Status Updates From Vicio propio

34

"They were looking for those pictures I took, man, I know it. My stash was all over the floor, they cleaned out the fridge, put everything in the Ostracizer and made smoothies and didn't even leave any for anybody else."

"'Anybody else,' that's you, Denis. Why should they leave you any?" Denis thought about this…

Let's try this one again.

Congratulations, hippie scum, and welcome to a world of inconvenience!

"Actually I'm a marine lawyer."

Doc thought about this.

"You're ... a Marine who practices law? No, wait— you're a lawyer who only represents Marines...”

I was lost the entire time. Got through half the book and couldn’t finish it. The entire books seemed like one long bad acid trip but it is about the 60’s in LA so I guess it’s my fault. Wanted to like this book but couldn’t connect with Doc or any of the characters.

Pynchon describes everything in such specific detail that he ends up in run-on sentences and I lose track of what we were initially even talking about. I understand that’s the entire point of this hazy private-eye mystery but it works inconsistently for me.

I *love* the writing style in this book so much

Interesting that the Vegas chapter isn’t in the movie. I can o ly imagine PTA didn’t wanna explore Vegas again after making “Hard Eight”

Grooovy

reading before bed

nap time!

Okay enough

Holy God, must practice reading better. Brain feels dyslexic

Far out man

Offshore winds had been too strong to be doing the surf much good, but surfers found themselves getting up early anyway to watch the dawn weirdness, which seemed like a visible counterpart to the feeling in everybody's skin of desert winds and heat and relentlessness, with the exhaust from millions of of motor vehicles mixing with microfine Mojave sand to refract the light toward the bloody end of the spectrum...

“Mind if I have one of those?” [cigarettes]
“You don’t want to start smoking, Bigfoot, smokin’s bad for your ass.”
“Yes well I wasn’t planning to smoke it in my ass, was I?”

No me acuerdo de en qué página lo dejé pero pfff muy bola

"Actually, I'm a marine lawyer."

Doc thought about this. "You're...a Marine who practices law? No, wait- you're a lawyer who only represents Marines..."

I barely ever can keep up with what’s going on and I think that’s the point.

The seemless transitions from first to third person and back are swift

So funny

Pinchon does a fantastic job of making me feel like I’m tripping balls with them

1973 long goodbye philip marlowe if he smoked weed instead of cigs…love when a guy is just put into situations

All of the descriptions of scenes and characters’ actions and movements and details of the environment are so vivid and puts me right in the room. However, the dialogue is pretty hard to follow along, mostly cause they’re all stoned. It makes me feel stoned myself, which I think is the point.

Finished Chapter 19, where Doc meets up with a wealthy client and makes a drop-off.

Well that ends Doc’s plan of getting the evidence (which leads back to him) off his hands and into someone else. Im feeling that the epilogue is already tying up loose ends, although the plot itself is completely baked the more I read it (as in it is high off its rocker that it wonders around aimlessly)

Finished Chapter 18, where Doc gets a surprise visitor.

Looks like it’s the end of a long chapter, which means that we are about to have an epilogue to the whole ordeal. Also, looks like some of the loose ends are wrapping up like shoelaces. According to “stoner logic” that is.

Up to Chapter 18, where Doc encounters Adrien, and gets an unexpected surprise in his own car.

Looks like we are onto the wrapping up phase of the book, as Doc’s misadventures in the late sixties have become pretty erratic, yet simply psychedelic. I’m not sure about this, but I think the book did a pretty good job at world building, even if the overall story is dazed and confused.

Finished Chapter 17, where Doc gets some truth about Coy from the man himself & Shasta.

Ok, now we got a little backstory about the elusive Coy, which I’m not going to give out here due to being a huge spoiler. By the way, We are nearly at the end of the book, which is over 300 pages long, so there’s got to be conclusion happening that would either be satisfying or divisive.

Finished Chapter 16, where Doc gets interrogated, learns hidden secrets about Bigfoot’s past & the LAPD’s darkest secret, discovers another Golden Fang lead, and finds Tariq & Clancy getting it on.

Ok, now we are getting somewhere with the whole “Golden Fang” mystery. I’m pretty sure the protagonist has got to be one of the most dazed, yet realistic portrayals of stoner PIs.