The Counterforce: Thomas Pynchon's INHERENT VICE

by J.M. Tyree, Jessica Sequeira (Translation)

Literary Nonfiction. Thomas Pynchon's cult detective novel, Inherent Vice, depicts drug-addled private investigator "Doc" Sportello, a leftover of 1960s idealism, on an errant quest to decipher the disappearance of a real estate tycoon. As in his other books, Pynchon imagines a "counterforce" of marginalized dreamers and weirdos seeking a more humane world. Tracing Inherent Vice's hilariously tangled plotlines and its hallucinatory prose, J. M. Tyree explores the clues that link a paranoiac thriller set in Nixon-era Los Angeles to toxic national myths that define America today. Tyree arranges each chapter after something Pynchon stands against--werewolves, sobriety, linear time, Hollywood--and defends the liberties taken in Paul Thomas Anderson's film of Inherent Vice. If, as Pynchon suggests, another past is possible, then perhaps a different future is possible. A lucid guide to Pynchon's idiosyncratic historical fiction, THE COUNTERFORCE argues that facts alone cannot save us. We need better stories.

Genres: Criticism

190 pages, Paperback

Published March 16, 2021

About the author

J.M. Tyree is the Nonfiction Editor of New England Review. He was a Keasbey Scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, and a Truman Capote-Wallace Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer in Fiction at Stanford University. He currently teaches as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at VCUarts (Virginia Commonwealth University).

Reviews

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is how I like my film and literary criticism -- personal, far-reaching, and fun.

[Jeremy Johnston · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not coherent and not about Inherent Vice :)

[Dank Wit]

oh, the pleasure of finding the best goodreads diss I've seen in a book thus far, in a volume I likely wouldn't have discovered/purchased without it