Floris Heidsma
# 4028120
BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
Abstract
Little discussion exists regarding the relationship between paranoia, anti-paranoia and the Absurd,
and the combined influence they have on Thomas Pynchon’s central characters. This thesis will seek
to illuminate to what extent Pynchon instils paranoia within the absurd reality imposed upon the
central character in Inherent Vice during his quest. The thesis will begin by discussing the relationship
between paranoia, anti-paranoia and the Absurd, followed by the Absurd quest prevalent in
Pynchon’s fiction. Then Humour of the Absurd, or Black Humour, central to Pynchon is described. The
Absurd quality of the California setting will be elaborated upon next. Finally, the Absurd quest itself is
traced extensively throughout Inherent Vice by following its main character, Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello.
Along his quest, analysis shows that Doc rarely becomes aware of the absurd, and that his paranoid
conviction supplies the pretense of meaning sought after in Absurdist reality, in a similar fashion to
how anti-paranoia has been rejected by a number of Pynchon’s previous characters.
Floris Heidsma
# 4028120
BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
Table of Contents
Introduction
1
Paranoia, Anti-paranoia and the Absurd
p. 3
2
The Absurd Quest
p. 7
3
Humour of the Absurd
p. 10
4
California Dreaming and the Absurd
p. 11
Setting
5
The Quest in Inherent Vice
p. 14
Conclusion
p. 25
Works Cited
p. 27
Floris Heidsma
# 4028120
BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
Introduction
Critics, such as Elaine B. Safer, Leo Bersani and Don Hausdorff, have addressed the occurrence of
paranoia, anti-paranoia and also the presence of Absurdist elements within the fiction of Thomas
Pynchon. However, there is a lack of discussion concerning the possible relation between these three
themes and their relevance to the perception of Pynchon’s characters. Moreover, these aspects are
integral to the nature of the quest plot central to most of his novels. However, despite that paranoia
and Absurdism contain similar elements, they are not identical. Both paranoia and Absurdism
essentially concern the search for meaning in a world that is otherwise unbearable. Relatively little
criticism is available on Pynchon’s more recent work Inherent Vice, and therefore a thesis based upon
this novel would contribute to academic discussion. This thesis will seek to illuminate to what extent
Pynchon instils paranoia within the absurd reality imposed upon the central character in Inherent
Vice during his quest. The thesis will consist of three sections: the first will attempt to explain
Pynchon’s notion of paranoia and its counterpart, anti-paranoia in previous works by Pynchon and
their relationship with Absurdism, described by Albert Camus and Thomas Nagel. The second section
will deal with the Absurd quest central to Pynchon, illustrated in light of the previous section. The
third section will discuss the humour of the Absurd. Although critics, such as Kellman, label Pynchon
as a Black Humour writer, no distinction is apparent. The fourth section will describe the setting of
Inherent Vice, which is integral to the absurdity and the consequent humour present. Finally, the fifth
section will directly deal with the Absurd quest in Inherent Vice.
I: Paranoia, Anti-Paranoia and the Absurd
“He understood it to be another deep nudge from forces unseen,” writes Thomas Pynchon about
Zoyd Wheeler in the opening lines of Vineland. Implied is that these unseen forces are secretive and
capable of influencing Zoyd, prompting the very paranoid thought that they may well be out to get
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Floris Heidsma
# 4028120
BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
him. This introduces the paranoid mentality which possesses most of Thomas Pynchon’s characters
throughout his novels. Paranoia is described as “more generally: any unjustified or excessive sense of
fear; esp. an unreasonable fear of the actions or motives of others” (OED “paranoia”). However,
Bersani argues that in Pynchon, paranoia functions more “as if it were merely synonymous with
something like unfounded suspicions about a hostile environment” (99). Therefore, Pynchon’s
paranoia essentially stems from the perception of a threatening entity. The paranoid seeks
connections and “other orders behind the visible” (qtd. in Bersani 100), which conspire against him.
