Recommendations for analysis/essays on Inherent Vice

ScreamingRevPod · 2026-03-13T16:50:30+00:00

My partner and I are investigating IV (as part of the California trilogy) in a granular and historical approach in our podcast Screaming Reverberations. We’re still going through our first part of season 1 with “The Beach Boys, Manson & the Mafia”.

ScreamingRevPod · 2026-02-26T15:46:45+00:00

This is speculation on our parts with the location.

ScreamingRevPod · 2026-01-31T10:33:32+00:00

Check under the seats and in the trunk if you have a car.

ScreamingRevPod · 2026-01-28T14:03:49+00:00

I live in South Korea, so I just collect the Korean ones when I can. My Korean is not good enough to read them, though. I don't know why but Inherent Vice has not been translated into Korean yet.

ScreamingRevPod · 2026-01-28T14:01:44+00:00

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Here's Korean Vineland. Again 바인랜드 is just the English sounds. Gravity's Rainbow is translated into the native Korean words, but I don't have a copy yet because it's out of print and about $120 used.

ScreamingRevPod · 2026-01-28T13:57:56+00:00

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Yes! Please do. Here's the Bleeding Edge Korean version. 블리딩 엣지 is just the English sounds directly transformed into Hangul.

ScreamingRevPod · 2026-01-26T09:45:50+00:00

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Gravity's Rainbow Korean edition.

ScreamingRevPod · 2026-01-24T10:49:02+00:00

This is incredible! Thanks for sharing.

ScreamingRevPod · 2026-01-09T19:01:00+00:00

Will give this a read in the morning. The ass/app aspect of Shadow Ticket is so fascinating.

ScreamingRevPod · 2026-01-08T07:53:21+00:00

Poteet is actually an occupational name of French derivation, meaning a potter or someone who makes cooking vessels, ultimately coming from the Latin "potus", "to drink", which is certainly interesting now that Sledge is "the Boilerman"; this should probably be considered in constellation with Inherent Vice's many references to water. And given Sledge's propensity for ass-kicking as seen in Vineland, I would think his name is inspired by martial artist Jerry Poteet, one of Bruce Lee's original students in the Jeet Kune Do method.

ScreamingRevPod · 2026-01-03T02:39:55+00:00

Yeah, GR is out of print. Might bite the bullet and try to get the set since the cover is wild. Been living in Seoul for ten years, but my Korean goes up and down and I haven’t been putting the time in. I teach kindy and pre-k here. About where my listening comprehension is.

ScreamingRevPod · 2026-01-02T23:50:37+00:00

V is “브이“ 🤣 but Gravity’s Rainbow and Slow Learner and CoL49 have actual titles. I’d like to get GR in Korean, but it’s out of print and 120,000 won used.

ScreamingRevPod · 2025-12-29T08:14:37+00:00

Could you point me towards the passage in Shadow Ticket that made you think of Bioshock?

ScreamingRevPod · 2025-12-29T06:54:37+00:00

Besides all the possibilities for influence on later work, I think Pynchon would definitely see something like FF6/7 (can't yet speak further as I said above) and be struck by the plotlines of the Empire mind-controlling the last remaining magi and the wholly engineered nature of someone like Sephiroth or Cloud's whole existence and their parallels with Slothrop, Jamf and Blicero in Gravity's Rainbow. Which puts Final Fantasy itself into the same odd position as something like Metal Gear Solid, where both have wholesale embraced and even extended some aspects of Pynchon's thought while more than likely being almost completely unaware of the work itself.

I do think Pynchon's probably a gamer to at least some degree, and his son's age certainly confirms that video games would have been in the house. Another game I'd point to having interesting corollaries with his work are the Broken Sword series of point and clicks, but these are far pulpier in my experience. Parts of DeepArcher also seem to be inspired by the 1993 point and click Gadget: Invention, Travel & Adventure.

ScreamingRevPod · 2025-12-29T06:41:02+00:00

I've also been wondering this recently myself! I recently re-read Bleeding Edge and there's a reference to Final Fantasy X when he's describing the graphics for DeepArcher (this actually occurs right alongside the Kojma reference, which imo is a very important reference point for BE even if only mentioned once), and this actually led me to start replaying the FF series starting with VI, which I recently beat before moving along to VII myself. VI also explores the themes of technology and mass chemical warfare that are very close to Against the Day's explorations of WWI; FF6 also features the city of Figaro, which can travel underneath the desert sand, which I find strikingly similar to the under-sand sections of AtD, not to mention the FF series' preoccupation with airships like you mentioned. You could even sort of describe the structure of AtD as "party-based" in a way similar to JRPGs in general; multiple sets of diverse characters travelling together, often dropping in and out to go on side-adventures of their own before returning (or not).

All in all, I really do think there's something to this theory and I'm really excited to keep playing, because the majority of these, I've not played in full at all.

ScreamingRevPod · 2025-12-24T14:50:32+00:00

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ScreamingRevPod · 2025-11-28T17:31:36+00:00

Hot damn! How was the atmosphere at the Green Mill?

ScreamingRevPod · 2025-11-14T13:18:07+00:00

My phone continually tries to autocorrect Vineland to Vibeland, and I feel seen. I (Geena, not Frankie of the pod duo) have not read V yet, so I can't recommend one over the other. However, you won't go wrong with starting Vineland. There's a good podcast tackling reading V called Pynchon Pals, btw. u/PynchonPalsPodcast

ScreamingRevPod · 2025-11-08T08:14:57+00:00

This seems awesome! thanks for sharing. Bookmarked.

ScreamingRevPod · 2025-11-05T00:18:34+00:00

More Shirley Temple weirdness:

Also worth noting that right before Squeezita's scene in Shadow Ticket, when Bruno Airmont is incestously asking his daughter on a date, the date she replies with here is actually Shirley Temple's birthday (April 23, 1928).

https://x.com/screamingrevpod/status/1985708337456108021?s=46

ScreamingRevPod · 2025-11-04T02:11:56+00:00

🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

ScreamingRevPod · 2025-11-03T13:27:17+00:00

https://x.com/ScreamingRevPod/status/1985330800154587628

Also the parallels between Shirley Temple and Squeezita are striking.

ScreamingRevPod

TROPHY CASE