I have two theories about the possible origins of Thomas Pynchon's new novel, Inherent Vice. Theory one: It's a postmodern genre work that ironizes the very conventions of detective fiction that it follows, while at the same time articulating and satirizing the excesses of violence, drug use, sloth and sex that typify late-20th-century American culture. Stretching, bending and self-reflexively interrogating the stretchy, bendy, interrogative textures of detective fiction, the novel, this first theory proposes, is an exercise in, say, epistemological entropy and/or consumptive consumption.
Zwischen Paranoia und Klamauk, Idealismus und Anarchie, Groucho Marx und dem Una-Bomber – in seinem neuen Roman bewährt sich Thomas Pynchon als grandioser letzter Vertreter der Postmoderne