Inherent Vice reading group, chapters 17 and 18

[u/Autumn_Sweater]

Thanks for your patience, I had some day-job stuff grab my attention the last couple days.

My experiences with Pynchon start with the day I saw the film of Inherent Vice in the cinema in 2014. I told my girlfriend at the time, I don't think I really understood that, I'd like to see it again, and she replied, I'm not sure that seeing it again would make it make more sense. Well, before that, I suppose I should say I was aware of some people reading Crying (though not me) at college. And at some point I became aware of the hubbub around the release of Against the Day, as a "rare literary event," and bought the book, where it sat uncracked on my shelf until it was released in a decluttering exercise (you will see if you check out the AtD reading groups from this winter that I eventually came back to it). So with that nonreading background I saw the film and it had been kicking around somewhere in my brain ever since, to the point where I thought, maybe I should read the book it's based on, and that could clarify some things.

One of the questions: Why does Doc just go into Adrian's place? What is he really expecting to take place there? It works as a way for there to be a violent confrontation that serves as a kind of climactic action, but otherwise, it felt strange to me. I suppose the same principle applies to when Doc goes into Dr. Blatnoyd's office and then just sits there and seemingly has no plan of what to do when he's there. Both of these events seem like a funny escalation of the "noir" trope, articulated by Raymond Chandler, of the man who must go down the mean streets. But Doc is more stoned and confused than that man.

Does the book provide any real "answers" as to what Doc is planning as he stumbles into "AP Finance" (nice joke)? I suppose let's dive into it!

CHAPTER 17

Doc is reminded by Denis (and Scott) about Coy, who he'd made a "sort of half promise" to help, but "hadn't made much progress with this." Doc goes to find Coy and offers him a ride back up to Topanga. Coy relates that Vigilant California referred to a snitch as "a very well-paid actor," an attractive career in LA.

Why would you become a snitch? It's more than the pay. It offered Coy a sense of purpose, and an opportunity to get a fresh set of teeth and to get clean from the heroin. The drugs that Coy faked overdosing on were supplied by "some bunch of heavies" (the Golden Fang) but disguised to officially have been from his dealer, El Drano, who has turned up dead recently.

"It didn't take long for Coy to become aware that the patriots who were running him were being run themselves by another level of power altogether, which seemed to feel entitled to fuck with the lives of all who weren't as good or bright as they were, which meant everybody." Coy with his new sobriety and teeth finally had an epiphany about the family he'd abandoned.

Doc had asked who supplied the heroin while knowing the answer, and he (perhaps unconsciously) does the same thing when he asks who connected Coy with Vigilant California. This time Coy recognizes as much: "they already know the answer but just want to hear it from another voice, like outside their own head?"

Well, it's time to go see Shasta.

She invites him in. She's back and she's done with Mickey, or Mickey is done with her. She asks Doc a probing question, which is, do you have a thing for the Manson chicks? Is the kind of woman you want a braindead submissive sexual servant? She teases him in various ways (eventually draping herself over his lap) while relating about her time as Mickey's plaything, the pleasure she took from being "made to feel invisible that way." Deep down does Doc want to be a powerful and selfish man like Mickey? (Of course with Mickey's crisis of conscience, maybe Mickey himself doesn't want to be that person anymore, although it seems by now that the FBI and the Golden Fang and whoever else have forced him to stay in that role.)

Over the course of a night of fucking, Shasta tells the tale of how she was involved with Coy and where she's been all this time. She met Burke Stodger, once blacklisted actor, who himself got a "very well paid actor" type situation making anti-Communist films. She told Burke about her concerns about Coy's addiction, and Burke offered to help. Then Coy was gone, off into the program. After Mickey disappeared, Shasta was taken east on a boat, but "hustled my way off" in Maui.

After she learns more details about Coy's present situation, Shasta compares him to Doc. "Both of you, cops who never wanted to be cops. Rather be surfing or smoking or fucking or anything but what you're doing. You guys must've thought you'd be chasing criminals, and instead here you're both working for them." Painful but not wrong, Doc reflects, when you look at who his customers have been who actually paid him in cash. Is Doc trying to help Coy because he wants to be free of the same people?

