Thomas Pynchon & The BBs

[Loaf]

I presume we've all read the hilarious account of When TP met BW? Anyway, Pynchon's latest book 'Inherent Vice' specifically mentions 3 BBs songs, amongst a host of other 60s and surf songs: Wouldn't It Be Nice, God Only Knows, an Help Me, Rhonda.

Check out the playlist: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000413861

I've just finished this book, and while it's not in the heavyweight league of Against the Day or Mason & Dixon, it's enjoyable in a similar way to Vineland or even Crying of Lot 49. Many have made Big Lebowski comparisons, and they're not far off.

for those who are interested, check out this Pynchon-narrated video for Inherent Vice: http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

[Ed Roach]

Thanks so much for posting this; I had no idea of the BB connection, but have intended to get it since reading this review in the LA Times last Sunday:

'Inherent Vice' by Thomas Pynchon

Southern California's 1960s past reemerges from the haze in this Chandler-like tale, set in the age of cannabis.

By Carolyn Kellogg >>>
August 02, 2009

"Inherent Vice" is Thomas Pynchon doing Raymond Chandler through a Jim Rockford looking glass, starring Cheech Marin (or maybe Tommy Chong).
What could easily be mistaken as a paean to 1960s Southern California is also a sly herald of that era's end. This, of course, is exactly the kind of layered meaning that readers expect of Pynchon.
His fans tend to be drawn to either his massive, bafflingly complex efforts -- the iconic, National Book Award-winning "Gravity's Rainbow," "Mason & Dixon" and "Against the Day" -- or to the more constrained, plot-driven narratives of "Vineland" or "The Crying of Lot 49."
It is the big books, with their parades of gloriously obtuse set pieces, full of slapstick and conspiracy and minutely researched ephemera, that established Pynchon as a writer worthy of intense inquiry. Yet having a plot doesn't make his work any less brilliant, any less Pynchonian.
"Inherent Vice" is a perfect case in point. It has a plot. It has a main character. This clear structure will, no doubt, disappoint the big-book boosters, the obsessives who began contributing to the online wiki annotation of "Against the Day" before finishing its 1,085 pages.
But maybe we should all take a hit off a fat spliff and enjoy the dirty, brainy achievement of Pynchon's "Vice."
At the center of "Inherent Vice" is Doc Sportello, a low-key private investigator living in a dingy bachelor pad in Gordita, a beach community with Venice's grit and Malibu's surfers and hills. He has little affection for nonhippie flatlanders and a love of good weed. But Doc is more law and order than his indica might indicate: His occasional girlfriend is an assistant district attorney, and he's got an enduring across-the-divide, almost-friendship with Bigfoot Bjornsen, an LAPD detective who does Cal Worthington-like TV spots on the side. It's these straight-world connections that bring Doc's ex-girlfriend Shasta Fay Hepworth to his doorstep asking for help.
In a detective fiction setup worthy of Chandler, Shasta -- a minor actress and mistress of real estate mogul Mickey Wolfmann -- tells Doc that her lover's wife, who has a lover of her own, is trying to ship Mickey off to an insane asylum so she can take control of his fortune. Doc takes the case, but before his investigation can get off the ground, he's accused of murder, picked up and released by the cops and the FBI and discovers that both Shasta and Mickey have gone missing. No client, no money, but a mystery to solve.

Weirdness and obsession
Doc does true detective work -- dressing up in disguises, following leads -- yet he's stoned most of the time and easily distracted. His world is full of Pynchonian weirdness: an ex-junkie sax player who has faked his own death and is living, unrecognized, with his band in Topanga Canyon; a surfer who ventures out too far to catch impossible waves; a lawyer fixated on the minutiae of "Gilligan's Island" and other trash TV; and Mickey's collection of pornographic ties, decorated with images of his lovers -- although Shasta is conspicuously missing.
Nearly every character has an obsession or addiction. Doc's almost constantly altered state allows the unreal to shimmer against reality like light on an ocean. Sentences appear and Doc wonders if he's said them aloud; he never finds out, and we can't be sure. A clue discovered on an acid trip is as valuable as anything learned while straight. And his cannabis-induced paranoia is only a quarter turn from his detective work -- especially when he comes across references to the mysterious Golden Fang. Doc knows the Golden Fang is a boat with a mysterious, historic past. But it also seems to be a consortium of horny Silver Lake dentists, not to mention an Asian gang connected to drugs and money, Vietnam and China.

