The Counterforce: Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice (...Afterwords) (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780999431689)

Literary Nonfiction. Thomas Pynchon's cult detective novel, Inherent Vice, depicts drug-addled private investigator Doc Sportello, a leftover of 1960s idealism, on an errant quest to decipher the disappearance of a real estate tycoon. As in his other books, Pynchon imagines a counterforce of marginalized dreamers and weirdos seeking a more humane world.

Tracing Inherent Vice's hilariously tangled plotlines and its hallucinatory prose, J. M. Tyree explores the clues that link a paranoiac thriller set in Nixon-era Los Angeles to toxic national myths that define America today. Tyree arranges each chapter after something Pynchon stands against--werewolves, sobriety, linear time, Hollywood--and defends the liberties taken in Paul Thomas Anderson's film of Inherent Vice. If, as Pynchon suggests, another past is possible, then perhaps a different future is possible. A lucid guide to Pynchon's idiosyncratic historical fiction, THE COUNTERFORCE argues that facts alone cannot save us. We need better stories.

Author: J. M. Tyree
ISBN-10: 0999431684
ISBN-13: 9780999431689
Publisher: Fiction Advocate
Language: English
Published: 03/16/2021
Pages: 190
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.20lbs
Size: 6.00h x 4.00w x 0.50d