These forces unseen range from having one’s erections monitored as a pre-determiner of V-2 rocket
strike sites due to Pavlovian conditioning during childhood, as is the case with Slothrop in Gravity’s
Rainbow, to Sportello’s suspicion in Inherent Vice that the theft of his porn magazines is a conspiracy
catering to his sexual tastes. Paranoia is omnipresent in Pynchon’s work, containing “‘every degree of
paranoia from the private to the cosmic… a mentality which assumes ‘the existence of a vast,
insidious, preternaturally effective international conspiratorial network designed to perpetrate acts
of the most fiendish character’" (Sanders 178).
Events are suspect for the paranoid and Pynchon describes that this stems from “‘the
discovery [note: the ‘discovery,’ not the ‘suspicion’] that everything is connected, everything in the
Creation’" (qtd. in Bersani 102). Hindrances are related to a perpetrator, or indeed, as is a frequent
joke, to the perpetrator behind the perpetrator, “the mob behind the mob” (Inherent Vice 248).
Paranoia desires connections leading to a controlling force, and ultimately, to a global conspiracy.
Paranoia “offers the ideally suited hypothesis that the world is organized into a conspiracy, governed
by shadowy figures whose powers approach omniscience and omnipotence, and whose
manipulations of history may be detected in every chance gesture of their servant” (Sanders 177).
Within this context, according to Louis Mackey, Pynchon orders his fictional world along the lines of
“all men are either Elect, the handful chosen for salvation, or Preterite, passed over and tacitly
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Floris Heidsma
# 4028120
BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
consigned to damnation” (17). This instils the conviction that the forces unseen strive to realise the
individual’s predetermined damnation, and therefore paranoia “substitutes for the divine plan a
demonic one” (Sanders 178).
According to David Cowart, the notion of conspiracy and the consequent anxiety is engrained
within 60s America (7), an atmosphere which Pynchon explores. In lieu of the series of assassinations
of the Kennedys, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King “‘the American public began to suspect, like
Oedipa Maas in the Crying of Lot 49, that ‘it’s all part of a plot, an elaborate [...] plot’” (Cowart 7).
This suspicion seems to be rooted in the inability of the public and Pynchon’s characters to
understand society, resulting in a continuous search for a motive or a connection between events
that unravels them all. Molly Hite argues that “Pynchon's fiction is driven by the trope of the absent
centre, in the form of a central insight illuminating a unitary idea of order” (qtd. in Simons 211).
Therefore, “both Pynchon's key characters and his readers become involved in unfulfilled searches
for the underlying logic of the world or the novel, or searches for… a total theory” (Simmons 211),
stemming from the “the subjective difficulty of representing the power of global capitalism” (211).
For Pynchon’s characters, the existence of a global conspiracy depends more on the inability to
understand the magnitude of global capitalist society, fundamentally lacking a central guiding entity.
Pynchon’s characters, therefore, exist in paranoid reality. However, the opposite may also be
true, termed by Pynchon as anti-paranoia: “if there is something comforting-religious, if you want,
about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition
not many of us can bear for long" (qtd. in Bersani 103). Either everything is related or nothing is,
which Brian McHale explains as: “paranoia and anti-paranoia, the world as over-interpretable and as
uninterpretable: these are the poles between which Pynchon's characters, plots, represented world,
and narrative voice oscillate...” (223). Due to the characters’ inability to understand the driving force
within their society they continuously oscillate between two, perhaps equally absurd, conclusions on
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Floris Heidsma
# 4028120
BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
reality. Anti-paranoia is deemed more terrifying than paranoia, because malign reason is preferred
by Pynchon’s characters to a lack of reason. "‘Either they have put him here for a reason,’ Slothrop
speculates during ‘the anti-paranoid part of his cycle,’ ‘or he's just here. He isn't sure that he
wouldn't, actually, rather have that reason’" (qtd. in Bersani 103). Reason is therefore necessary to
cope with reality, even if only in the guise of “hidden orders behind the visible” (Bersani 103).
Therefore, paranoia is the source of meaning and the “desired structure of thought” (Bersani 103).