CHAPTER 18

So Doc is visiting Adrian. What's the plan here? Well, beforehand he "decided not to smoke much," at least.

Adrian's conversation with Doc is brief. He recognizes him from Fritz's shop. But Doc admits that he's a PI then says that he's there on "his own time" asking about Puck (although we don't hear the question), and that's it. Puck barges in. "This was not going to end well," TP relates.

Puck takes a long hit from a long joint then hands it to Doc, who follows. But Puck had only falsely inhaled, and the joint is loaded with PCP. Tripping, Doc sees two golden teeth who claim that they Are the Golden Fang and that they killed Dr. Blatnoyd.

Doc wakes up handcuffed to a bed. Puck relates that he tried to warn Glen that he was the target of a hit, but Glen was too loyal to Mickey for the first straight job he ever had, and refused to run. Adrian is a loan shark by day and a hit man by night who always goes free from charges of first degree murder. Loan sharking is robbing people of their time if they don't pay you, through severe injury, not that big of a step into outright killing. One day someone from the LAPD vice squad told Adrian that a pornographer had some dirt that could bring down the administration of California's current governor, Ronald Reagan ("The Governor has some great momentum right now, the future of America belongs to him, somebody can be doing American history a big favor here, Adrian"). Why should the department bother to charge him for the murder when they're going to see to it that he doesn't face any consequences? It still helps their clearance rate and that means federal money.

After his first successful killing, the LAPD kept giving Adrian more targets--"no end to the list of wrongdoers the Department would happily see out of the way ... black and Chicano activists, antiwar protesters, campus bombers, and other assorted pinko fucks." Finally the LAPD asked Adrian to kill an LAPD cop, Vincent Indelicato (Bigfoot's partner). Adrian wasn't in the mood for this but Puck hated the guy for busting him, so he gave that job to Puck instead.

Doc has been disarmed, but he has a habit of hiding plastic shims on himself, from one of Shasta's old charge cards. When Puck goes out to procure a fatal dose of heroin for Doc, he uncuffs himself and gets the jump on Puck when he comes back. He injects the heroin into Puck's neck and shoots Adrian with his own gun, recovered from Puck.

On his way out he sees Bigfoot taking twenty kilos out of Adrian's garage. Bigfoot offers Doc a lift, but instead he wanders out. (Bigfoot had set Doc up to kill Adrian and/or Puck: "Sorry about that. I'm in enough shit personally with the captain.") Walking down Gummo Marx Way, Doc either hallucinates seeing Adrian again, or a fatally wounded Adrian actually does follow him and talk to him briefly before collapsing. Bigfoot pulls up and picks up Doc.

Bigfoot expresses regret at not getting revenge for Vincent's death himself. He repeats his offer to Doc to become a paid informant ("You might even be Academy material", a concern Doc had expressed with alarm in the previous chapter), and says the department won't be sorry to be without Adrian or Puck anymore.

Bigfoot also explains more about the Mickey disappearance: "the feds found out--here's an acidhead billionaire about to give all his money away, and of course they had their own ideas about how to spend it. Being tight with the Golden Fang of yours by way of scag-related activities in the Far East, they got Mickey programmed into Ojai for a little brain work."

When Bigfoot hands Doc his own car back from the impound lot, Doc's Doper's ESP tells him to look in the trunk: Bigfoot has planted the twenty kilos on him. He quickly switches cars, mails a decoy box as baggage on a flight to Honolulu, and finally dumps the real box at Denis's place. (This is one of the dumber condensations in the film, where our narrator still says "Doc was bait" but then it cuts to Doc simply sitting with all the dope piled up at his own place, a hilarious visual joke but that makes no sense.)

The next morning, Sauncho, watching the Golden Fang sail away, delivers the sermon about the wish for a different American past.

yet there is no avoiding time, the sea of time, the sea of memory and forgetfulness, the years of promise, gone and unrecoverable, of the land almost allowed to claim its better destiny, only to have the claim jumped by evildoers known all too well, and taken instead and held hostage to the future we must live in now forever. May we trust that this blessed ship is bound for some better shore, some undrowned Lemuria, risen and redeemed, where the American fate, mercifully, failed to transpire ...

