Google hasn't only digitized books. It's also managed to digitize Thomas Pynchon, or at least the advertising for his latest novel, "Inherent Vice." A
YouTube video that launched Tuesday, the day the book was released, plays like a trailer for a movie -- except that the movie is a
book.
The video is a far cry from others that Penguin Group USA has posted on its YouTube channel, most of which seem like little more than infomercials or behind-the-scenes type footage.
If the reviews have painted the book as Pynchon doing an Elmore Leonard burlesque while bowling with "The Dude" and typing on Raymond Chandler's broken Royal portable in between frames, then the ad
does little to dispel this. A man speaking in the voice of the novel's man character, a private eye named Doc living in a surfer's community in Southern California and who calls himself more of a "Gum
sandal" than gumshoe, tells you about his life in a soft, slightly stoned drawl, while surf rock plays over a montage of seedy beach images. The voice may or may not be the reclusive Pynchon's --
Penguin isn't saying -- but at the end of the clip "Doc" tells you can just read about it all in the book, which costs $27.95. And then he stops, astounded. "$27.95, man? That used to be like three
weeks worth of groceries. What year is this again?" --John Capone