Pynchon’s characters strive to make sense of the world, yet are unable to do so. Moreover,
Pynchon suggests that paranoia is desirable because it at least grants the pretense of meaning in life.
Both states of being seem absurd. Thomas Nagel writes that “the sense that life as a whole is absurd
arises when we perceive, perhaps dimly, an inflated pretension or aspiration which is inseparable
from the continuation of human life and which makes its absurdity inescapable, short of escape from
life itself” (718). It is the inherent lack of meaning that is absurd and unbearable for Pynchon’s
characters. Absurd is defined as “the chaotic and purposeless nature of the universe, and the futility
of human attempts to make sense of it” (OED). Albert Camus describes the absurd struggle for
meaning in a world that is inherently meaningless in “The Myth of Sisyphus”: “this world in itself is
not reasonable... But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for
clarity whose call echoes in the human heart” (7). The desire for reason is similar to Pynchon’s
paranoia. Moreover, Nagel writes that “if there is a philosophical sense of absurdity, however, it
must arise from the perception of something universal-some respect in which pretension and reality
inevitably clash for us all” (718). Anti-paranoia shares similar doubt, wherein significant connection
becomes arbitrary. However, Slothrop chooses paranoia and so does Absurdism advocate not
succumbing to the futility of the individual. Instead, the individual applies meaning, even if only as a
pretense to make the situation of life bearable. Therefore, paranoia and Absurdism concern the
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Floris Heidsma
# 4028120
BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
means with which to cope in world that is otherwise unbearable, if only essentially by means of
pretension.
II: The Absurd Quest in Pynchon
Paranoia, then, seeks connection in the world in order to establish meaning and reason in the form
of forces unseen. Absurdism is a consequence of the futile search for meaning in a meaningless
world. Similarly to anti-paranoia, Absurdism expresses the disconnection between the individual’s
relation to the world and arbitrariness in action. As a consequence of this awareness, paranoia and
Absurdism share the theme of a quest for knowledge and of being. This quest is undertaken even if
only as a pretense to distract the individual from succumbing to the realisation that truly no forces
are at work. Safer writes that:
Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, like Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), and
V. (1963), directs attention, with sharp-edged humor, to people’s quest for meaning and
fulfilment in the twentieth century, a time when many have become upset by the repeated
failure of their dreams and aspirations. This continued yearning and frustration helps set up
an absurd perspective, absurd by Camus’ definition, which focuses on a “divorce between
the mind that desires and the world that disappoints, [the] nostalgia for unity, this
fragmented universe and the contradiction that binds them together.” (107)
The continued yearning and frustration are central to the absurd quest. Camus writes in the Myth of
Sisyphus that the "mind's deepest desire is an insistence upon familiarity, an appetite for clarity”.
Within Absurdism, the individual seeks knowledge in order to understand and Camus continues,
“Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to the human, stamping it with his seal”. The
inhumanity of the world and its consequent incomprehensibleness is that which causes frustration
within the Absurd. Moreover, Camus states, “the mind that aims to understand reality can consider
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Floris Heidsma
# 4028120
BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
itself satisfied only by reducing it to terms of thought”. This echoes Pynchon’s paranoia, wherein
events in the world are reduced to humanised intent because that is understandable within the
structures of capitalist society.