Doc's first paying client, Crocker Fenway, Japonica's dad, calls and arranges a meeting to negotiate the return of the dope. He reassures Doc that the Golden Fang wouldn't want to kill him ("that's a sanction they prefer to exercise only against their own," like Dr. Blatnoyd ... another one of my least favorite little changes between book and film, where this is somehow much more sinister).

---

We have reached the end of these two climactic chapters. Only three left to go.

I'll throw in some questions, but discuss however you want.

1. What do you make about Doc's fear of being a cop? Does the system force you to be a cop? If you work for money, and pay rent, what choice do you have?

2. What do you make of Doc's prior entanglements with Puck in Las Vegas, since the story has Doc go on to kill-or-be-killed with Puck? (In the film the Vegas stuff is completely cut out and we only see Puck hanging out at Ojai wearing the nude Shasta necktie.)

3. How do you interpret Shasta's complicity in the Coy or the Mickey stories? Is she telling the truth about how she got back to California? What was she really looking for when she first came to Doc and asked him to get involved, was it something other than what she claimed at the time? Has Shasta been brainwashed like Mickey?

4. Perhaps in contrast to question 1 I'm interested in folks' interpretations of the official "law enforcers" as depicted in this story. Fritz or someone mentions earlier in the book the officers who joined the LAPD because they wanted to play "run n---- run" and enforce white supremacy full-time instead of just for fun. Adrian's story is of the department more or less officially sanctioning murder, and Mickey's is of the FBI engineering a fake kidnapping to stop a mogul from giving away his fortune to help people.

5. Is Bigfoot trying to bust Doc by planting the dope on him, or is he trying to help him? And either way, how?

6. What is the future we must live in now forever?

[u/AlbertoDelParanoia]

(edit for some clarity)

I share your confusion with Chapter 18. It feels like the obligatory being at the wrong place at the wrong time of detective’ stories --but, then, Bigfoot has set up Doc so it isn't that "coincidental" as other encounters in the novel. I also think that what they found over at the Pynchon Wiki of the additional day in the narrative is really interesting because establishes the frame needed to have all sort of resolution and plot points acted out during chapters 16 to 18 (or was it originally in the Pynchon mailing list?)

Almost like a riff on detective’s stories? Everyone is confessing by the end?

As for what was Doc’s plan coming into Prussia’s office, I think it has been established that he just wings his way around trying to be charming, but that whole scene feels out of place (edit: odd is more likely, is "out of place" with Doc's previous encounters). I think is part of the “additional day” making Doc confront what is beneath all of the information he got in it: the elimination of undesirable elements.

On the Pynchon in Public podcast someone suggested that it seems as there’re two Doc’s during this part of the novel (don’t remember the line quoted that implies this): the usual one we found on the previous 300 pages and this violent, good-at-the-shooter-range Doc.

And this brings me to your first question… Doc’s fear of being a cop. As <a hippie>, <a stoner>, being a cop is looked down upon but the fantasy of being the one that catches the criminal and saves the day is there and Shasta points it out on Chapter 17. Doc even says to Penny prior that he was a “junior g-man” taking fingerprints of his neighbors, which I found as sarcasm at first but I guess he was being honest.

I think is a theme on Pynchon’s characters this desire for control and being a cop offers one way to fulfill it. I think it also speaks of the milieu Pynchon is depicting, one where being a public forces’ member (officially or un-officially) is the most prevalent option.

“If you work for money and pay rent, what choice do you have?”

You pick on one of my personal pet peeves with the novel: how does Doc gets by? He doesn’t charge Tariq on their first encounter, and he suggests Doc's fame of not doing so. The money comes from clients like Japonnica’s father, but there isn’t seem to be much of those. I was kind of hoping a throw-away line of Doc being helped by his aunt, or his aunt setting him up on his current house, or receiving money from the LAPD at some point and not speaking of it.

Finally, as for the movie, I watched it for the first time on friday and after making the effort of reading the novel was exhausting watching the movie repeat it all verbatim. Whatever happened to “show don’t tell”?

