“If there is something comforting – religious, if you want – about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Denton, Texas
(click to enlarge)
“You can only cruise the boulevards of regret so far, and then you’ve got to get back up onto the freeway again.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice
Cover of Inherent Vice, by Thomas Pynchon
So, last September I read Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon because… well, because it is Thomas Pynchon – but more specifically because I had read that Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, The Master) was making a film based on the book and I wanted to experience the text first.
Pynchon has occupied a great many of my thoughts and a large part of my time ever since I first picked up a paperback copy of Gravity’s Rainbow at the KU Bookstore in 1976 or so (I was not able to finish it for a quarter century – not until a summary, an online page by page annotation, and wiki helped me keep the characters straight). I have read most of the rest of his oeuvre (still have an unopened copy of Bleeding Edge on my bookshelf) and am most assuredly a fan.
Up until I read Inherent Vice I considered Pynchon’s fiction to be unfilmable. After reading it, I agreed with PTA in that Inherent Vice was only almost unfilmable. He had tried to adapt Vineland into a movie, but realized that was impossible.
Because of business and inattention to the Internet, I missed the Dallas showings of the film in December, but finally a wider release was in the offing. My son and his friends saw it over the initial weekend, but I wasn’t able to fit the time in so I decided to go after work.
On Monday I logged into the Alamo Drafthouse website (it’s only a stone’s throw from my house and my work) and bought a ticket for that evening. I was tired and it was bitter cold and I knew that if I didn’t buy it ahead of time I would wimp out after work and go home and sleep.
The Alamo Drafthouse is such a nice experience. You get a reserved seat, craft beer (Temptress Baby!) and the food isn’t bad at all. I ordered a hamburger – a Royale With Cheese, of course. Alamo’s policy of no talking and no cellphones is certainly a welcome perk.
So… how was the film.
If you are a fan of Paul Thomas Anderson you will be disappointed. This isn’t a PTA movie; it is a Pynchon movie. PTA’s movies can be weird (Frogs!?) but this one is WEIRD. What makes it crazy making if you don’t know what to expect is that he sets the stage with so many familiar tropes and then abandons them without a moment’s hesitation or regret. From the trailer you might think that it is a detective story – about a search for a missing billionaire and the detective’s old girlfriend – hoary old familiar plot devices -, but from the book I knew that this is a feint – that nothing is going to be explained, nothing is going to make sense, and the mystery will fade away rather than be resolved. What the hell exactly is The Golden Fang anyways?
You might also think that this is going to be a druggie comedy in the style of The Big Lebowski. There are elements of that – but the comedy is overshadowed by Pynchon’s signature paranoia and despair.
But, that said – I thought it was great. It is the kind of thing you will like if you like that kind of thing.
Despite the ending being changed and large sections of the novel excised (you have to do this to get a tolerable running time) it is amazingly faithful to the book – for good and bad.
What was crazy for me is the way the characters speak. I have been reading Pynchon for so long I am very familiar with the unique language a Pynchonian character uses – his cadence, style, and subject matter. I have been reading these letters on the page and hearing them in my head for decades.
Now, to hear these words coming out of another human being’s mouth was astounding. I could only shake my head at this ephemeral world of imagination now come to life on the silver screen.
“The Line makes itself felt,– thro’ some Energy unknown, ever are we haunted by that Edge so precise, so near. In the Dark, one never knows. Of course I am seeking the Warrior Path, imagining myself as heroick Scout. We all feel it Looming, even when we’re awake, out there ahead someplace, the way you come to feel a River or Creek ahead, before anything else,– sound, sky, vegetation,– may have announced it. Perhaps ’tis the very deep sub-audible Hum of its Traffic that we feel with an equally undiscover’d part of the Sensorium,– does it lie but over the next Ridge? the one after that?”
― Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon
Cedars Open Studios
1805 Clarence Street
Dallas, Texas
There is a geometry to art.
“What goes around may come around, but it never ends up exactly the same place, you ever notice? Like a record on a turntable, all it takes is one groove’s difference and the universe can be on into a whole ‘nother song.”