The Absurd quest consists of consists of a journey in which epistemological and ontological
questioning is integral. According to Brian McHale, epistemological and ontological questioning is
central to Pynchon’s fiction, due to “an increasing perception that the world and reality are unstable,
and therefore there is no point in questing for reliable knowledge” (McHale). Pynchon’s characters
are nearly always wound up in a quest to uncover, or to discover, but of which the goal degrades into
abstraction and only questions of being remain. Safer states that “in Pynchon’s earlier novels, the
main characters, and the reader as well, search for life’s meaning and for hope. Slothrop (in Gravity’s
Rainbow), Oedipa Maas (in The Crying of Lot 49), and Stencil (in V.) quest for some form of order (no
matter what kind) and fulfilment in the face of absurdity” (107). The absurd quest is manifested
within Herbert Stencil in V.. Herein, Stencil quests after V., an elusive entity he comes across in his
father’s secret intelligence papers, believing V. to be connected to global conflict. Herbert’s father,
Sidney, notes that “there is more behind and inside V. than any of us had suspected. Not who, but
what: what is she” (qtd. in Hausdorff 259). In the style of the absurd quest, Pynchon’s “‘single central
image is abstract, the letter ‘V.,’ which subsumes multiple meanings… and undergoes a number of
transformations in the course of the narrative’” (259). In the end, perhaps the most viable
explanation for V.’s elusiveness is that V. is simply non-existent. Integral to the quest is the problem
of interpretation. According to Hite “Pynchon exploits the idea that ‘things ought to add up to’ such
an ordinary signified in order to motivate the quest for unity and meaning amidst chaos... what
Pynchon exploits is the cultural determination of the desire for complete certainty in all things” (qtd.
in Madsen20). The quest for unity and meaning requires interpretation to find it: all connections
must add up to some form of unified truth.
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Floris Heidsma
# 4028120
BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
The absurd quest may then be nothing more than the search for order within disorder. As
Cowart writes “Pynchon ultimately reveals nothing more than the entropic acceleration of disorder.
No pattern palliates our plight” (7). Yet, despite the apparent futility, the characters persist on their
quest. It is in this that the absurdity of the quest may be recognised. The quest is futile: Herbert will
never find V. as a tangible and satisfying resolution to his searching. However, Hausdorff writes that,
though “meaningless the search may be, it is self-propelling, providing its own rationale. Most
terrifying is the possibility that he might discover V.; in that event, the search and the activity would
end, and he would be forced to lapse into inertness” (263). Echoed here is Camus and his myth of
Sisyphus, wherein Sisyphus persists in lifting the rock up the mountain as that task gives temporary
him purpose. According to Hausdorff, it is this sense of purpose that is important, whether in terms
of survival or the search for individual meaning. This is “‘the legitimate alternative to the ‘inertness’
of modern man in a mechanized world” (268). The act of questing in itself grants meaning and
purpose to life.
Therefore, the absurd quest is also a personal undertaking, wherein Pynchon describes
numerous individuals who, in the face of a meaningless society, embark upon a purpose of their own.
“God knows, how many Stencils have chased V. about the world” (qtd. in Hausdorff 266). However,
Pynchon also suggests that this quest is not a viable solution, as it is “no more and no less a
depersonalized obsession than all the others” (266). Obsession still does not grant Pynchon’s
characters any real purpose in life. When the quest is over, the world will again become meaningless.
The notion of pretense, as discussed earlier in paranoia and Absurdism, is therefore present within
the nature of the absurd quest. Pynchon suggests that the quest is a privilege, “the world doesn’t
care” (qtd. In Hausdorff 266). The opposite reality would be unbearable, and indeed Hausdorff writes
“viable delusion thus becomes a survival tactic in a world running out of alternatives” (268). The
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Floris Heidsma
# 4028120
BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
absurd quest, therefore, involves the futile desire of unity and order, and yet this personal
undertaking becomes the only viable alternative, or delusion, to a meaningless world.
III: Humour of the Absurd
In Inherent Vice, humour plays a central role in depicting the absurdity that Pynchon’s characters
encounter during their quest. Their environment is constantly distorted by absurdity, causing the
characters to struggle with disorientation. Moreover, the absurd situations force not only the
characters, but more so the reader to rethink their stance on what is accepted as normative and
what is real. The presented absurdity is often humorous and therefore, in this section, the relevance
of Pynchon’s humour to the Absurd quest and the humour ingrained in the absurd environment will
be discussed.
