Ark Audio Book Club # 26 "Inherent Vice" by Thomas Pynchon

Ark Audio

Inherent Vice (2009) is a shaggy dog story about a hippy private investigator, Lawrence “Doc” Sportello, living in L.A. at the tail end of the 1960s (which I think could really mean up until 1974ish). One night, his “ex-old-lady”, Shasta Fay Hepworth, comes around looking for help to stop the kidnapping of the billionaire land developer she’s been having an affair with, Mickey Wolfmann. This sends Doc into a world of drug-fuelled conspiracies involving a cartel/dental syndicate/schooner called “The Golden Fang”, FBI and police corruption, Neo-Nazis and reactionary anti-hippy conservatives, junkies, prostitutes, mystics and an undead saxophonist. By the end of the novel, we are still left wondering what has transpired. Some characters are a little better off, others are worse… or worse. And we are uncomfortably left to ponder the remark of one character that “in the end, nothing really ends”. Featuring Franek Korbanski, Emilie Bang- Jensen, Sheri Helberg and hosted and produced by Macon Holt. Macon's "review" http://arkbooks.dk/the-libidinal-economy-of-inherent-vice/