—-Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice
Cover of Inherent Vice, by Thomas Pynchon
I have always had an odd and powerful relationship with the novels of Thomas Pynchon. I have spent a good portion of my life with his work in my hands. It started with Gravity’s Rainbow – which took me twenty five years to read… and I consider it to be my favorite novel. Even though I first tried to read it in college I was not able to get through the massive tome until the advent of the internet. I had to follow along with a chapter by chapter summary and a hypertext compendium of characters and information to keep from getting lost.
Then, over the years, there was the almost equally massive V – then the short and bitter Crying of Lot 49. Time marched on to the West-Coast based Vineland and by the time Mason & Dixon arrived I was writing online and chronicled the devouring of this text as I went along.
From my old blog – The Daily Epiphany
Daily Epiphany -Friday, March 19, 1999
Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs
May 2, 1997. A little less than two years ago. That’s the exact day that
Mason & Dixon arrived from Amazon (an online journal is useful for finding useless factoids like that).Over those two years I have, sometimes dutifully, more often sporadically, with plenty of vacations and sabbaticals, slogged through the pages. I was well known to be seen carrying that book around, it’s cover handmade by me from the red white and blue Tyvek wrapper it arrived in. “Aren’t you finished yet?” asked on many occasions.
That didn’t bother me. After all, it took me twenty five years to read Gravity’s Rainbow. In some ways, Mason & Dixon, though shorter and less complex, was even more difficult. The weird faux colonial Olde English and bizarre capitalization and punctuation added an Extra Dimension of Difficulty to the usual Pynchonian Puzzlements.
So slowly I kept at it. Week by week the irregular, oval coffee-stain on the pager-edges moved, slice by imperceptible slice, from my right hand to my left.
Tonight, I finished it.
I bent the cover back and slid the crude Tyvek cover off and dropped it into the trash. It was replaced with the original two-layer cover, preserved from the travails of two years of pawing, stored safely in a dresser drawer.
In order to make room in my bookcase for the Pynchon, I had to pull something out. So, now, it’s Infinite Jest. It’s only 1,079 pages long. Print looks a little small. I even have a bookmark for it. I bought the book used and it contains a loose snapshot of some scrubby looking guy posing by a motorcycle. I have, of course, absolutely no idea who this is. That’ll do.
The thickness and size seemed familiar so, on a whim, I pulled that Tyvek bookcover out of the basket, turned the cover around.
It fit exactly.
A few years later, I tackled Against the Day, then fell off the Pynchon wagon (for no real reason except maybe the intrusion of real life) until now.
Now, I decided to read Inherent Vice – Pynchon’s noirish dark psychedelic detective crime novel.
“Dealing with the Hippie is generally straightforward. His childlike nature will usually respond positively to drugs, sex, and/or rock and roll, although in which order these are to be deployed must depend on conditions specific to the moment.”
—- Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice
“It had been dark at the beach for hours, he hadn’t been smoking much and it wasn’t headlights – but before she turned away, he could swear he saw light falling on her face, the orange light just after sunset that catches a face turned to the west, watching the ocean for someone to come in on the last wave of the day, in to shore and safety.”
—- Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice
I had the trade sale paperback on the shelf for a long time, but I had to read it right now because, next month, they are coming out with a movie made from the story.
Oh, and not just any movie, a Paul Thomas Anderson movie.
Imagine that, Paul Thomas Anderson filming a Pynchon novel. This is truly the best of all possible worlds.
Modern technology has advanced now to the point I could sit in my reading chair with the book in one hand and a tablet in the other, with web pages queued up to alphabetical and page-by-page summaries to help me with the complex plot and kaleidoscope of characters.
This is arguably his most accessible novel, if for no other reason it has a familiar setting and is woven upon a loom of an established detective genre. It is the only thing I’ve read by Pynchon that I would say is remotely filmable – though just barely.
It still has the Pynchonian style of paranoia, subtle complexity, and, especially, a huge cast of odd characters with odder names. I enjoyed the book immensely. It is, without a doubt, the kind of thing you will like if you like that kind of thing.
