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Sunday, September 5, 2010

Ghosts From Charge Shot!!!’s Past: Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice

Posted by Andrew at 8:39 PM 

This new feature, Ghosts From Charge Shot!!!'s Past, will run every Saturday and aims to bring some of this stuff - both good and embarrassing - to the eyeballs of our newer readers, while taking long-time constituents on a trip down memory lane. Enjoy!

Summer’s end is upon us, but it’s not quite over yet – you’ve got until the fall equinox to hit the beach, cookout some piles of meat, and wait for network TV shows to come back from hiatus.

While you wait, why not curl up with a good book? At almost exactly this time last year Chris wrote his very first piece for us, a review of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice. Among other things, he called it “an immensely enjoyable beach read.” An excerpt:

“Pynchon has always been a doubled-edged sword for literary critics; on one hand, he's the man who writes books so complex that they need wikis in order to make sense of the plot. On the other hand, he's the man who fills his books with enough popular culture references to make the writers of Teen Beat blush, a man who refuses traditional interviews but has no qualms about appearing on The Simpsons. Literary critics have spent most of their time focusing on the former Pynchon while effectively ignoring the latter. In a way, this is unfair; Pynchon is as much a cultural critic as he is a beacon of postmodernism. And Inherent Vice is his first work to focus solely on popular culture while for once ignoring the complex structures and metanarratives that normally worm their way into his books.”

Check out the review, and see if it makes you want to check out the book. You’ve only got so many warm days left! tag! you're it! books, Ghosts