By S.E. PEARSON
Staff Writer
The Daytona Beach News-Journal
The Doc abides.
Doc (also known as Larry Sportello) -- the main man in Thomas Pynchon's often hilarious and entertaining mystery, "Inherent Vice" -- recalls the Dude from the Coens' cult classic film, "The Big Lebowski," except Doc is really a private eye, you dig? If you like doper humor, this novel should be right up your alley.
"Vice" is set in fictional Gordita Beach, Calif., during the Nixon presidency, just on the heels of the Manson Family murders, and when computer data collection/surveillance is in its early stages.
Doc gets drawn into the case of a missing Los Angeles real estate big shot through his ex-girlfriend who is in a relationship with the land mogul. Bummer. Like Philip Marlowe, Doc has to deal with a pain-in-the-butt cop -- who may or may not be on the take -- and an assortment of colorful characters and thugs.
But it's not the mystery plot that drew me in. It's Doc and his friends' painfully hip Sixties dialogue and mental journeys, often enhanced with mind-altering substances, that makes Pynchon's work such a fun trip.
Doc and his friends offer some amusing and mind-blowing social observations. Among them is Sauncho, a marine lawyer and some-time legal counsel of Doc's, who often expounds on 1960s pop culture, such as this deconstructive analysis of TV ad icon Charlie the Tuna:
"It's all supposed to be so innocent, upwardly mobile snob, designer shades, beret, so desperate to show he's got good taste, except he's also dyslexic so he gets 'good taste' mixed up with 'taste good,' but it's worse than that! Far, far worse! Charlie really has this, like obsessive death wish! Yes! he wants to be caught, processed, put in a can, not just any can, you dig, it has to be StarKist! suicidal brand loyalty, man, deep parable of consumer capitalism, they won't be happy with anything less than drift-netting us all, chopping us up and stacking us on the shelves of Supermarket America, and subconsciously the horrible thing is, is we want them to do it. . . ."
The book is filled with humorous detours like this and it's the journeys that matter -- the destination? Not so much, man.
If you've been put off by the length of Pynchon's previous works, check out "Inherent Vice," which checks in at under 400 pages. Groovy!
"Inherent Vice," by Thomas Pynchon, The Penguin Press, 369 pages, $27.95, hardback
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