Zack’s Reviews > Inherent Vice > Status Update

I’ve got to say: reading a Pynchon novel is interesting because I do find him to be a naturally funny person—the way he describes things makes me chuckle—but whenever he is deliberately attempting a joke, I find him to be the most painfully unfunny writer I know.

“You don’t want to start smoking, Bigfoot, smokin’s bad for your ass.”
“Yes well I wasn’t planning to smoke it in my ass, was I?”

Really curious about why he decided to return to the same themes from Vineland, published 19 years prior

“Doc was used to outdoor concerts where thousands of people congregated to listen to music for free, and where it all got sort of blended together into a single public self, because everybody was having the same experience. But here, each person was listening in solitude, confinement and mutual silence…”

“What Sortilegé had tried to point out about Ouija Boards…was that concentrated around us are always mischievous spirit forces, just past the threshold of human perception, occupying both worlds, and that these critters enjoy nothing better than to mess with those of us still attached to the thick and sorrowful catalogs of human desire.”

Sometimes he puts the jokes aside and locks in

This guy (Pynchon) loves a good banana joke. Thinks they’re way funnier than they actually are. There’s a recurring bit about the head detective having an addiction to chocolate frozen bananas. I feel like I keep politely smiling at all these bits like when my dad says something corny

“Yeah, PIs should really stay away from drugs, all ‘em alternate universes just make the job that much more complicated.”

“But what about Sherlock Holmes, he did coke all the time, man, it helped him solve cases.”

“Yeah, but he…was not real.”

I chuckle

Best part about reading a Pynchon book is how there are an equal amount of jokes that don’t land as jokes that do. I don’t know whether or not I’m being serious.

“Ask you something, Doc?”
“Long as it ain’t the capital of South Dakota, sure.”
Ugh

I believe this is the third time I’m trying to read this book (according to my records, I checked this out in 2019 and 2021). Every time I’ve bounce hard and fast, despite this being a hippie send-up of Chandler (the big reason for that is because we already have the hippie send-up of Chandler—The Big Lebowski).

I think I’ve finally started to click with Pynchon’s late style, so I have hopes for this