Now I am psyched for the film. Only a few days before the premiere. This will be the second beloved book (after Cloud Atlas) committed to celluloid (actually its digital equivalent) by a stylish director in the last two years. I loved Cloud Atlas (both the book and the film) though it predictably bombed at the box office.
I suspect a similar fate for Inherent Vice – I can’t imagine the ordinary teenage-minded moviegoer enjoying the complex interplay of humor and horror that the Pynchonian Universe produces splashed across the silver screen. But I will be there, staring up as if it were meant for me alone.
“You need to find true love, Doc.”
Actually, he thought, I’ll settle for finding my way through this. His fingers, with a mind of their own, began to creep toward the plastic hedge. Maybe if he searched through it long enough, late enough into the night, he’d find something that might help — some tiny forgotten scrap of his life he didn’t even know was missing, something that would make all the difference now.”
—- Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice
Looking at the IMDB page – it sure looks weird, seeing all those big time (and not so much) stars arranged against those wonderfully outlandish Thomas Pynchon character names.
Reese Witherspoon … Penny
Jena Malone … Hope Harlingen
Joaquin Phoenix … Doc Sportello
Josh Brolin … Bigfoot Bjornsen
Sasha Pieterse … Japonica Fenway
Owen Wilson … Coy Harlingen
Benicio Del Toro … Sauncho Smilax
Michael K. Williams … Tariq Khalil
Eric Roberts … Mickey Wolfmann
Maya Rudolph … Petunia Leeway
Martin Short … Dr. Blatnoyd
Sam Jaeger … Agent Flatweed
Katherine Waterston … Shasta Fay Hepworth
Martin Donovan … Crocker Fenway
Timothy Simons … Agent Borderline
Yvette Yates … Luz
Serena Scott Thomas … Sloane Wolfmann
Keith Jardine … Puck Beaverton
Elaine Tan … Xandra
Madison Leisle … Goldfang
Steven Wiig … Portola Barkeep
Jeannie Berlin … Aunt Reet
Christopher Allen Nelson … Glenn Charlock
Hong Chau … Jade
Jefferson Mays … Dr. Threeply
Peter McRobbie … Adrian Prussia
Samantha Lemole … Gold Fang Mom
Toyia Brown … Harmony
Diana Elizabeth Torres … Lourdes
Sophia Markov … Amethyst Harlingen
Andrew Simpson … Riggs Warbling
Victoria Markov … Amethyst Harlingen
Martin Dew … Dr. Tubeside
Michael Cotter … Rhus Farthington
Taylor Bonin … Ensenada Slim
Laura Kranz … Chryskylodon Patient
“Later they went outside, where a light rain was blowing in, mixed with salt spray feathering off the surf. Shasta wandered slowly down to the beach and through the wet sand, her nape in a curve she had learned, from times when back-turning came into it, the charm of. Doc followed the prints of her bare feet already collapsing into rain and shadow, as if in a fool’s attempt to find his way back into a past that despite them both had gone on into the future it did. The surf, only now and then visible, was hammering at his spirit, knocking things loose, some to fall into the dark and be lost forever, some to edge into the fitful light of his attention whether he wanted to see them or not.”
—-Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice
This amazes me to no end. Seeing the Sagrada Familia is something I want to do before I die… now I want to live long enough to see it finished.
I had better start taking care of myself.
50 People On ‘The Most Intellectual Joke I Know’
It’s hard to pick a favorite one…. maybe:
Q: What does the “B” in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for?
A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot.
I’ve had a small fascination with the icons marked on shipping crates… especially ones with art in them.
I always find this blog from the Dallas Museum of Art interesting
There are a lot of good things on this earth, but there are few things better than this:
Congratulations to Alice Munro. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature this week.
I’ve always said she is the unquestioned master of the short story. Glad to see someone working exclusively in the underrated form and genre of the literatry short story (pretty much) get this recognition. The only problem with reading Munro, as a short story writer, is that when you finish one of hers you realize that you will never be that good – that she has done something you will never be able to pull off.
There’s a new Pynchon novel out, Bleeding Edge. I’m not as excited as I have been in the past… (I have a lot to read) but still… I have to go read it.
