Thomas Pynchon’s reputation has risen and fallen over the past five decades; one of his conspiracy-chasing characters might note a pattern of inverse relation to rises and falls in the world’s financial markets. Gravity’s Rain- bow, 36 years ago, confirmed Pynchon as America’s new great reclusive genius; since then battalions of academics have made careers reinforcing his reputation for obscurantism, while sharp-jawed reviewers have leapt upon each perceived failure to top that book with the excitement of jackals scenting a dying lion. Inherent Vice may generate huge sighs of relief from both sides; it’s a third the length of Pynchon’s previous novel, Against the Day, and it’s structured as a detective story.
A period detective story, no less, set in 1969, when paperback copies of Pynchon’s second, slimmest, novel, The Crying of Lot 49, might still be found sticking out of the back pockets of dungarees.
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