A Crazy Week

Last week was a blast, a breath of fresh antarctic wind on my sweaty face. Last wednesday I found out that i was going to be published in the mexican literary journal DOS FILOS, set in Zacatecas, Zacatecas. Its hard to describe what I felt like when I read the little email that the editor, renowned writer Jose de Jesus Sampedro sent me to inform me that the short story i submitted was worthy of publication. I felt happy, I felt lucky, a strange feeling in my chest that i can only say felt like a sudden burst of joy. My father had a lot to do with this moment. He has always read all my stories since I was young, and always has told me what he thought of them, but most importantly he has always encouraged me to keep writing, and he believed in me enough to do me the favor of sending the story through the mexican post office while he was in Zacatecas in a work trip. I also owe debts to my great-uncle Miguel Donoso Pareja for he was the one that recommended DOS FILOS to me and told me he thought this particular story was going to be published. Needless to say, i feel very encouraged now to keep writing and reading, ill also post a picture of the magazine itself when it gets to me

http://www.excentricaonline.com/libros/images/uploads/dossfilos.jpg

That same wednesday I also found out that an editorial I wrote for a small independent newspaper from St.Augustine was going to be published. The newspaper is called The Watertown News and is mostly a sort of civic protest kinda thing, with the main political articles written by Lee Malis, the editor. Lee Malis has had a lot of journalistic experience all over the world, covering wars and events like pinochet's demise in chile. The newspaper is pretty new but its already at 8000 copies per release so I'm guessing its doing pretty good and Ive noticed its getting a lot of local support from sponsors. I like the newspaper a lot because i think its main articles are quality investigative reports on the injustice that prevails in the shitass but pretty town of St.Augustine.

Then this weekend I went to Atlanta with my girlfriend Stephanie and saw Devendra Banhart and the Grogs live. The show was in this little movie theater that was converted to a venue called the Variety Playhouse, in the area of Little 5 Points. The area itself is very cool and we had some pizza and beers before the show. The show was amazing, flawless. The set list was great too because it had the best songs from all of his albums. After the show I talked to him and Stephanie took a picture of my talking in spanish with him (devendra wasnt able to talk much cus of all the groupies but he bummed a cigarette from me, a shitty miami made 305 and he said to me Callate Huevon! when i told him how much fun my life had been with his music). He was very high, but very polite. Then i talked to his best friend and awesome musician Noah Georgeson for a good 10 minutes and we talked mostly about caetano veloso, how they had gone through favela adventures together in Brazil and how crazy it was. I didnt talk to Greg Rogove that much but he was the tallest of the bunch, and he looked like a gentle, hippie by way of bro giant. Me and Stephanie both think it was a lot of fun.

Bofetadas Necesarias

Pues si, ya era hora. Primera Bofetada: el treinta y pico porciento que fue tomado de mi primer cheque de trabajo. Pensar que uno se saca la madre sacandole la mugre a todo lo que se le puede sacar la mugre en una cocina de una sucia corporacion, para que despues le quiten la tercera parte de un ya miserable cheque. Segunda Bofetada: que me hayan botado de dicho trabajo por haberme comido una tazita de chili sin pagar. Si me agarraron, y me dio inmensa verguenza, pero tenia hambre. Es excusa para robar? no, pero al ser agarrado con las manos en la masa ofreci pagar. Nada, me mandaron a la casa y me pidieron que regresara al dia siguiente a las 3pm, hora que me dijo me iban a botar (porque trabajo a las 11am). No fui, ya que no tenia ganas de ser maltratado y humillado por una manager irrespetuosa por haber robado una tazita de chili.

Lo aprendido. La vida no es facil, y la literatura no cambia eso. Trata, y con eso es suficiente.