In classic Pynchon fashion, random incidents add up to conspiracy -- maybe. Behind powerful figures loom shadowy, more powerful figures, and complex layers of knowledge lead to confusion as much as clarity. There is also a lot of sex (if little romance), many pop-culture allusions (one scene references at least two classic noir films), characters who cross over from Pynchon's other work ("Vineland," predominantly) and silly names galore.

It's easy to forget, among all his games and puzzles, that Pynchon can write razor-sharp beauty with the best of them. A page-long description of the Santa Anas demands a place next to classic passages by Chandler and Joan Didion.

In Pynchon's big books, these devastating descriptions, particularly of place, are often swept away in the tide of prose and characters. Here, in a novel that focuses on Los Angeles so sharply that Tommy's is pinpointed by its cross streets, they shine.

L.A. on his mind

Pynchon, now 72, apparently lived in Southern California in the 1960s, and the attention to L.A.'s geography implies that the region has remained on his mind. Maybe he's got a clear sense of recall -- or maybe he comes back to visit or has devoted time to exploring Google Maps' street views. Either way, his details of the city are precise.
The Internet does make an appearance in "Inherent Vice," with a reference to the pre-Web ARPAnet and a prescient sense of future connection. "Someday," a real estate agent says, "there will be computers for all this, all you'll have to do's type in what you're looking for . . . and it'll be right back at you with more information than you'd ever want to know, any lot in the L.A. Basin all the way back to the Spanish land grants -- water rights, encumbrances, mortgage histories, whatever you want." The idea reads as both hope and lament.
And yet, if "Inherent Vice" exhibits nostalgia, it is not for the Los Angeles of yesteryear but for the days when genuine mystery was possible, when Doc's acid trip could be as relevant as Det. Bjornsen's world, when complex layers could both contradict and coexist. It's a love letter to a time when obsessives couldn't get all the answers from computers, when we might embrace the unknowable.

Still, after getting pretty far out, "Inherent Vice" eventually circles back and ties up all its loose ends. It has a climactic moment, a cushiony denouement -- by gum, closure. If this stands in counterpoint to Pynchon's most acclaimed work, perhaps we should pay heed to the novel's title: "Inherent Vice" refers to a hidden defect that undermines a property's worth, a marine-legal term for a Shakespearean flaw. It could refer to Los Angeles; it could refer to the 1960s. Or it could refer to the author's work itself: With Pynchon's brilliance comes readability.


The link to the video really blew my mind!  I recognized just about every little spot where it was shot...  Thanks again.

[othereric]

Whoa whoa whoa. I'm a huge Pynchon fan and obviously a huge Brian Wilson fan but I've never heard the story of them meeting before. What are the details?

[Bill Barnyard]

And of course Pynchon was once a friend of Jules Siegel.

 

[Ed Roach]

(Whoa whoa whoa. I'm a huge Pynchon fan and obviously a huge Brian Wilson fan but), 
I've never heard the story of them meeting before. What are the details?

See, funny thing is, I'm not a Pynchon fan, only because I haven't ever read him.  But again, when I read the Times review, I knew I had to read this book.  Now, I realize I had read/heard the Brian story way before this, and reread it in Carlin's book; (I've even got photos in that book!)  Here's the story, though:


Pet Sounds

In his March 1977 Playboy article, "Who Is Thomas Pynchon...And Why Did He Take Off With My Wife?", Jules Siegel claims he visited Pynchon in his one-room apartment in Manhattan Beach, California, while on assignment to do an article on Bob Dylan for The Saturday Evening Post, to wit:


"I told him [trP] about the Dylan assignment. 'You ought to do one on The Beach Boys,' he said. I pretended to ignore that. A year or so later, I was in Los Angeles again, doing a story for the Post on The Beach Boys [ultimately published by Cheetah magazine]. He had forgotten his earlier remark and was no longer interested in them. I took him to my apartment in Laurel Canyon, got him royally loaded and made him lie down on the floor with a speaker at each ear while I played Pet Sounds, their most interesting and least popular record. It was not then fashionable to take The Beach Boys seriously.

