Thomas Pynchon - Inherent Vice

You can definitely tell that Inherent Vice is a Pynchon novel, but its hippie-era detective-noir-caper genre structure is something of a change of pace for him - not least in being centred around a character, perpetually stoned gumshoe Doc Sportello, who actually feels real. It's interesting seeing so many classic Pynchonian motifs in such an apparently different format - although of course all of his previous novels can themselves be read as sprawling, discontinuous detective anti-narratives. Indeed, in many ways, the plot of Inherent Vice is beside the point (just as with his other novels), even though it ultimately resolves after a series of increasingly unlikely coincidences and twists - tellingly, in that sense, its structure precisely replicates that of the genre in which it situates itself. Fun!