The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 8 February 2012
by Thomas Pynchon
In Pynchon's novel Inherent Vice, he portrays a California in which the hippie dream of the sixties is broken up and shattered by reactionary forces in our society. In the earlier novel, Vineland, Pynchon explored this theme in greater detail, with greater rigor, and with his trademark obsession with American popular culture and the war between progressive and reactionary forces. As clever and subversive as the counterculture is in this novel, one gets the sense Pynchon thinks that the forces of reaction and fascism are winning, here in 1984, the Reagan years, and during what he calls the Nixonian Reaction. This is the era in which the Revolution goes soft, but also finds itself under an increasingly sophisticated kind of covert counterrevolution, the forces of government agents run amok, men with long dark memories, a pathological patriotism, and a nearly unlimited budget. So, we meet Zoyd, a burned out dude living in the redwood forest of Northern California. He lives on odd jobs and a government check he gets each month as long as he annually proves his insanity. In years gone by, he was married to Frenesi Gates, an idealistic filmmaker in Southern California. Frenesi, in an improbable surrender to the sexual attraction of power, turns COINTELPRO informant with, and lover to, Brock Vond, one of those rabid FBI manipulators. (Indeed, the least convincing notes in the novel are those about sex: sexual prowess, sexual politics and sexual power.) Zoyd and their daughter, Prairie, hide in plain sight in the woods. Brock and his minions can keep an eye on them and keep them away from Frenesi, who is living in disguise, serving now as an agent, infiltrating drug cels and informing on other burned out remnants of the "movement". In the Reagan years now, something drives Brock Vond to break the cycle and habit of this little empire. Perhaps he feels the pressure of dropping budgets and the overall success of his little crusade. People begin to disappear and everyone feels the threat of his long reach.
It is difficult to describe what happens next. People go on the run, others go looking for help. History rises from the shadows. We're down the rabbit hole and have to deal with everything from Zen ninjas from the Santa Cruz mountains to rogue FBI agents suffering from television addiction with fantasies of making a movie about the whole scene. Friends and enemies (sometimes both) swirl in this sprawling novel. Pynchon has a genius for shifting perspective almost imperceptibly, from one character to another. We go way back into each history, full of unlikely and bizarre events. His cultural critique and style sound a lot like Hunter Thompson, and the almost fantastical adventure sounds a bit like Murakami. Pynchon's obsession with culture, our addiction to television and the bizarre trappings of celebrity and power, is brilliantly played for historical effect. He captures a mood, the shift from idealistic sixties kids to the money-obsessed yuppies of the eighties. But he is canny enough to know that the fix was always in. Nobody in power was going to let the real revolution come to pass. Much of his story remains vividly relevant today, especially in the wake of the past couple of administrations and their brazen lust for control.
The book is really quite brilliant, though it suffers from excesses. Pynchon is in love with his rambling critique and this reader got a little lost in his plot's sidelines and dead ends. One couldn't help but wonder if the book might have benefitted from another edit, making it a bit leaner and more focused. The ending, too, is somewhat anticlimactic. The story just seems to diffuse to its conclusion, as if the author is running out of steam. Still, along the way, there is Pynchon's cultural brilliance, capturing so many elements of the American landscape in one story. His depiction of the dissolute and confused culture of dissipated progressive revolution, living now deep in the woods, is perfect in tone. No other author so far has so well captured the essence of that shift. So the book is a little flawed. It is also quite brilliant.
Also by Pynchon: [Inherent Vice]