"'Ohhhhh," he sighed softly with stunned pleasure after the record was done. 'Now I understand why you are writing a story about them.'"

Then later...

According to the 2006 bio of Brian Wilson, Catch A Wave: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson (Peter Ames Carlin, Rodale, 2006), Jules Siegel and Pynchon paid a visit to Brian in Beverly Hills:

When Siegel brought his friend Thomas Pynchon up to the house one night, the famous hipster novelist sat in stunned, unhappy silence while the nervous, stoned pop star — who had dragged him into his then-new Arabian tent to get high — kept kicking over the oil lamp he was trying to light. "Brian was kind of afraid of Pynchon, because he'd heard he was an Eastern intellectual establishment genius," Siegel recalls. "And Pynchon wasn't very articulate. He was gonna sit there and let you talk while he listened. So neither of them really said a word all night long. It was one of the strangest scenes I'd ever seen in my life." (p.103-104).

[buddhahat]

I'm a Pynchon fan although must confess to a general feeling that much is going over my head when I read his books. I am currently re-starting Against The Day for the 3rd time (!), to get it out the way in prepararation for Inherent Vice, which I'm really excited about, especially considering The Beach Boys connection!

Am actually enjoying ATD much more this time, although that might be something to do with the Pynchon Wiki I have on my ipod on the bedside table!!

[Loaf]

I'm a Pynchon fan although must confess to a general feeling that much is going over my head when I read his books. I am currently re-starting Against The Day for the 3rd time (!), to get it out the way in prepararation for Inherent Vice, which I'm really excited about, especially considering The Beach Boys connection!

Am actually enjoying ATD much more this time, although that might be something to do with the Pynchon Wiki I have on my ipod on the bedside table!!

Against the Day is my favourite Pynchon so far (I'm saving Gravity's Rainbow until i've read everything else). The Pynchon wiki is an excellent resource for all his books, but if you want a bit of discussion too, try the 'Chumps of Choice' website: http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/

It was enormous help for me, especially providing more info on the historical events referenced.

Here's an idea for anyone with any connections: If Brian wants to make a new record, why not have him set music to the lyrics found in Pynchon's books...?

Oh, man, that would be good. Think about it, it gets better and better.

[buddhahat]

I'm a Pynchon fan although must confess to a general feeling that much is going over my head when I read his books. I am currently re-starting Against The Day for the 3rd time (!), to get it out the way in prepararation for Inherent Vice, which I'm really excited about, especially considering The Beach Boys connection!

Am actually enjoying ATD much more this time, although that might be something to do with the Pynchon Wiki I have on my ipod on the bedside table!!

Against the Day is my favourite Pynchon so far (I'm saving Gravity's Rainbow until i've read everything else). The Pynchon wiki is an excellent resource for all his books, but if you want a bit of discussion too, try the 'Chumps of Choice' website: http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/

It was enormous help for me, especially providing more info on the historical events referenced.

Here's an idea for anyone with any connections: If Brian wants to make a new record, why not have him set music to the lyrics found in Pynchon's books...?

Oh, man, that would be good. Think about it, it gets better and better.

Ha ha! Maybe Brian in 67 might have been well up for that, with its intellectual kudos and all, but not sure if he'd be sold on it nowadays, nor his management for that matter: Commercial appeal = 0

Reminds me that Pynchon was allegedly in a band in the 60s: the Insect Trust. Either that, or he merely wrote the lyrics to one of their songs - The Eyes of a New York Woman, I think it was called. As with all things Pynchonian, the exact truth of his involvement is slightly blurry. Nevertheless, a great band and well worth hearing.

Thanks for the heads up re the Punchon message board - I will check that out!

[roll plymouth rock]

Ha! I was thinking of posting a thread of this nature after reaching the mention of "The Boards" in IV...definitely good to see it started on here.

Some of the more LA-savvy board members will appreciate this article:
http://www.wired.com/special_multimedia/2009/pl_print_1708