The scope of Joyce

I've been thinking a lot about "modern" writers and writers that have defined the western ideal of what can literature be and it doesnt cease to amaze me how circular influence can be and how when good art is made it truly lasts forever, whether being read or listened to or seen in its original form or experienced in the form of an artist that bears the mark of influence from whoever. That being said next semester I'm taking a class on Great Works of Western Literature and the books we are going to read are Ulysses by Joyce, Dante's Inferno, Cervantes's Don Quixote and Homer's Iliad. I was surprised at Joyce being there but after thinking about it a little I realized how Joyce more or less really eclipses any other writer of the 20th century, either by mere definition or by consideration of the weight of his gigantic sphere of influence.

One example, Joyce was a big influence of who can be argued is the best American writer of the last century, William Faulkner. Without Joyce's Ulysses a book like The Sound and The Fury would not have been, or maybe even As I Lay Dying (my personal favorite out of what Ive read)wouldnt have been the same. In the same vein and touching upon the topic of circularity and particularly of how magnanimous Joyce's influence is, Faulkner greatly, if single handedly (and perhaps with Borges)directly influenced the whole Latin American Boom of the 60's. Maybe that's a bit too enthusiastic, but when you think about it, Garcia-Marquez, Vargas-Llosa, Jose Donoso, Juan Carlos Onetti, and a personal favorite of mine (that perhaps isnt technically part of that list) Jorge Enrique Adoum. So how does an Irishman, inspire an American Southern, that in turn inspires a bunch of top class Latin American writers? I dont know and thats the beauty of it. One great writer is all it takes to start a beautiful chain of reaction like the one I just mentioned. Sure, all those writers write through unique creative lenses of their own, but the proto-style (if that word makes sense) is all Joyce, and the style that is thought of as Faulkner's (or that Faulkner made his)is tangible in many different literatures.

An Essay about The Bard

Merry Lies: Fiction as an Improvement upon Life in Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing

Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing is a play in which its main characters and the plot they are involved in move forwards to an inevitable happy conclusion solely through deceit, lies, and fabrications of identity. Without lies, Much Ado would simply be a different play, and ironically the deceit makes the play a comedy, not a tragedy. There is a notion in Christian theology, and perhaps in general, that lying is a bad thing, but in this play lying serves mostly for the good of all. Not only does the plot in Much Ado requires stories and rumors (in other words, fictions) created and propagated by its characters, but the characters themselves use self-made versions of themselves and lies to achieve their own individual goals or to make themselves better.

The two main love stories -arguably the meat and potatoes of the play- have successful happy endings thanks to elaborate schemes. Benedick, a man that considers himself too picky to fall in love with any woman, wouldn’t have fallen in love with Beatrice if it he hadn’t eavesdropped on Don Pedro, Claudio and Leonato talking about how much she is in love with him. This of course was planned by them and the lie was made up specifically for Benedick’s ears. The same goes for Beatrice, a seemingly fierce independent woman that decides to fall in love with Benedick once she overhears her cousin Hero talk with her servants Ursula and Margaret about how she heard from Claudio and Don Pedro of how much he is in love with her.

The secondary parties that try to make love happen here very much enjoy manipulating the other character’s lives, and in the case of Don Pedro and Hero, this is perhaps the only way they can control their environment. Don Pedro stays single throughout the play because he is already considered old, and is only too happy to help his fellow soldiers in finding a wife. Hero being a good friend of Beatrice is also more than glad to help her out, even if it is through a lie. Don Pedro and Hero are really bored with their lives and feel like they have to play tricks on people to have fun, they do it to improve life both for themselves and for others. This manipulation of the truth that Don Pedro and Hero’s crew indulge in is a way for them to escape the boring reality of their lives, they literally have to create a more exciting world for their own entertainment.

