Leo and Elmina were staying up on Sepulveda at the Skyhook Lodge, which did a lot of airport business and was populated day and night with the insomniac, the stranded and deserted, not to mention an occasional certified zombie. “Wanderin all up and down the halls,” said Elmina, ‘men in business suits, women in evening gowns, people in their underwear or sometimes nothing at all, toddlers staggering around looking for their parents, drunks,drug addicts, police, ambulance technicians, so many room-service carts they get into traffic james, who needs to get in the car and go anyplace, the whole city of Los Angeles is right there five minutes from the airport.”
“How’s the television?” Downstairs Eddie wanted to know.
“The film libraries on some of these channels, ” Elmira said. “I swear. There was one on last night, I couldn’t sleep. After I saw it, I was afraid to sleep. Have you seen Black Narcissus, 1947?”
Eddie, who was enrolled in the graduate film program at SC, let out a scream of recognition. He’d been working on his doctoral dissertation, “Deadpan to Demonic—Subtextual Uses of Eyeliner in the Cinema” and had just in fact arrived at the moment in Black Narcissus where Kathleen Byron, as a demented nun, shows up in civilian gear, including eye makeup good for a year’s worth of nightmares.
“Well I hope you’ll be including some men,” Elmina said. “All those German silents, Conrad Veidt in Caligari, Klein-Rogge in Metropolis—”
“—complicated of course by the demands of orthochromatic film stock—”
Oboy. Doc went out to search through the kitchen, having dimly recalled an unopened case of beer that might be there.
—Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice, 2009
Kathleen Byron, Black Narcissus, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947
Conrad Veidt, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Robert Wiene, 1919
Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Metropolis, Fritz Lang, 1927
Thought I had my ear to the ground pretty well, but I didn’t know he had a new one out until just now. Back in a bit, gotta go buy it…
And I agree, Kathleen coming out that door is one of the scariest images ever – even more so when it’s moving.
I’ve read the first 20–30 pages of that (and intend to get back to it once I finish clearing the rest of my current literary plate). From that sampling it seems like a hoot, though since my tastes run more towards the Gravity’s Rainbow end of the Pynchon spectrum I am slightly disappointed that he chose this go-round for a relatively laid back Chandler/Leonard pastiche. How are you finding it?
@JF: I’m just going with it, and enjoying the hell out of it.…
The gag about the lawsuit against MGM at the end of the book is pretty priceless (I’m trying to be as vague as possible).
But I still think my favorite Pynchon-movie joke is “The Robert Musil Story starring Pee-Wee Herman” from Vineland.
In Inglourious Basterds (which, at least on first viewing, kind of exhausted me, though I’m pretty sure three of its chapters (1, 4, and 5) are the masterpiece Lt. Raine speaks of) the name Hugo Stiglitz sure reminds me an awful lot of “Bloody” Chiclitz. Tarantino doesn’t really strike me as the Pynchon-reading type, but they sure do have their affinities, and I don’t think it’s just because they’re both of the pomo persuasion. QT’s frame of reference is certainly not as wide, but they seem to hang out at the same dive bar in the creative aether.
JF: I can’t imagine a Kill Bill without Vineland’s lady-ninja academy.
I’m trying to enjoy Inherent Vice, but it seems fairly insubstantial, even as I get to the last fifty pages. Like the Coen Brothers’ movies, however, Pynchon’s novels always get better with repeat viewings. Maybe a second pass will help.
I dug it. Sure, I would’ve been happy to get another Mason & Dixon style monstrosity, but since Against The Day is only a couple years old at this point (if that), I’m just delighted to have a new novel from him this soon after the last.