I’m about two-thirds through Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, Inherent Vice. I haven’t looked at any of his work for years but this is short and tongue-in-cheek LA noir set in the 70s hippy novel and it is laid-back and nothing much is going on but larded with so much LA and California nuance that it just slides along like a genuine low rider. And it is very funny, in that same droll, dry, sly way. On page 232 our hero, the private detective Doc has some coffee and Ding Dongs for breakfast.
When he got back, he flipped on the TV and watched Monkees reruns till the local news came on. The guest today was a visiting Marxist economist from one of the Warsaw Pact nations, who appeared to be in the middle of a nervous breakdown, “Las Vegas,” he tried to explain, “it sits out here in middle of desert, produces no tangible goods, money flows in, money flows out, nothing is produced. This place should not, according to theory, even exist, let alone prosper as it does. I feel my whole life has been based on illusory premises. I have lost reality. Can you tell me, please, where is reality?” The interviewer looked uncomfortable and tried to change the subject to Elvis Presley.
No tricks? Just clear and transparently allegory-rich prose? Pynchon is sounding more like DeLillo in his old age. Or is it that Pynchon is just sounding more like the clearer-and-transparently-allegory-rich echo of himself that reverberated through DeLillo?