My past not quite reclaimed by Thomas Pynchon

Last night, trying to deal with insomnia, read Pynchon's Inherent Vice . Didn’t expect it to put me to sleep, just keep my mind off fact I couldn’t sleep.

In case you don't know, Inherent Vice is a detective novel that uses the freak culture of Southern California in 1970s the way Chandler used LA in the 30s

Pynchon’s writing about people in their 20s and 30s at a time when I was still in Cub Scouts.  But I recognize the types, fads, music references.

A lot of it persisted into my high school years, thanks to older siblings of friends passing along the traditions and tribal memories like joints.

Kids I knew inherited their older brothers and sisters’ record collections, tie-dyes, Zap Comics, bongs, addictions, attitudes, alienations, disengagement, creative energies.

So I knew a lot of second generation freaks, hippies, New Age mystics, and other variants of counterculture vultures and dropouts.

Just none of them could add to their embrace of a particular type adult wisdom, sophistication, glamour, or sorrow.

Still, Pynchon's characters and tropes are very familiar. Familiar, but not tangible. I can't *feel* my own past come alive through them.

I'm reminded of people, places, moments.

As I read It think, I wonder how Nina’s doing. Where's old Ray got to? Oh, yeah, Olcott and Bonnie!

But Nina, Ray, Olcott, Bonnie don't jump up out of the book at me.

Which isn't a comment on Pychon or Inherent Vice. It's a sign of my detachment from that period of my own past.

I can call up memories from then, but I can't call up the feelings or sensations that ought to be attached. The memories have no physical force.

Without that force they might as well not be my memories.

Sometimes, most times, it's as if I skipped the 1970s altogether.

It’s not exactly like what Paul Kantner said of the 60s.  If you can remember them, you weren’t there.

Still, many of the people I hung out with went through their late adolescence inside fogs of pot smoke, their brains stewing, percolating, humming, accelerating and decelerating under the influences of various chemicals.

So you’d expect that their memories might have hiccups in them.

But I spent the decade stone cold sober.

Comments

[CrayolaThief]

You're lucky you've got at least dawning memories. As a comparative youngster my impressions of the time period are mostly based on syndicated late night television. Probably not the last word in authenticity.

What did you think of the novel itself? I enjoyed that Pynchon seemed to be having a good time writing it. Thematically pretty slim though. I don't think it serves very well as an intro to his oeuvre for the uninitiated. Can't imagine telling anyone "if you like this, you'll flip your wig for Gravity's Rainbow." Lot 49 is the instrument for that.

My guess is the target audience is Those Who Were There, and Pynchon is doing the literary equivalent of phoning up some old buddies to reminisce about old times over a joint.

[Linkmeister]

I was 19 when the 70s began. I spent nearly seven years of that decade overseas, definitely not sober except when I was at work. The music of the period forms the bulk of my collection. I have memories of life in Japan and on Kwajalein, and then finishing the college degree in Hawai'i after moving here. Had I not been overseas I might have met a nice girl and settled down.

The roads not taken.

[mac macgillicuddy]

The only Pynchon I've read recently is Vineland, which I actually bought years ago and took that long to get around to. It struck me aso sort of a mix of Raymond Chandler, "X-files" and "My Name is Earl."

[actor212]

The 80s were my deKantnered decade. I was too young in the 60s to miss them. Indeed, 1969 could arguably be called the happiest year of my life, in totality.

[mac macgillicuddy]

Actor,

You may mean happiest year, so far

[Lance]

CrayolaThief, I think your description and assessment are both dead on. I'm enjoying it but it's frustrating because Pynchon keeps losing track of his plot as he gets tangled up in those phone calls home.