The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 22 October 2009
by Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon has long been the subject of adoration among a certain kind of countercultural nerd reader. It helps that he maintains his mystique by being adamantly reclusive (barring the occasional appearance on The Simpsons). This reader had read just The Crying of Lot 49, and that many years ago, so it is difficult to gauge this novel in relation to his earlier prize-winning work. What we have here, though, is a rambunctious mystery novel. The protagonist is Doc Sportello, a hippie investigator operating from a Los Angeles office above a doctor who doles out amphetamines disguised as vitamins. Sportello smokes pot most of the time, and dabbles in acid and PCP along the way. He is certainly no angel. The novel opens when his ex-girlfriend walks in and hires him to find out about a plot against her new and very wealthy boyfriend, who also happens to be a big time property developer. As is the convention of such novels, plot chaos ensues. One body after another turns up, and there are conspiracies large and small swirling around this one job.
The setting is late 1969 or early 1970, on the tail end of the freewheeling 1960s, and during the early days of the Charles Manson trial. The atmosphere is one of dissipation and collapse. The hippie dream, certainly, has grown somewhat sour and the forces of conservatism are making a comeback. The mystery itself is somewhat muddled, also as in a lot of such books, but it doesn't feel like the main idea in the book, anyway. First of all, we have Pynchon's creative evocation of the time and the place. The hippie culture and the various "alternative" lifestyles of the time are vividly described, along with their concurrent dissolution. There is a dark mood in LA after the Manson murders, and the mood permeates the book, despite it being regularly quite funny. Along the way, there's plenty of sex (the women in the book are all pretty much up for anything) and various passages with a vague undulating quality, as if seen through a drug-induced haze. The book is some kind of cross between Raymond Chandler and Hunter Thompson, and brings to mind, curiously, the 1969 James Garner movie Marlowe. And a movie reference isn't out of place, given the LA pop culture landscape of this novel. Doc's story is littered with numberless references to movies (particularly James Garfield movies), television shows and some of the minor artefacts that liven the narrative. This is, surprisingly, just enough to carry the reader through. The plot itself is somewhat low-key and the mystery is a bit short on suspense. The climax in the action goes off like a silenced pistol. In the end, though, this isn't what one eventually gets from this book. It is a popular genre, with many popular references and set in a popular cultural period. What lies beneath is a seediness and a sort of moody cultural critique that might be ultimately nihilistic, but somehow ends up being entertaining throughout.
Also by Pynchon: [Vineland]
[Other Mystery and Suspense books]