Inherent Vice

Really hard to pick just one Pynchon for this list, as he is an all-around master of satire. But Inherent Vice is probably his LOL funniest, a stoner take on the detective genre set in the hippie world of 1970s southern California. The cinematic adaptation by Paul Thomas Anderson ain’t half bad, either. 

There are just some novels, and writers for that matter, who stick in your memory.

And for me, there aren’t enough superlatives in existence to capture just how fantastic I think Pynchon is. The elusive author just has “it” - whatever “it” is. The X Factor, raw talent, it’s got many names. No matter what you call it, Thomas Pynchon is dripping in it. 

And for me, Inherent Vice is his best work. From the loveably strange main sleuth Larry "Doc" Sportello to the convoluted plot that deliberately twists you this way and that, it’s got it all. One of… show more.

Pynchon’s books are often dense and long and hard to get through (but rewarding if you power through). Inherent Vice is one of his lighter reads–accessible enough that Paul Thomas Anderson made it into a movie. It’s a funny, bizarre detective novel set in 1970s Los Angeles. Inherent Vice’s private eye protagonist Doc Sportello is looking for a vanished man in the sundrenched, sun-blasted landscape of southern California. There is no doubt that Pynchon consciously copied much of Chandler’s plot in an homage to the classic work. Like Murakami though, Pynchon works a kind of magic with it that… show more.

Here’s a novel deeply perfumed with pot smoke and paranoia. Filled with Pynchon’s trademark puns, odd character names, and odder characters, it’s his most accessible novel, a detective story set in the early 1970s. Its main character, P.I. Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello, has the sleepy air of a confirmed stoner, but he’s dogged in following leads in the disappearance of an old girlfriend and her former lover. If you find yourself in a state of confusion about what’s going on, relax, Sportello’s confused, too. I love the book’s hodgepodge of 70s memorabilia: Hawaiian shirts, check; random psychedelia, check; free love, check;… show more.