Selections from One-Star Amazon Reviews of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice

[Editorial note: The following citations come from one-star Amazon reviews of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Inherent Vice. To be clear, I’m a big Pynchon fan. I’ve preserved the reviewers’ own styles of punctuation and spelling. More one-star Amazon reviews].

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Wow.

drivel

stilted dialogue

knock yourself out

every detail is described

This was my first Pynchon

my second stab at Pynchon

I so rarely abandon anything

shouldn’t have been published

that ridiculous post-modern credo

pick up James Ellroy. He is a true artist

like a novelization of the Big Lebowski

false as a jet contrail in an 1880’s western movie

I had to read whole pages twice or even three times

practically nothing that occurs is important to move the plot along

he smokes a joint and stumbles across a clue that leads him to the next chapter

does a disservice to liberals by portraying them as a bunch of negative stereotypes

This book makes the classic NAKED LUNCH by Burroughs completely coherent

No one in our entire bookclub could finish it and we are all avid readers

NEVER BUY BOOKS THAT CRITICS RAVE ABOUT, THEY ALWAYS SUCK!!!

It glorifies hippies and condemns the right-wing Man

one of the most useless novels I have ever read

This is my first experience with Pynchon

this may make a decent movie

nothing redeeming about it

no entertainment value

difficult and obscure

no meter

Uugghh.

As a Scandinavian

It is a bad detective story

Pynchon wants this to be a film.

When Amazon recommends a book, I take notice.

I have never read a book by Thomas Pynchon before

I am beginning to think the “professionals” just like crap.

The Author is the type that critics love to refer to as edgy

Pynchon is probably the most overrated American writer.

It is as if this author was stoned the entire time he wrote this.

numerous drug and hallucination references and insinuations

story telling with drugs and hallucinations are better left to movies or television

Definitively a good movie was made based on an awful book by an overrated writer.

Pynchon maybe in top 10 most overrated writers in the last 100 yrs.

Let me start by saying that I have never read Pynchon before.

I had to re-read several pages and passages multiple times

Thomas Pynchon is supposed to be a great author

Remember those dumb “Family Circus” cartoons

the author appears to be a wanna be stoner

I am in the process of writing my own novel

Where is Kerouac when you need him?

The whole novel is one long inside joke.

I’m in a book club with 10 guys….

nonsensical plot

Studpid

Blech.

meandering piece of slop

What’s not cool is this book.

an Elmore Leonard Want-a-be

I could write a hippie chick way better.

The professor also said he hated reading it.

Do not recommend to anyone under the age of 65

This is my first encounter with a book about drug usage

The seventies were a time of sex, drugs and rock and roll.

The volumes I have read , sadly, occupy a large footprint on the planet.

Doc, the protagonist, is in a drug-induced haze for the majority of the novel

My extremities are tingling with the feeling that Socrates had after drinking a cup of hemlock.

ARPAnet, forerunner of the internet, is discussed as if everyone knows about it

written by a cute undergraduate student working under Pynchon’s wing

characters who make brief appearances

bad acid trips and a caricature of a plot

the ramblings of an intoxicated person

I really wanted to like this book

I am an avid fiction reader.

This was my first Pynchon

Some call it “stoner noir.”

you are the sober one

strangled by Pynchon

unsexy sex scenes

fiction is useless

H are to follow

little cat feet