Malcolm Gladwell has a new book out: David and Goliath
Excellent talk by him here: Malcolm Gladwell discusses tokens, pariahs, and pioneers
INTERVIEW: WHY DO MOTORISTS GET SO ANGRY AT CYCLISTS?
When I walked around the Chihuly glass exhibit at the Arboretum… here, here, here, here, here, here, and here – I heard one questions several times. People asked, “What happens when it hails.”
This is Texas, and they don’t say “if” it hails, they say, “when.” Even the Arboretum literature addresses that. It said that the glass is tougher than you think, and that Chihuly has capacity standing by to replace anything that breaks. When it hails.
Well, it hailed. It looks like the only damange is to the white blossoms in the Persian garden pool, the ones I saw the second time I visited the exhibition. They said the works will be replaced and the rest of the glass is unscathed.
The Chihuly glass in the Persian Garden Pool that was damaged by hail at the Dallas Arboretum. This photo was taken before the storm.
For those of you from places where the weather isn’t quite so… Texas-like, here’s some homespun video of what we live with here. All from Thursday afternoon.
From the article:
Piano says that because the Nasher is a privately held collection, it is free to leave its Flora Street museum and go elsewhere — although he noted that this is not something the Nasher family wants to do, that it was the dream of founder Raymond Nasher to put his collection in the Dallas Arts District at that location. Were Nasher alive today, Piano says, he would “mad, mad, mad, mad, mad.”
I agree, I think the Nasher is playing way too nice with this. If it were my collection I would be in talks with, say New York City and see if the colection could be relocated to… maybe a nice site in Central Park. They would leap at the chance. I know the city of Dallas would be hurt by the move, but to make it up they could use the Nasher site for low income housing and maybe a homeless shelter. I’m sure the Museum Tower next door would enjoy that.
The Museum Tower Condominiums tower over Tony Cragg’s “Lost in Thought”
Finally, a Dallas Food Truck Park. Coming soon. Faster, please.
From the article:
For generations, government policies have been geared toward creating endless landscapes of strip malls like the one Bentivolio looks at with such fondness. In the process we have gutted our traditional downtowns. We have eaten up farmland and forest. We have, …, endangered the lives of our senior citizens. We have engineered a world where children cannot walk or bike to school without risking their lives. We have created countless places devoid of any real social value.
An interesting article, but one that, for me at least, is ultimately useless. You might as well send a heroin addict an piece of paper listing the inconvieniences of shooting up.
Oh, good! Now I can carry Gravity’s Rainbow around on my Kindle.
Swedish Edition of Gravity’s Rainbow
I’ve discovered that one of my favorite cult bands, My Favorite, is now The Secret History… with the same quirky feel. Good stuff.
A Seven-Song Primer On Michael Grace Jr., New York’s New Wave Cult Hero
What’s going on this weekend?
Well, on Friday, there’s the Arts District Summer Block Party. These are always a lot of fun. I might do Late Night at the DMA. The Nasher has been showing kid’s movies on an inflatable screen in the garden, but this week it’s 500 Days of Summer. I’m getting a little tired of Zooey Deshanel’s Goofy Quirky Zany Adorkable Hipster Doofus persona… but still…
Then, on Saturday, the Deep Ellum Outdoor Market is growing and ecompassing Filipino Fest – which sounds like fun.
Sunday? Don’t know yet… but I feel like maybe some Oak Cliff…. Maybe some Bar Belmont. Oh, Shakespeare in the Park is starting up with Twelfth Night.
Any other ideas?
It’s been a bad year for great musicians.
RIP Eduard Khil
“There is also the story about Tyrone Slothrop, who was sent into the Zone to be present as his own assembly–perhaps heavily paranoid voices whisper, ‘his time’s assembly’–and there ought to be a punchline to it, but there isn’t. The plan went wrong. He is being broken down instead and being scattered. His cards have been laid down, Celtic style, in the order suggested by Mr. A.E. Waite, laid out and read, but they are the cards of a tanker and feeb: they point only to a long and scuffling future, to mediocrity…-to no clear happiness or redeeming cataclysm.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Bill Chance 