Celia Wallhead (Univeristy Of Granada)
1. Introduction: looking through the fog
Jeff T. Johnson focuses (if that is the right word) on the haze, mist, fog, that pervades sixties California in Pynchon’s portrayal: “This time around, Pynchon’s narrative frame is a look back at something peering forward out of the haze, an intoxicating cloud of unknowing.” (Johnson 2009) Inherent Vice has been dismissed as just a good beach read, but the paradox Johnson points to, looking back at something looking forward, shows how we must, as with other Pynchon books, notably Mason & Dixon and Vineland, not only meditate on the past but see how it has shaped the future of America. As always, the reader has the advantage, in that we can see much more clearly, we know the future, at least nearly forty years of it, as in this case. As we look back with hindsight, we see that the hippie movement –if we can call it a movement– the Psychedelic Sixties, came to an end more-or-less in the year –1969– of the capture and trial of Charles Manson. It seems that the hippies lost and their opponents, the government and the fascists, won. Fritz and Sparky, whizz kids of the early computers and nascent Internet, and friends of the protagonist, Larry “Doc” Sportello, tell him that as the communications network expands, one of the effects is going to be a totalitarian Big Brother-like system of spying on ordinary people (which will do him out of a job). If the government is out to control all Americans (which is what was feared of the postal system in Crying of Lot 49), there is a great need to attempt to resist government monopoly, especially on the so-called truth of information.
2. The passing of the hippie era
The passing of the hippie era is seen as a tragedy, the period being a transient respite from general rottenness –Vietnam apart– allowed by God and taken back by Him (254-5) The inherent flaw (“inherent vice” of the title) of hippiedom lies in being in thrall to drugs. The strength or advantage of hippiedom –freedom– leads to its own weakness: substance abuse. Coy became a snitch in order to try and kick his habit, he is also an example of betrayal, a snitch like Frenesi Gates in Vineland, but he repents in the end. He is an example of the living dead, whom we have found in other Pynchon works. Doc became a Private Detective through having to pay back a debt contracted through his drug use. The inherent flaw of fascism, utopian desires, when taken to their extreme, harm the innocent, the weakest.
It is postulated that the Manson case helped precipitate the end of the hippie era. Although Manson is a real historical figure, like Nixon and Reagan, so we could call this novel, like so many of Pynchon’s others, “historical metafiction,” Pynchon uses Manson to illustrate the “turn.” Charles Manson turned from harmless hippie to taking up the violence of those who opposed him and attacked the middle class status quo, or its more visible exponents.
3. Fascists versus hippies
Fascism seems to become prevalent at times when people are disappointed with the way things are going or afraid of certain elements in their society. Pynchon reminds us of Fascist Germany in different ways –the name Adrian Prussia is an obvious one– as if to say that the threat is always there. Philip Roth showed us in The Plot Against America (2004) how easily America could have gone fascist in the middle of the twentieth century, and, indeed, before that, Pynchon had given us Frenesi Gates flipping in Vineland. Jeff Severs has pointed out that Pynchon seems to specialize in the individual flip or turn. The difference between 1984’s Vineland, although they portray the same period and place: Nixon’s Vietnam era and Reagan’s California, is “9/11.” What anachronistic hints does Pynchon make towards 2001? Perhaps the name of Tariq Khalil, the black Muslim who comes to ask for Doc’s help and looks askance at his white man’s afro (14). The fear of fascism looks ahead to the paranoid vigilance that would come to the western world after the attacks on the Twin Towers.
“Bigfoot” Bjornson has seen the film The Pride of Miss Jean Brodie and knows much more about the subject than Doc. The film came out in that year, 1969, and is based on Muriel Spark’s novel of 1961. The Scottish writer tries to show how pride and exceptionalism can morph into isolationism and xenophobia.
Fascism calls for patriotism, for support and defence of the country and its leaders, even to the glorification of violence. Returning to the Pynchon, hippies, with peace as their password, find that their pacifism makes them suspect patriots. Anti-government sentiment unites opposites: “We found we shared many of the same opinions about the U.S. government.” (16) Tariq Khalil of the “Black Guerrilla Family” is talking about the Aryan Brotherhood the Jewish Mickey Wolfmann has ironically surrounded himself with.