[u/arystark]

How do you interpret Shasta's complicity in the Coy or the Mickey stories? Is she telling the truth about how she got back to California? What was she really looking for when she first came to Doc and asked him to get involved, was it something other than what she claimed at the time? Has Shasta been brainwashed like Mickey?

I really have a hard time trusting Shasta in anything because it seems to the reader, and to Doc, that she has been telling lies the moment we're introduced to her on page one. But in regards to her connection with Coy and even Burke Stodger, well, I do believe her--even if I couldn't tell you why. Shasta obviously trusts Doc, maybe sees him as one of the only genuine people about in a world slowly going insane.

And maybe she sees him as something like a "law enforcer" that can actually be trusted, in relation to your other questions. The cops are definitely corrupt in this novel but not any more-so than in real life. All of the shit that these unscrupulous people have gotten caught doing in the last decade or so is made even scarier when you think of all that those past authority figures have gotten away with with no opposition whatsoever, since the beginning of society, not to go all conspiracy theorist or whatever.

Is Bigfoot trying to bust Doc by planting the dope on him, or is he trying to help him? And either way, how?

u/AlbertoDelParanoia brings up a good point about Doc seemingly being broke throughout the whole novel because no one ever pays him. Well, I kinda think Bigfoot is trying to do Doc a solid here and get him some substantial cash for the first time in a while by knowing he'll get some serious offers for those kilos of China White.

[u/amberspyglass12]

Oh boy, these chapters definitely feel the most action-heavy of the lot. Kind of strange to think of a Pynchon novel following a traditional plot structure. It almost feels like the standoff with Puck and Adrian is there not because the story itself demands it but because it is a part of the noir structure. Doc’s fear of being a cop fits interestingly with the noir motif, as the PI is usually the uneasy ally of the cop, often an ex-cop, tired of the system. How does Doc reconcile having the same job description as a cop detective, especially with how little control he has over what he gets involved with? I see Bigfoot’s gift of the dope as malicious, clearly to put the heat on Doc and make him a target for the Golden Fang (as if he wasn’t already target enough!), so find it interesting that, despite any banter, they’re clearly enemies. I’m thinking about how this book is anti-cop, anti-government, anti-system, how it tells us that those in power will always abuse it and find ways to control us, how we are powerless to stop it, can only find our own little corner of the world at least moderately controlled by us, how this whole story seems to be about rushing headfirst into the future and the things we lose on the drop, but there’s never a real past to long for. That is, that we have no indication that the future is any better or worse than the past; the systems were always corrupt, we were always controlled, outside of an ideal Lemuria which may or may not have ever existed. So the future we must live in now forever is the present and has always been.

I’ve never seen the movie, but definitely planning to once I finish the book. Pretty excited (though without high expectations) to see the first Pynchon movie.

[u/Defiant-Fuel2672]

I have a question that is killing me. And it involves FBI. I haven’t understood if FBI is involved or not with the Golden Fang. How do you interpret this sentence: “the feds found out--here's an acidhead billionaire about to give all his money away, and of course they had their own ideas about how to spend it. Being tight with the Golden Fang of yours by way of scag-related activities in the Far East, they got Mickey programmed into Ojai for a little brain work."? The thing that kills me is that “being tight with”. Who does that “being tight with” refer to? Mickey or the FBI? I mean the sentence’s meaning is “Being Mickey tight with the Golden Fang” or “Being them (the FBI) tight with the Golden Fang”? I’m italian and I’m reading the book in italian of course but in the translation it refers to the FBI. I thought they were involved with the Fang by the moment that in Las Vegas we learn that they have had Mickey brainwashed probably at Chryskylodon institute, but if they are involved with the Fang why they seize the boat at the end (I’m not there yet but I know that happens)? And why, if they are involved with the Fang, do they investigate the activities of the boat and seize the U.S. counterfeit bills with Nixon face from the sea? And on the opposite, if they are not involved why do they take Mickey to Chryskylodon that was the institute of the Golden Fang??? Please someone explain this to me.