The book is partly about a aging porn director, partly about a young couple absently plotting revenge against a cop, partly about a former paramedic's crime.

Unfussiness, in fact, is their approach to easier living: using indoor and outdoor space together, designing open floor plans, emphasizing ways to share space together.

It’s really terrific. It’s even made me like John Wesley Harding’s music, after all.

"So did the book --" I blurted, too late to stop, "ever come out?"

The Pynchonmanes like the intellectual challenge of his massive books, and they tend to balk against the straightforward elements of Inherent Vice