Hero and Claudio’s relationship has more obstacles in the play than Benedick and Beatrice’s. Still, both the complications and solutions are born from complex webs of lies. Early in the play they are betrothed, but Don Pedro’s bastard brother Don John intends to break up the marriage. At first he tries to convince Claudio in a masked ball that Don Pedro is wooing Hero for himself and not for his benefit (Claudio was pretending to be Benedick, interestingly enough). This is a lie that ends up not working to his advantage. Don John then tries to ruin Claudio and Hero’s marriage by using Borachio’s idea, that is of setting up Claudio and Don Pedro to eavesdrop Borachio making love with Margaret so that Claudio would think that Hero’s not a virgin (something incredibly important, arguably even today in certain religious circles). This plan works for a bit, and causes Hero to be publicly humiliated by Claudio and shunned by her father on the day of her wedding. The friar, a man who is supposed to follow God’s law and shouldn’t lie, recommends to pretend that Hero is dead, so that Claudio will feel bad about what he’s done and accept her back. The friar’s deceitful plan works and in the end Claudio does marry Hero.

Hero faking her own death deserves in itself a couple of extra conjectures. Perhaps one of the most neutral characters in the play, Hero is an obedient daughter who is ok with marrying whoever she is set up with. It would only be fitting for her that the only way she can achieve her purpose in life (getting married, of course, and to be happy) is by faking her own death. Hero in a sense is active in this deceit (as she was active in deceiving her cousin Beatrice), and though not her idea, she accepts it and agrees to lock herself up to not give away the scheme. She has to participate in the lie, that is, she has to literally be part of the lie to be able to move forward in life and avoid eternal shame for her and for her family. By pretending to be dead, she becomes, or makes herself a better person, that is by a sort of fictional return to nothing. The friar says it beautifully and states it clearly: “So it will fare with Claudio: When he shall hear she died upon his words, Th’idea of her life shall sweetly creep Into his study of imagination, And every lovely organ of her life Shall come aparell’d in more precious habit, More moving, delicate, and full of life, Into the eye and prospect of his soul, Than when she liv’d indeed.” (4.1.222-230)

Claudio later finds out that she was never guilty of what she was accused of, but the simple fact that the friar would think that for Hero to gain favor with Claudio she had to seem dead to the eyes of the world is extremely sad, -notice the shall sweetly creep into his study of imagination as the friar points out, her death re-creates her into a better woman- and shows how bad the situation of women could be in those days. The friar himself is an extremely interesting character, a character who is by his title supposed to follow God’s law, but breaks it without any fear or even reluctance to benefit his neighbor. It’s even more interesting to think about when this lie he is the defacto creator of, ends up effectively helping out the uncomfortable situation that Hero and her father Leonato faced. A lie once again, is ironically used to do good. The friar shows how good of a person he is by coming up with an extremely elaborate lie that everybody in the play that is not part of it believes. Fiction is here used to save the day, something that is not true, ended up making the final reality of the play a better place for Hero. Hero and the audience get the happy ending that is logically expected of the comedy.

*******

I have shown above how Lies and Fictions literally control every aspect of the plot of the play, but what about the characters themselves? Are they all what they pretend to be? How do the characters in this play portray themselves as something they are not because what they are not is better than what they really are? It seems obvious that if the plot is driven by a bunch of fictions created by the already fictional characters of the play, that the characters themselves create fictional versions of themselves.

For example, Dogberry, the chief of the Watch, tries to talk as a highly educated man, but fails terribly, making of himself an extremely laughable buffoon. It’s apparent to the reader and to the audience of the play that Dogberry is conscious that he is not educated but that he tries to seem so, because if he was educated he would be more socially acepted. Here is the crucial part in which miscommunication happens (but in a slightly deconstructive side note, is communication possible?) between Dogberry and Leonato:

DOGBERRY. One word, sir. Our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended two aspicious persons, and we would have them this morning examin’d before your worship. LEONATO. Take their examination yourself, and bring it me. I am now in great haste, as it may appear unto you. (3.5.45-51)

Dogberry’s trying to be a sophisticated speaker ends up being an important factor in the way the plot fleshes out, for if he had been understood by Leonato, Hero would not have been humiliated by Claudio. Though a relatively small and unimportant character of the play, Dogberry’s attempt at being a well spoken person keeps the plot of Much Ado moving forward.