Pynchon’s writing tends to be categorised as Black Humour, a movement in which “the
novels and stories written by such authors as Pynchon, John Barth, Joseph Heller, Bruce Jay
Friedman, and Gilbert Sorrentino, among others, tended to present events that were grim and
terrifying but to deal with them in a wildly humorous manner” (Kellman). The more tragic and
confrontational realities of the world are coupled with humour and Jerome Klinkowitz explains that
black humour writing arose as “an accommodation by laughter to the world's insanity and a
deliberate refusal to find any new forms in fiction appropriate to the strange new worlds they
described” (271). Black humour writing explores the inherent absurdity of man’s place in the world,
thereby depicting its senselessness and the disorientation caused for its characters. The absurd,
therefore, is prevalent within black humour and indeed O’Neil writes, “the absurd finally, insofar as it
is a comic rather than a tragic mode, is always an expression of black humour, and even in its tragic
emphasis remains a fertile source of latent entropic humour. All the forms of black humour discussed
so far, in short, tend ultimately towards the absurd...” (160).
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Floris Heidsma
# 4028120
BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
Moreover, the absurd may even impose black humour. H.S Reiss, on Kafka’s Absurdism,
writes that Kafka’s humour suggests “the need for an acceptance of life which then can be a way out
of an otherwise hopeless maze” (536). Similar to in Pynchon’s writing, Kafka’s maze implies the
disorientation of the characters, and it seems to be Kafka’s hope that humour will bring about the
acceptance which turns the world from a senseless maze into a world that simply is. Nagel, too,
argues that the absurd confrontation “need not be a matter for agony unless we make it so” (727).
This confrontation is actuated “by the collision between the seriousness with which we take our lives
and the perpetual possibility of regarding everything about which we are serious as arbitrary or open
to doubt... These two inescapable viewpoints collide in us, and that is what makes life absurd” (Nagel
718-719). Humour arises from this undermining of the seriousness in which man undertakes life and,
more importantly, is regarded as the only option when confronted with absurd reality. Therefore,
Reiss writes that humour within Kafka’s writing is necessary to accept the human condition, as
“through it man’s intolerable burden can be eased and the human situation accepted” (541). The
Absurd perspective necessitates humour in order to cope with its senselessness, allowing for black
humour to arise.
IV: California Dreaming and the Absurd Setting
Set in California, more specifically in Los Angeles with a brief excursion to Las Vegas, the setting
saturates Inherent Vice with the humorously absurd. Located at the edge of the American frontier,
the Pacific edge, California is distinguishable from the rest of the United States as a “testament to the
exhaustion of the westering impulse once seen as so vital to the nation's manifest destiny... from the
Old world to New” (Adams 252). California in this sense is regarded as the ultimation of the American
Dream: the “cultural symbolism as America’s America” (Miller 226). Pynchon uses California as a
writing surface onto which “alternate versions of past and present are being inscribed” (Miller 226).
11
Floris Heidsma
# 4028120
BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
California possesses a “collective dream that everybody was being encouraged to stay dripping in”
(Inherent Vice 176). Los Angeles is implied to be about to boil over and is, in the style of Pynchon,
“over drugged and hyper signified” (Wilson 222). Hyper signified in the sense that all incidents attain
a higher significance – which may amount to nothing but superstition in this drugged state. Within
his writing Pynchon suggests that the dream is unsustainable and self-corrupting:
It was as if whatever had happened had reached some kind of limit. It was like finding the
gateway to the past unguarded, unforbidden because it didn’t have to be. Built into the act
of return finally was this glittering mosaic of doubt. Something like what Sauncho’s
colleagues in marine insurance liked to call inherent vice. “Is that like original sin?” Doc
wondered. “It’s what you can’t avoid,” Sauncho said... (351).
