deciding vote]

Delmar O'Donnell: Okay... I'm with you fellas.

Life or Death?

You bet.