Benjamin Linder

Take everything that marks a Thomas Pynchon novel – winding sentences, intimate bonds, unmanly but not uncourageous violence, and lots oral sex – set it in Southern California, and structure it like a Raymond Chandler mystery, and you get Inherent Vice. Political, sexual, and something of a stubborn-youth story, Pynchon’s drug addled PI romp is as fascinating as it is fun, if you can keep up. So, drop out, drop in, tune up, tune in, and explode.

Thomas Pynchon’s hippie-noir, set in LA in the ‘70’s right at the end of the flower power and free love era, sees Lawrence ‘Doc’ Sportello, P.I., investigate the disappearance of a missing real estate magnate, one Mickey Wolfmann. There’s a pool going with odds he winds up dead and a big payday for anyone who bet he shows up one day saying he kidnapped himself. As the case unfolds it seems that everyone may be in on it, including but not limited to the FBI, certain members of the LAPD with questionable loyalty, Neo-Nazis and an international drug smuggling crime syndicate known by those in the know as The Golden Fang. So, how does the laid-back, joint-smoking, psychedelic-tripping private eye whose only requisite for taking a case is a good cause come into the mix? He’s doing a favor for an ex, Shasta Fay Hepworth, possibly the love of his life, not out of hopes of winning her back, but simply as a tribute to the love he still feels for her. This is even after she tells him Wolfmann has been cheating on his wife with her.

In the pursuit of Sportello’s ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend, the plot dips and winds, turns itself around and then passes out on the rug before jerking awake and explaining the whole convoluted thing to you, which was revealed to the narrator in technicolor clarity in the midst of an acid-induced fever dream. Following the disappearance of Wolfman, the subplots extend and unfold like so many blades of grass, waving hypnotically in the high water. But don’t fret, Pynchon weaves plots like Lucy Telles weaves a basket. Every Nazi who winds up dead at Chick Planet right in the middle of the Pussy-Eater’s Special and every groovy and insane girl who winds up in a cocaine-addled dentists office in the middle of the afternoon comes to bear on the disappeared Wolfmann. Describing the turns of the novel’s plot becomes far less interesting than hinting at them because even though one writing a review of the book ought to, it’s far more fun to hint at the fantastical shape of such a book. After all, the twists and turns of Inherent Vice manage to raise the most ludicrous details to the utmost significance. This details include the American war in Vietnam and a hefty quantity of counterfeit cash with Nixon’s face on it that might be buried somewhere at sea, maritime salvage law and Howard Hughes’s relationship with the FBI and his casinos in Las Vegas, something about neo-Nazis as hired muscle and, of course, the LA music jazz scene. The plot finds itself connecting to all of these groups in a way that proves to be both improbable and inevitable. And it manages to walk this line because it ties it all together with a quintessentially American hero, Doc Sportello, a lone wolf who’s finally believable in both his heroism and his aloneness, and a realistic representation of arguably the most American setting, Los Angeles.

Inherent Vice, and Thomas Pynchon in general, does believable implausibility incredibly well. Inherent Vice is an update of the noir detective novel in the best possible way. Because when Raymond Chandler writes a flawed hero, like Philip Marlowe, his flaws are that he manipulates and beats women. The same goes for Jake Gittes of Chinatown. Doc Sportello’s flaws, on the otherhand, are that he’s short and a little forgetful, and sometimes inappropriately erect, but not in a way that’s violent or harassing. A big part of this is the way sex has been written in stories where men are portrayed as emotionally unavailable tough guys. It conjures in the mind some scene of a man standing, half-dressed, shirtless with his back to a bed and a woman, far younger than he, with a bed sheet pulled up just below her armpit saying something about how “Oh, that was wonderful!” to which the man gives a knowing smirk. This scene plays out as if the key to good sex is emotional unavailability and, pardon the pun, hardness. The sex in Inherent Vice is, at the very least, fun and often a little emotionally charged. When sex is had it’s shared, not won or compelled. And the emotional aspect of it is one of the best parts of the character of Doc Sportello as the new model of a modern major general, masculinity for the modern man. Han Solo, Rick Blaine, Philip Marlowe, even Rick Sanchez in “Rick and Morty,” are all male heroes set up to be alone and detached and tough because of their detachment, a quality glorified in scenes of sexual ‘intimacy.’ This is not the hero you’ll find in Inherent Vice, who feels a pang of hurt when he hears from his ex-girlfriend about her new lover. This, of course, doesn’t stop him from taking on the FBI and killing a man in a gun-battle.

So, for my own sake, why is this depiction of heroism and sexuality so refreshing? Because if you’re a bit of a lonely person yourself, as many writers are, to have grown up with Philip Marlowes or Han Solos or Ricks, Blaine or Sanchez, it feeds the impulse to seal yourself off in your loneliness, to treat the fear and pain, and often heartbreak that accompany it as weaknesses and hobbles that will make transforming that loneliness into heroism impossible, or as childish things that need to be put away. To have a symbol of masculinity whose manly qualities arise from his being openly feeling and communicative and sympathetic towards one’s fellow man is nothing short of a liberation. Doing the right thing, having good sex, being a good person as defined not by what cause one serves but by the direct impact one has on the lives of those around them, these are some of the qualities that we’ve been told make a person good, and that are informed by feelings. Why should we admire heroes that shun having fun or never experience rejection save one defining moment? Why should we hold up heroes that exhibit the very qualities we desire are necessitated by the suppression and rejection of the psycho emotional core in ourselves makes life good and fun? I suppose it has something to do with the ends of these movies. In the end, Rick Blaine makes the right decision, which is also the hard decision. Something about his aloofness says that he can make this call because he has steeled himself against the frivolities only other, weaker men can enjoy like love or grief. But also, that’s for the birds, man. If you want a hero who’s as quick to shoot a Nazi as he is to kiss a pretty girl, opt for the one who embarrasses himself by unexpectedly tearing up, and can never tell what he says outloud and what he says in his head. But also know that it doesn’t matter to him because he hardly ever thinks anything he’d be ashamed to say.