It is this mosaic of doubt that makes suspect the underlying truth to California dreaming. Miller
writes that California is depicted as a “sleek beauty masking inescapable corruption, disillusionment
and emptiness”. California possesses a rotten core: the inherent vice that Doc struggles with as a
private investigator. Adams describes Pynchon’s California as a place of “automization” (251), and
Los Angeles an overwhelming city which lacks a central core and therefore its very structure
produces alienation and disorientation (254). The inhabitants, Pynchon’s Preterite, struggle in the
immoral city as can be discerned when in the closing scenes of the novel Doc finds himself “in a
convoy of unknown size, each car keeping the one ahead in taillight range, like a caravan in a desert
of perception, gathered awhile for safety in getting across a patch of blindness” (368). Miller
describes this scene as representing the inescapability from the “common feeling of powerlessness”
(236), and even this specific act of common good, which Doc notes is “was one of the few things he’d
ever seen anybody in this town, except for hippies, do for free” (36), is merely a “temporary ‘safety’”
(Miller 236). Moreover, this blind movement through the fog illustrates the disorientation with which
the characters wrestle as they navigate through the story. Pynchon suggests that California – this
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Floris Heidsma
# 4028120
BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
place of dreaming – is soulless and absurd. Beneath the surface lies an inescapable fatality: an
inherent vice with which Pynchon confronts his characters and urges them onward as if by forces
unseen.
The detour to Las Vegas is also significant because, according to Jan Kott, the slot machines
in casinos are the ideal situation for the Theatre of the Absurd because all elements are present:
“Alienation is complete. Man is reduced to a player… Man is "thrown"… into a world which does not
belong to him… Their relationship is absurd. The machine controls the player rather than the player
the machine” (17-18). Pynchon, therefore, is able to infuse his paranoia into an immediately familiar
Absurdist setting.
Pynchon presents California in Inherent Vice through the focalisation of the central
protagonist, Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello, which the reader follows throughout the novel. Due to this single
focalisation, the story is limited to Doc’s perspective on reality, which consequently lends the reader
first hand insight into the disorientation inflicted by drug induced Californian absurdity. Moreover,
there is an aspect of unreliability due to Doc being an avid stoner, only increasing the hallucinogenic
experience of California. His perspective also allows for elements of drug humour, important in
Pynchon and tinged by absurdity. Through Doc, then, the reader is directly confronted with the
absurd conditions Pynchon presents. However, it is noteworthy that despite that Doc encounters
absurdities; it is only the reader who seems to be fully aware of their absurd nature. The reader is
dropped into Doc’s California lifestyle and seems to be expected to, like Doc, accept the absurdities
present within it, to humorous effect. His reality is littered with humorous incongruities that Doc
seems not to notice. It is this sense of reader omniscience that is an important aspect within the
Theatre of the Absurd. In the Theatre of the Absurd “ spectators see the happenings on the stage
entirely from the outside, without ever understanding the full meaning of these strange patterns of
events, as newly arrived visitors might watch life in a country of which they have not yet mastered
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Floris Heidsma
# 4028120
BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
the language” (Esslin 5). This shows that Doc is an Absurd character: confined to the patterns, or the
lack thereof, that dictate the workings of his reality. It is only through sporadic humorous inclination
that Doc fleetingly becomes aware of the absurdity and thus experiences absurd realisations. The
reader, however, is continually aware, and therefore, similarly to the spectators of the Theatre of the
Absurd, “are thus confronted with a grotesquely heightened picture of their own world: a world
without faith, meaning, and genuine freedom of will” (Esslin 6).
IV: The Quest in Inherent Vice
In the previous sections the nature of the Absurd quest in Pynchon’s novels has been explained, as
has the significance of Pynchon’s choice of a California dreaming setting in relation to the absurd.
Also described has been the humour contained within Pynchon’s writing, humour that is, according
to Kafka and Nagel, necessary in coming to terms with the absurd. The thesis will now turn to the
Absurd quest within Inherent Vice, which takes on the form of an investigation into the
disappearance of Wolfmann, Shasta, Coy and the illicit nature of the Golden Fang. The significance of
the encountered absurdity and paranoia will be described by following Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello to
specific absurd sites along his quest.
The first of such places Doc visits is Chick Planet Massage, where, upon entering, Doc is
immediately approached by Jade who informs him of “today’s Pussy-Eater’s Special, which is all good
until closing time?” (20). Besides that Jade constantly ends her sentences as a question, it seems
absurd that at this massage parlour a customer is able to pay to provide a sexual favour for the
hostess. It is a humorous incongruity to the expected, as is common in Inherent Vice. Doc doesn’t
come to this same conclusion and accepts the nature of the offer by replying with “Mmm, not that
$14.95 ain’t a totally groovy price, but I’m really trying to locate this guy who works for Mr.
