Inherent Vice (film) in the context of "One Battle After Another"

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. (/ˈpɪntʃɒn/ PIN-chon, commonly /ˈpɪntʃən/ PIN-chən; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist. He is noted for his complex works of postmodern fiction, characterized by dense references to popular culture, history, literature, music, science, and mathematics, as well as by humor and explorations of paranoia. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American novelists. Pynchon is notoriously reclusive. Few photographs of him have been published, and rumors about his location and identity have circulated since the 1960s.

Born on Long Island, Pynchon served two years in the United States Navy and earned an English degree from Cornell University. After publishing several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he began composing the novels for which he is best known: V. (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), and Gravity's Rainbow (1973). For the latter, Pynchon won the 1974 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Pynchon followed with the novels Vineland (1990), which was loosely adapted for film as One Battle After Another in 2025, Mason & Dixon (1997), Against the Day (2006), Inherent Vice (2009), which was adapted for film in 2014, and Bleeding Edge (2013). Pynchon's latest novel, Shadow Ticket, was published in 2025.

Inherent Vice is a novel by the American author Thomas Pynchon, originally published on August 4, 2009. A darkly comic detective novel set in 1970s California, the plot follows sleuth Larry "Doc" Sportello whose ex-girlfriend asks him to investigate a scheme involving a prominent land developer. Themes of drug culture and counterculture are prominently featured. It is considered a postmodern novel that warps the stylistic conventions of detective fiction. Critical reception was largely positive, with reviewers describing Inherent Vice as one of Pynchon's more accessible works. The novel was adapted into a film in 2014.