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Book review: Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice
Pynchon, known for his crazed epic fantasies, has surprised readers with a comparatively straightforward detective story - and it’s good
Who would have thought it?" asked Tim Martin in the Daily Telegraph. "One of America's most wilful and obscure writers has produced the most enjoyable beach read of the summer." Thomas Pynchon, best known for crazed epic fantasies such as Gravity's Rainbow, has written a relatively straightforward detective novel: a Chandleresque mystery, set in California in 1970, featuring a stoned hippie detective, rounded characters, a plot that "goes in straight lines" and a great deal of "very funny" dialogue.
Inherent Vice is often very amusing, agreed John Dugdale in the Sunday Times. But Pynchon has once again been led astray by his "Dickensian comic fertility". This book is wildly excessive: there are too many characters with silly names (Dr Rudy Blatnoyd, Trillium Fortnight) and there is "too much druggy humour". Pynchon is "proof that talent and good taste need not go together", said Aravind Adiga in the Times: brilliant writing goes hand in hand with tedious caricature. Even so, this novel is very enjoyable – "the perfect point of entry for a new generation of Pynchon readers".
Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon, Jonathan Cape, 384pp, £18.99 The Week Bookshop £17.09 (including p&p) ·