But Dogberry isn’t alone in pretending to be someone he is not. The romance between Beatrice and Benedick had to be sparked by rumors because otherwise it simply would not have happen. Both Beatrice and Benedick from the beginning of the play cite numerous reasons as to why they would rather be single, and they do so using very sophisticated language. Benedick says this about women in the first act of the play: “That a woman conceiv’d me, I thank her That she brought me up, I likewise give her most Humble thanks; but that I will have a rechate Winded in my forehead, or hang my bugle in an Invisible baldrick, all women shall pardon me.” (1.1.238-242) And Beatrice says express her dislike of men in a funny short remark: “Lord, I could not endure A husband with a beard on his face, I had rather lie in the woolen!” (2.1.29-31)

If these lines show something about the characters who speak them, they show that Benedick and Beatrice seem to be very independently minded people, not caring of what society may say about them. But it is easy to see that they act likewise because they are older than the other characters of the play and because they refuse to accept their single condition. That is, they have to create that rebellious persona for themselves, because accepting what they are and whine about it would be just sad. What they pretend to be, coupled with their excuses, places them in a better position, within society and within their own mind (Once again, fiction always beats reality). Ann Barton says it better in her introduction to the play: “Both Beatrice and Benedick, for all their surface gaiety, their scorn of the married state, are essentially lonely people.” (Barton 363) and a paragraph below: “For all its surface aggression, its deflationary quality, their wit is really defensive: a way of protecting a self that they know to be vulnerable.” (Barton 363)

The story of Much Ado about Nothing thrives on the spying, eavesdropping, and deceiving that its characters love to act on, but in an even more tangible level, there are clues within the play’s inner structure that point to a preference of what is not real over what is real. For one, though a highly common thing back in that era, the mask ball scene says a lot about the play and its characters. Everybody in the mask ball scene pretends to be someone they are not, and both a good scheme (Don Pedro’s) and a bad one (Don John’s) have their roots in that scene. Therefore, the masked ball scene is not merely part of the structure of the play, but it is an image for what the whole play is about. The song that is sung by Balthasar in Act 2 also is another sneaky commentary on the play itself, men are deceivers and have been so “since summer first was leavy” : “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever, One foot in the sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant never. Then sigh not so, but let them go, And be you blithe and bonny, Converting all your sounds of woe Into hey nonny nonny. Sing no more ditties, sing no moe, Of dumps so dull and heavy; The fraud of men was ever so, Since summer first was leavy…” (2.3.62-73)

The fact that the song itself is not a really important part of the plot makes it easier to see as an even more explicit commentary on the themes of lies, deception, and fabrications that pervades the whole play from beginning to end. Another part of the play’s structure, the title, also comments on the play-though a little obvious, it is worth mentioning-. The title is revelatory: Much Ado about Nothing is exactly what its title proposes, a bunch of people that are too bored with their lives and their way of making their life better is by creating situations for themselves, because life can’t do that for them. The much ado is quite literally over things that are really all made up and become real within the character’s minds and eventually in their own respective realities. Nothing in the title refers to something inexistent, and something that only exists in a character’s mind only exists within his mind, or is only real in the realm of thoughts and ideas (which are not tangible in our plain of existence), until those ideas, thoughts, lies, deceits, schemes, etc. are put into action by means of language (words) and action. Once that happens, the tangible reality of the characters improve (Dogberry’s case being a sad but funny exception), it’s as if both what is real and what is not real need each other to create a better whole.

Whether it is Dogberry feeling inadequate and having to make this up by trying to be a well spoken sophisticate, or Hero pretending to be dead to redeem herself and therefore becoming dead in Claudio’s and the rest of the men’s minds, or Benedick and Beatrice showing an outwards disdain towards marriage that is based on a lack of love (which in turn inspires their friends to make up rumors so that they fall in love), the play’s plot evolves not from what happens to the characters, but from the situations the characters create for themselves. Much Ado about Nothing is an exploration of how men turn to fiction to make their lives better, and the ultimate human objective, to reach happiness.