Wolfmann?” (20). Another absurdity is that the place turned out to be “bigger inside than out” (21),
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Floris Heidsma
# 4028120
BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
with Doc roaming endlessly through vacant rooms. This spatial incongruity is another recurring
aspect and adds to the sense of disorientation in Doc’s wandering.
Doc heads towards the Wolfmann residence in order to talk to Mickey’s wife, Sloane. The
encounter between Doc and Sloane is described with “as if auditioning for widowhood, Sloane
Wolfmann strolled in from poolside wearing black spike-heeled sandals, a headband with a sheer
black veil, and a black bikini of neglible size made of the same material as the veil. She wasn’t exactly
an English rose, maybe more like an English daffodil...” (57). This is another incongruity: Sloane’s
clothes don’t match the expectations of a woman in mourning, which the black veil and black
clothing denote, especially in the context of her kidnapped husband. Her bikini is out of place and a
satire on Californian clothing and relationships. All in all, Sloane strikes an absurd figure. Doc, again,
seems to merely accept this portrayal, commenting that “miniskirts were invented for young women
like her” (57). Doc also comes across Wolfmann’s personal necktie collection consisting of silk ties
bearing images of various women in erotic positions, women that Doc suspects are a part of “a
Mickey Wolfmann girlfriend inventory” (63). These clothing articles provide an incongruity: ties are
part of a professional dress code, and yet an erotic depiction violates this purpose. Instead, they
function more as conquest tokens. Doc’s reaction to Sloane’s erotic image is his observation of “an
almost gentlemanly angle to Mickey’s character he hadn’t counted on” (64). Though humorous, Doc
again appears unfazed by the encountered absurdity. Moreover, Shasta’s tie is missing, another
piece of the puzzle to be solved.
Riggs Warbling’s talks about zomes at the residence, which he designs and builds, making
“great meditation spaces, do you know, some people have actually walked into zomes and not come
back out the same way they went in? And sometimes not at all? Like zomes are portals to someplace
else. Especially if they’re located out in the desert, which is where I’ve been...” (62). Zomes are
absurd insofar that they distort space and time, creating a form of transportation out of current
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BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
reality. Riggs’ absurd descriptions fit in with the rest of the Californian hallucinogenic experience,
making zomes the perfect Californian home. Later on in the quest, zomes reappear out in the desert
at Arrepentimiento, Wolfmann’s “long time dream project… near Las Vegas” (62). The site is dotted
by “several what Riggs had called zomes, linked by covered walkways. Not perfect hemispheres, but
pointed at the top” (249). At one of these Doc and Tito are arrested by Riggs, who threatens them
with “all right, you can stop there… Or you can keep on coming, clear on into the next world. Ask me
if I give a shit” (250). This threat is ironic as Riggs invites them into a zome and later on once again
informs Doc that zomes “can act as doorways to other dimensions” (253). Either way, Doc may have
entered another world. Similarly to Chick Planet Massage, the interior of the zome is disorientating in
terms of volume: “and actually, now that Doc thought of it, more space, judging from the outside
than there could possibly be in here. Riggs caught him looking around and read his mind. ‘Groovy
ain’t it?... instead of a few dollars per cubic foot enclosed, this is more cubic feet per dollar” (251).
Zomes are a transportation device, in the sense that Riggs adds “I can leave whenever I want.’ He
motioned with his head. ‘All I have to do is step through that door over there, and I’m safe’” (253).
This suggests that zomes provide an escape: from California and perhaps, too, from its inherent vice.
