We are now less than one month away from the release of Pynchon's latest (August 4). Here's the description which may or may not have been written by Pynchon himself: The (ugly) cover: Anyone else as excited for this as I am?
So far, so awesome. 50+ pages in and I'm hooked. This is, shockingly enough, a real page turner, very funny, and quite a delight. It's easily Pynchon's most accessible book (helps that it clocks in at a little over 300 pages).
I just finished it. Fun and certainly accessible, and I enjoyed every second of reading it, but I'm already starting to forget what happened. Maybe the book has inflicted Doper's Memory upon me.
I'm over half-way through at this point, but I can certainly grant the "forgetability" factor. It's a hell of a romp, but it doesn't strike me as a book that sticks a la GR or M&D. But then, both those books are books to be absorbed and not read in one sitting. I get the feeling that IV is Pynchon's stab at a real bestseller (and rumors abound that the publisher is already shopping the filming rights...) - in other words, he's doing the McCarthy thing (getting old, wanting to break the bank), presumably sans Oprah appearance.
That description reads like Vineland 2. Not that there's anything wrong with that...Vineland was fun, if more Tom Robbins than Tom Pynchon. Rushdie's NYT review was about the only positive one that Vineland got though. How have the reviews been for Inherent Vice? I'm guessing that the words "accessible" and "Pynchon" aren't what most reviewers had in mind.
Here's a compendium of first tier Vineland reviews. All of these are positive to one degree or another, but they mostly lack the effusive praise you find in reviews of Pynchon's major works. I get the same impression of the IV reviews. The only "negative" one that I've come across is the NYT review, which is more "not positive" then it is actively negative.
I'm a little late to the party, but my local library system has eight copies, but they've been checked out non-stop since it came out. I'm about halfway done. I have to admit the first few pages had me thinking, "Oh no, this is way too much work for a 'light read'", but then he sends one of his stoner friends out for pizza, asks if he just grab one piece of tofu off it, and the friend says "Actually, that's a marshmellow." Then he had me. A lot of the reviews had mentioned similarities to The Big Lebowski. Am I the only one who pictures Jeff Bridges as Doc?