I read Inherent Vice, the new novel by Thomas Pynchon.
Pynchon writes a psychedelic mystery featuring characters who continually smoke marijuana to remain continuously stoned and find themselves wittingly, or unwittingly, caught up in the machinations of a covert organization known as The Golden Fang. This hippie-noir story introduces hardboiled gumshoe Larry “Doc” Sportello (Philip Marlowe + Norville “Shaggy” Rogers) who is hired to investigate the related disappearances of a real-estate mogul and a member of a popular surfer band called The Boards. Doc gets side-tracked by his growing obsession with an elusive party yacht named The Golden Fang owned by an organization he posits is up to its armpits in counterfeiting, drug running, police corruption and kidnapping but may be simply a group of tax evading dentists.
Inherent Vice is more accessible than Gravity's Rainbow (the book for which Pynchon won a National Book Award in 1974 but is probably the least finished once started novel of all time) and is not as verbose or complex as most of his other novels, yet it features many of the staples of Pynchon's work: humor, paranoia, illicit drug use, cleverly named characters, covert organizations and a hard-to-grasp, meandering plot.
My favorite Pynchon novel is The Crying of Lot 49. Its protagonist discovers a secret mail delivery service called Tristero that disguises mail receptacles as trash bins, operates under the slogan W.A.S.T.E. (We Await Silent Tristero's Empire) and utilizes postage stamps featuring a muted post horn. Including a Hamlet-esque play within a play and a frustrating final sentence, this book leaves the reader guessing whether Tristero exists or is a product of the protagonist's active imagination. If you've never read Pynchon before, start here. If you want to read Gravity's Rainbow, don't. First, read Ulysses. If your mind doesn't explode and you don't curl into the fetal position muttering “Why, oh, why did I leave the comfort of illiteracy?” you'll be better prepared for Gravity's Rainbow.
