Inherent Blog

Inherent Vice is the name of Thomas Pynchon's latest novel. And according to the reviewers (and the publisher Penguin Press), it is a noir novel. Pynchon (72) does the voice over for a promotional video. Check it out here. What's that, you say? You've never read a Pynchon novel, or you've tried, but you couldn't (or wouldn't) finish it? That may not be a problem. According to Joseph Bottum (no, I didn't make up that name), in his Wall Street Journal column: "'Inherent Vice' is the closest to beach reading that Thomas Pynchon has ever produced." And, for Pynchon, the novel weighs in at a very svelte 369 pages.

The story takes place in 1970s Los Angeles and tells the story of Doc Sportello, a hippy PI. Oh, and his business is called LSD Investigations (supposed to stand for Location, Surveillance, Detection -- yeah right). Sounds interesting to me. And, for what it's worth, according to the Wikipedia entry, "inherent vice" is: "a legal tenet referring to a "hidden defect (or the very nature) of a good or property which of itself is the cause of (or contributes to) its deterioration, damage, or wastage." The cover price is $27.95, but you can find it for less on Amazon. At the moment, Amazon appears to be selling it for $16.77 plus shipping.

In other noir news, thank you Mr. Johnson for reminding me of the Pacific Film Archive noir showings in Berkeley. Having a problem understanding their website? Stephen Johnson to the rescue (but God help you find parking).

According to Mr. Johnson: This Friday August 14 they are showing Anthony Mann's "Raw Deal" and also "No Man of Her Own" with Barbara Stanwyck in the great but little shown Cornell Woolrich movie based on his I Married a Dead Man novel. Saturday the 15th they show the Italian noir political thriller "Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion" (1970) about a super arrogant, authoritarian top police investigator who happens to be also a psycho murderer in the paranoiac days of the Red Brigades. On Sunday August 30, they show "Point of Order," the documentary about McCarthy, and also the noir drama "The Prowler" directed by Joseph Losey who was soon afterward driven out of Hollywood by McCarthyism. In September/October they will show the early noir movies of Otto Preminger including "Laura", "Fallen Angel", "Whirlpool", "Where the Sidewalk Ends", and "Angel Face" Wow! what a slambang series!

And as a brief follow-up, yes, GI Joe was a box office hit. As I mentioned in an earlier entry, there were no critics screening for GI Joe because ... well, it sucked. But Paramount figured the summer crowd wouldn't care, and they were right. Some critics, nonetheless, did what critics do. Geoff Berkshire of the Chicago Tribune wrote: "That G.I. Joe is completely ridiculous should come as a surprise to no one. That it's not an outright disaster might be a different story." My work is done here.