The Lesson

The Lesson By Emilio Santoro It was a Saturday, and like most Saturdays Alfredo received a short but welcome visit from his two grand-kids. Their father, Alfredo’s son Maximo, dropped them off around twelve for lunch. Alfredo made sure the kids left their dirty shoes out on the front porch, and then he cooked for them and gave them chocolates and they talked about school and when they asked him questions about how he got his white hair or why he had spots on his hands he entertained them with answers. On this particular Saturday, Fiona (a plump cheeked six year old that liked to wear pigtails) and her twin brother, Felix (a scrawny boy with a brown mop of hair) gave Grandpa Fredo an earful from the moment they stepped in his house with their little bare feet. “Grandpa Fred school was crazy this week.” said Fiona. “Yeah Grandpa, Brian went into the storage closet because he heard that’s where all the birthday cakes were kept and he got in and it was dark and he tripped and cut himself pretty bad on the knee.” Said Felix. “I bet Brian likes cakes” said Alfredo. “Yeah!” the kids said and laughed together at poor fat Brian. “Well who told Brian there was cake there?” Alfredo said. “ I think it was Joey, he is funny” said Fiona. “When Mrs.Gandolfo asked him why he was bleeding Brian said he thought there was cake and everyone laughed at him because he turned red like a tomato” said Felix “Like a FAT tomato” said Fiona and the kids laughed hard. “I hope you kids don’t get in trouble for being silly like that Brian you’re telling me about” said Alfredo, now rocking on his rocking chair. “No way!” said Felix. “We’re smart” said Fiona. Alfredo smiled and thought to himself that his grand-kids were smart. He thought himself a lucky grand-father. “Let me go to the bathroom really quick, you kids be good” “Ok” said the kids. Alfredo returned to the living room and saw his grand-children were not there. He went to his room and found them jumping on his king sized bed. “Let’s go back to the living room, I want to tell y’all something” Alfredo said. After a dozen or so more jumps the kids followed. “While I was in the bathroom I thought a bit about poor Brian, and you know there’s a lesson to be learned here I said to myself” Fiona and Felix were now spinning fast, their arms stretched out. A few seconds later they stopped. They saw their world shift violently and their sense of balance was impaired in a manner that would be familiar in a not so distant future, say in about fifteen years or so from then. They were having a good time. “What are you talking about Granpa?” said Fiona, still dizzy and trying to sit down on the couch. “I’m talking about not too long ago I was like little Fat Brian, except I wasn’t fat. I also believed some tall tale and ended up getting hurt pretty bad. Way worse than Brian.” Alfredo said, somber and grave. Fiona and Felix were feeling better and less dizzy and asked their Grand-father to tell them what happened to him. Their little eyes were zooming on their grand-father’s forehead lines, observing how tense they were. Alfredo was making an effort to remember. They hadn’t seen their grandfather so serious in a long time. Then his face relaxed. “Hey kids I’m in the mood for some chocolate, would you like some Hershey bars?” “Yeah!” they screamed in unison. Chocolate was more gratifying than a silly story. Alfredo ate a chocolate himself, and they were having a good time making fun of how their teeth look silly with chocolate painted all over. “You might not know it, but back in the day I was one of the best tree climbers of my neighborhood. “ Alfredo said, trying to return to his story after the chocolate break. A wet, black spot stood on his left front tooth. Fiona and Felix’s mouth opened and emitted a long O. “How old were you Granpa?” Felix asked. “About six or seven years old” And he kept going, remembering as he produced the story. “Being a good tree climber had its perks though, soon enough there were kids trying to outclimb me. The competition was fierce.” The children’s eyes were glazed on their grand-fathers. In their little heads they were climbing trees right next to their old Granpa. “Of course, some of the kids that tried to be better than me weren’t necessarily the nicest kids either. Those kids that try to bring you down when you’re doing good at football or basketball or climbing trees, you know?” Fiona thought of Lila, the girl that made fun of her drawings and of her pigtails. Felix thought of Vince, the kid that every once in a while liked to chuck things at him, like basketballs on the face or stomach. Alfredo kept telling his story. “When I was young, and I don’t think it was just because I was young but because that’s how I’ve always been, I’m naïve and gullible.” “What’s gullible?” Felix interrupted. “That’s when