Reviews
"Inherent Viceis the funniest book Pynchon has written. It's also a crazed and majestic summary of everything that makes him a uniquely huge American voice. It has the moral fury that's fueled his work from the start - his ferociously batshit compassion for America and the lost tribes who wander through it." --Rolling Stone "The new Pynchon: a beach read and a heartstring puller. It's almost surreal. A" --Entertainment Weekly "A Great American Read-a terrific pastiche of California noir, wonderfully amusing throughout (and hard to quote from in a family newspaper because of the frequent use of, uh, colorful spoken language) and a poignant evocation of the last flowering of the '60s, just before everything changed and passed into myth or memory." --Washington Post "How pitch-perfect noir can one get?" --Chicago Tribune --Los Angeles Times "Pynchon's prose is so casually vernacular, so deeply in the American grain, you forget that someone composed it. Inherent Vicefeels fizzily spontaneous- like a series of jazz solos, scenes, and conversations built around little riffs of language." --Newsweek "A deliciously composed dark comedy.......I found myself charmed and pleased with the way Pynchon meets the genre square and fair...Whatever you think of the '60s, or maybe you don't think anything about it, this book may sing to you too." --NPR, "All Things Considered" "What Pynchon is after with the prodigal absurdities of Doc's adventures is not really parody, but something larger. They are a way to enter into a time and place of extravagant delusions, innocent freedoms, and an intoxicated (literally) sense of possibility. And to do it without sententiousness, to write in psychedelic colors disciplined by a steel-on-flint intelligence." --The Boston Globe "Reading Thomas Pynchon again, one is reminded that fiction can clarify the world-capturing it as it seems to be-and it can also change the world by seeing it new ways. Pynchon is a magician in the second category: He applies language to what we know and all we've missed-giving new shape to both....The book is exuberant, delightfully evocative of its era, and very funny." --O Magazine, " Inherent Vice is the funniest book Pynchon has written. It's also a crazed and majestic summary of everything that makes him a uniquely huge American voice. It has the moral fury that's fueled his work from the start - his ferociously batshit compassion for America and the lost tribes who wander through it." -- Rolling Stone "The new Pynchon: a beach read and a heartstring puller. It's almost surreal. A " -- Entertainment Weekly "A Great American Read-a terrific pastiche of California noir, wonderfully amusing throughout (and hard to quote from in a family newspaper because of the frequent use of, uh, colorful spoken language) and a poignant evocation of the last flowering of the '60s, just before everything changed and passed into myth or memory." -- Washington Post "How pitch-perfect noir can one get?" -- Chicago Tribune Inherent Vice is Thomas Pynchon doing Raymond Chandler through a Jim Rockford looking glass, starring Cheech Marin (or maybe Tommy Chong). What could easily be mistaken as a paean to 1960s Southern California is also a sly herald of that era's end. This, of course, is exactly the kind of layered meaning that readers expect of Pynchon... With Pynchon's brilliance comes readability." -- Los Angeles Times "Pynchon's prose is so casually vernacular, so deeply in the American grain, you forget that someone composed it. Inherent Vice feels fizzily spontaneous- like a series of jazz solos, scenes, and conversations built around little riffs of language." -- Newsweek "A deliciously composed dark comedy.......I found myself charmed and pleased with the way Pynchon meets the genre square and fair...Whatever you think of the '60s, or maybe you don't think anything about it, this book may sing to you too." --NPR, "All Things Considered" "What Pynchon is after with the prodigal absurdities of Doc's adventures is not really parody, but something larger. They are a way to enter into a time and place of extravagant delusions, innocent freedoms, and an intoxicated (literally) sense of possibility. And to do it without sententiousness, to write in psychedelic colors disciplined by a steel-on-flint intelligence." -- The Boston Globe "Reading Thomas Pynchon again, one is reminded that fiction can clarify the world-capturing it as it seems to be-and it can also change the world by seeing it new ways. Pynchon is a magician in the second category: He applies language to what we know and all we've missed-giving new shape to both....The book is exuberant, delightfully evocative of its era, and very funny." -- O Magazine, Inherent Viceis the funniest book Pynchon has written. It's also a crazed and majestic summary of everything that makes him a uniquely huge American voice. It has the moral fury that's fueled his work from the start — his ferociously batshit compassion for America and the lost tribes who wander through it." --Rolling Stone The new Pynchon: a beach read and a heartstring puller. It's almost surreal. A” --Entertainment Weekly A Great American Read—a terrific pastiche of California noir, wonderfully amusing throughout (and hard to quote from in a family newspaper because of the frequent use of, uh, colorful spoken language) and a poignant evocation of the last flowering of the '60s, just before everything changed and passed into myth or memory.” --Washington Post How pitch-perfect noir can one get?” --Chicago Tribune --Los Angeles Times Pynchon's prose is so casually vernacular, so deeply in the American grain, you forget that someone composed it. Inherent Vicefeels fizzily spontaneous—like a series of jazz solos, scenes, and conversations built around little riffs of language.” --Newsweek A deliciously composed dark comedy…….I found myself charmed and pleased with the way Pynchon meets the genre square and fair…Whatever you think of the '60s, or maybe you don't think anything about it, this book may sing to you too.” --NPR, All Things Considered” What Pynchon is after with the prodigal absurdities of Doc's adventures is not really parody, but something larger. They are a way to enter into a time and place of extravagant delusions, innocent freedoms, and an intoxicated (literally) sense of possibility. And to do it without sententiousness, to write in psychedelic colors disciplined by a steel-on-flint intelligence.” --The Boston Globe Reading Thomas Pynchon again, one is reminded that fiction can clarify the world—capturing it as it seems to be—and it can also change the world by seeing it new ways. Pynchon is a magician in the second category: He applies language to what we know and all we’ve missed—giving new shape to both….The book is exuberant, delightfully evocative of its era, and very funny.” --O Magazine
