“I can’t say it often enough—change your hair, change your life.”
What’s impressive about Inherent Vice is that it’s still as quality as most of Pynchon’s writing yet is a slam dunk pretty late in the game. It’s in essence a rerun of CotL49 with its twists and turns and crazy all over the place plot points and the constant state of movement, yet obviously is painted this time in a distinctively hippie coat of colors, by which I mean tie dye and neon. Inherent Vice is by far the guy’s funniest- funny as his other works are, IV feels distinctly like a comedy and not just a philosophical/literary work with jokes sprinkled in. Sportello’s constant drug hallucinations and the book’s constant maziness really can make it a bit… er… hard to follow at times and even the Wikipedia plot summary won’t do you much good for a lot of it. A lot of the times the jokes are, sure, drawn in reference (the p-diddies acronym is pretty unfortunate), which I guess is alright considering it’s important for the 60s aesthetic and also helps elevate the feeling of this being a satire on stories that heavily pander to nostalgia or people who were young adults in a certain time period. Fortunately, the humor never feels unfunny despite all this. The cast of characters is far from P.’s most endearing/memorable (See: the whole sick crew from V.) but some characters (Sauncho, Jade/Ashley, Denis) were quite notable, funny, and interesting; sadly, this abundance of characters does cause Tolstoy syndrome (where you can’t differentiate any of the characters because there are too many) but that’s also part of the guy’s style I guess. Overall, it’s pretty funny and definitely a hearty victory for the guy. A pretty solid addition to the remarkably consistent Pynchon catalog.
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