Skip to content

Inherent Vice

Pages
431
Published
2009
Language
English

Synopsis

In 1970s Los Angeles, a perpetually stoned private investigator named Doc Sportello is hired by his ex-girlfriend to investigate a conspiracy surrounding a ruthless real estate mogul. What begins as a simple case spirals into a labyrinth of drug culture, paranoia, and a conspiracy that stretches far beyond the initial request. Pynchon's dense, darkly comic prose turns the noir detective structure into a sprawling meditation on the era's counterculture and the paranoia of the Vietnam War era.

Vibe

About the author

T
Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist based in New York City and noted for his dense and complex works of fiction. Hailing from Long Island, Pynchon spent two years in the United States Navy and earned an English degree from Cornell University. After publishing several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he began composing the novels for which he is best known: V. (1963), [The Crying of Lot 49](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2636665W) (1966), Gravity's Rainbow (1973),...

Characters

Larry "Doc" SportelloProtagonist
Shasta Fay HepworthSupporting
Coy HarlingenSupporting
Michael Z. "Mickey" WolfmanSupporting
All characters in Inherent Vice