Inherent Vice

by Thomas Pynchon

Now she was laying some heavy combination of face ingredients on him that he couldn’t read at

Doc, who had a chronic problem telling one California blonde from another, found an almost 100-percent classic specimen—hair, tan, athletic grace, everything but the world-famous insincere smile, owing to a set of store-bought choppers which, though technically “false,” invited those she now and then did smile at to consider what real and unamusing history might’ve put them there.

“As one who’s been down that particular exit ramp,” Hope advised, “you can only cruise the boulevards of regret so far, and then you’ve got to get back up onto the freeway again.”

and life in psychedelic-sixties L.A. offered more cautionary arguments than you could wave a joint at against too much trust, and the seventies were looking no more promising.

Doc was reminded for the uncountableth time that for every band like this one there were a hundred or a thousand others like his cousin’s band Beer, doomed to scuffle in obscurity, energized by a faith in the imperishability of rock ’n’ roll, running on dope and nerve, brother- and sisterhood, and good spirits. The

’cause what I am is, is like a small-diameter pearl of the Orient rolling around on the floor of late capitalism—lowlifes of all income levels may step on me now and then but if they do it’ll be them who slip and fall and on a good day break their ass, while the ol’ pearl herself just goes a-rollin on.”

“Sure!” was their attitude, “you want dope? Here’s your dope, you fucking idiot.”

she was the Kozmic Traveler, deep issues Out There awaited, galaxies wheeled, empires collapsed, karma would not be denied, and Real Japonica must always be present at some exact point in five-dimensional space, or chaos would resume its dominion.

Back in junior college, professors had pointed out to Doc the useful notion that the word is not the

thing, the map is not the territory.

here in the capital of eternal youth, endless summer and all, that fear should be running the town again as in days of old, like the Hollywood blacklist you don’t remember and the Watts rioting you do—it spreads, like blood in a swimming pool, till it occupies all the volume of the day. And then maybe some playful soul shows up with a bucketful of piranhas, dumps them in the pool, and right away they can taste the blood. They swim around looking for what’s bleeding, but they don’t find anything, all of them getting

more and more crazy, till the craziness reaches a point. Which is when they begin to feed on each other.”

it was like the beach, where you lived in a climate of unquestioning hippie belief, pretending to trust everybody while always expecting to be sold out—but he didn’t have to enjoy that either, especially.

Doc knew the lilt and tessitura of most every sad song in the profession but still liked to take a glance at the sheet music.

and it felt like he’d just been dreaming about climbing a more-than-geographical ridgeline, up out of some worked-out and picked-over territory, and descending into new terrain along some great definitive slope it would be more trouble than he might be up to to turn and climb back over again.

What goes around may come around, but it never ends up exactly the same place, you ever notice? Like a record on a turntable, all it takes is one groove’s difference and the universe can be on into a whole ’nother song.”

“What, I should only trust good people? man, good people get bought and sold every day. Might as well trust somebody evil once in a while, it

makes no more or less sense. I mean I wouldn’t give odds either way.” “Wow, Doc. That’s

Doc got out his lens and gazed into each image till one by one they began to float apart into little blobs of color. It was as if whatever had happened had reached some kind of limit. It was like finding the gateway to the past unguarded, unforbidden because it didn’t have to be. Built into the act of return finally was this glittering mosaic of doubt.

Something like what Sauncho’s colleagues in marine insurance liked to call inherent vice.