you believe everything people tell you, no matter how ridiculous it may sound.” More O’s from the kids. “Anyways, I was very gullible and even now I’m kinda like that and let me tell you it’s not a good thing when people want to take advantage of that and trick you, you know?” The kids nodded their heads. They were understanding. They were smart kids. “So when I used to climb trees an older kid, I think his name was Ryan, told me that if I climbed a palm tree, grabbed three coconuts from the top, and climbed down with them, once I drank the coconut water I would become the strongest man in the world” “Wow that sounds cool granpa” said Felix. “Felix shut up, what happened granpa?” said Fiona. “Well so the day came and Ryan had been talking and saying that if I really was the best tree climber I should climb the huge palm tree at the local YMCA. When he tried to challenge me like that of course I wanted to do it more than ever to show him that he was wrong. I think it was a Monday, it was after school was over. Ryan and all his stupid friends came over, and lots of girls came too. I was a little nervous, I had never climbed a palm tree, especially one this tall. The palm tree must have been about 25 to 30 feet tall. I really wanted to show everybody what I could do.” Alfredo was rocking on his rocking chair a little faster. He rocked and he rocked. “So I started climbing. My past experience proved invaluable. I wrapped my legs and arms around the trunk and climbed my way up slowly at first but I got to the top relatively easy. Then I grabbed three coconuts and started my way down. I was doing alright kids, I really was. The crowd was going crazy, some of my friends were cheering at me, yelling ‘Fre-do! Fre-do! I thought Ryan must have been pretty pissed off right then” The kids gasped. “Im sorry kids, don’t use that word ok? And don’t tell your parents I said it” “Ok granpa” the kids said. “All of a sudden I heard a beautiful voice, or at least the most beautiful voice I had heard at that age, way before I met your granma, that’s for sure. I looked down and it was Claudia, looking cute as a button. She gave me a thumbs up and smiled at me. I was climbing down allright, but I was taking my time because what I used a bag to put the coconuts in and that made my grip a little weaker on the left hand. I wanted to wave or at the least give her a thumbs up. Sometimes in those kinds of situations the brain is going through so much stress that the wrong choice is made. Instead of attempting some kind of salutation to Claudia with the hand that held the bag, I tried to giver her a thumbs up with my free hand. Well guess what happened? I lost my balance and fell really hard. I got taken to the hospital, fractured my shoulder, and made a fool of myself in front of Ryan and Claudia and all the kids cheering for me. All because I believed Ryan’s stupid story, that of course wasn’t true. At least I hope it wasn’t true. I haven’t broken a bone since.” The kid’s were wowing and looking at each other in disbelief. “So what’s the lesson?” said Fiona in a tone of complain. “What do you mean what is the lesson?” said Alfredo. “I know!” said Felix. “Shut up stupid!” said Fiona. “The lesson is not to believe people’s tall tales so that stupid things won’t happen to us.” Said Felix beaming. “Ahhh, I guess I do have smart grand-kids.” Said Alfredo. “More like a smart grand-son.” Said Felix. “Shut up shutupshutup!” said Fiona. “But wait granpa.” Said Felix. “What is it Felix?” said Alfredo. “Your story is pretty crazy granpa” said Felix. Alfredo frowned, trying to hide how proud he was of his grand-son. “Do you think your own grand-father, the father of your father, would lie to you Felix?” “Uh, no. I guess not granpa.” Felix said, noticeably starting to feel sorry about what he said. “ Do you want proof that my story is true Felix? You too Fiona?” said Alfredo. After a slight silence, the kids nodded their heads. Alfredo didn’t say anything else. He unbuttoned his shirt, took the right arm out of its sleeve, and showed them the scar. A thick, pink, undulating worm. Fiona and Felix didn’t say anything. They just ran out of the living room and sat on the porch stairs. Fiona whispered to her brother. “Did you see that, did you see?” Felix looked at her with scared eyes and said yes. Alfredo went to the porch to check on them. “Are you allright kids?” Fiona and Felix said they were fine. Then Fiona asked. “Can we see it again?” Alfredo showed her. A thick, pink, worm. The kids looked at it in utter fear. “I’m going to the bathroom, being old has its perks.” Said Alfredo, and headed to a door with a little sign his late wife had bought that said “Pipi Room”. Once in the bathroom, Alfredo took off his shirt and peeled off the pink silicon rubber sticking to his skin and flushed it down the toilet.

Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice: A Review

Inherent Vice is a book about the sixties and how eerily it can resemble the America of today. Thomas Pynchon is known in american literature as a writer of complicated, long books, with even more complicated prose(before this book i had only read The Crying of Lot 49, his shortest book at 130 so pages that is still relatively a hard read). In this book we find that same quirky and elongated paragraphs, and the same sense of humor and general paranoia that I found in The Crying of Lot 49. Pynchon can make connections with most readers by writing about a beloved era, the 60's and 70's and that makes this perhaps an accesible book. Doc Sportello, the main character and PI of the story, lives in a constant cannabis-induced hazed that doesn't help at all when his ex-girlfriend Shasta asks him to help her find her millionaire boyfriend, from then on the story is full of crazy ass characters and lots of "groovy" talk, dig?

Allusions of every type (music, film, literary) are found sprinkled all over the book, (Rocio Durcal and Tom Jobim being the ones I felt more than pleased and surprised by)as well as obvious references to the american detective fiction tradition. Pynchon's take on the detective story is all his own, the plot still as hard to follow as most works of this kind(well theres a lot of weed in the book, so its understandably so)and having Doc solve problems by recollecting epic acid trip hallucinatory facts can be either awesome (to me) or very silly. The lengthy landscape descriptions can also be seen as a tribute to this venerable genre. But is the book good? Yes. Does the book has it's draggy parts? Yes, and thats it's only defect, because in its own way, the book illustrates perfectly the deception and dissapointment of those people who lived in the hippy era and suddenly are faced with the Manson murders, and even more, with the end of "free love" and all that that entails.

On a more personal view of this book, Doc as a character is incredibly easy to sympathize with. He smokes kools, he constantly smokes not shitty weed, but "righteous" weed, eats food all the time, is strangely romantic (though pynchon's sex scenes where nothing more that a beautiful set up and then the dissapointing "they started fucking" or "they fucked"). The dialogue is entertaining, but as a man of the 2000's it was hard for me to able to tell if the exaggerated sixties speak was realistic or not, nevertheless as I said, the dialogue was smart and funny.

So how does this book reflect the America of today? Paranoia, A more and more relaxed "moral" stance on drugs, promiscuity, and the reality of the internet (something that he touched upon towards the end of the book but in a very strong manner, by suggesting the use of technology to not divide, but unite humanity)are things that should resonate to anybody living in the USA of today. The "haze" that Doc is always in can be very easy to parallel with the perpetual "lost" status of man (for good or for worse). Though this points of reflexion come into mind through the reading of the book, the book never focuses on these, succesfully giving the book an "after the reading" depth that I thought wasn't there at first. Pynchon fascinates because though an old soul (72 says faithful wiki)he seems to be very much in touch with the world around him, and his encyclopaedic references show him to be indeed a well rounded man's man. Inherent Vice is the testament of a man who can still have fun writing a book and majestically shares this fun with his readers.

A Cover

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