Indeed, the name of the site, Arrepentimiento, is “‘Spanish for ‘sorry about that’”(248). It is a free
housing project and Wolfmann’s attempt to pay penance for the means in which he acquired his
wealth; his sought-for release from the inherent vice he has been a part of. Shasta can also be linked
to these zomes. Back at Gordita Beach, Doc encounters Shasta, who explains that she had had to go
“up north? Family stuff?” (262) and that she had merely “been away (262)”. Doc notes that Shasta
wears around her neck a seashell “maybe even brought back from a distant Pacific island, whose
shape and markings reminded Doc of one of the zomes in Mickey’s now-abandoned project in the
desert” (262). A zome again symbolises a portal, which in this case served to transport Shasta either
away – to the Golden Fang schooner – or back again. Whether or not zomes actually function as
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# 4028120
BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
portals, the signification behind the increasing number of zomes that Doc encounters is striking. If
the number of zomes increases, then so too, Doc may reason, does the number of L.A inhabitants
who wish to leave the relentless city. This might be, in Doc’s paranoia, because the corrupt forces
unseen within the city are coming to their culmination.
After the Wolfmann residence comes Topanga mansion, where the surf band the Boards
resides. The Boards are a very successful band in California and represent the music industry in
Inherent Vice. Yet, Doc comments on the disconsolateness of success within this aspect of the
Californian dream: “Doc was reminded for the uncountableth time that for every band like this one
there were a hundred or a thousand others like his cousin’s band Beer, doomed to shuffle in
obscurity, energised by a faith in the imperishability of rock ‘n’ roll...” (126). Pynchon comments on
California’s music industry: for most of the Pynchon’s preterite the dream of success only exists as a
tragic hope.
Within the mansion, Doc meets a number of absurd characters, for instance, a dog named
Myrna who shows very un-doglike behaviour. The dog watches television with other inhabitants and
due to some “strange dog ESP” (127), she can tell that a dog-food commercial is about to come on a
minute before it does. When it is over, she “‘would turn her head to any humans in the vicinity and
nod emphatically... it seemed to be more of a social act, along the lines of, ‘something, huh?’” (128).
Topanga mansion contains a certain sense of inertness which slowly develops throughout the
passage. Myrna is watching television along with the Boards and Spotted Dick personnel, among
which “the concentration level among the viewers had doc feeling a little restless. He realised the
scope of the mental damage one push on the “off” button of a TV zapper could inflict on this roomful
of obsessives” (128). Pynchon uses this scene to comment on the effects of television and the
absurdity it instils: the inhabitants appear lifeless and disconnected, exemplified by their
concentration level, as if television provides an alternate version of reality. Moreover, television
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BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
appears to have a brainwashing effect, as the watchers seem “absorbed enough... to forget that
these people are actors” (128).
Paranoia and the forces unseen are present in Topanga mansion. Doc becomes aware of a
harbouring and paranoid atmosphere, describing that “something like a security detail appeared now
and then out on the property, making perimeter checks” (128). Although some form of security is to
be expected for a celebrity band, a perimeter check remains a little strange for a house filled
essentially by drug users, partygoers and groupies. It is when talking to Spotted Dick’s keyboard
player Smedley, that Doc discovers a threatening presence:
“How’s Fiona enjoying it here in Southern California?”
Smedley got glum. “Loves everything but the paranoia, man.”
“Paranoia, really?”
His voice dropped to a whisper. “This house—” At which point a scowling young gent...
entered and leaned against a wall with arms folded and just stayed there, listening. Smedley,
his eyeballs oscillating wildly, fled the area (128).
Doc realises that a controlling power is present, unnatural to the maintained hippie vibe: “Doc
couldn’t help but noticing what you’d call an atmosphere. Instead of a ritual handshake or even a
smile, everybody he got introduced to greeted him with the same formula — “where are you at,
man?’ suggesting a high level of discomfort, even fear, about anybody who couldn’t be dropped in a
bag right away and labeled’” (129). Labels are an element of control: everyone must adhere to an
orderly system of categorisation. This implies an amount of brainwashing on the hippies’ part by
forces unseen, whether through television, the music industry or drugs. Moreover, Doc’s paranoia
stretches out past the mansion to greater Los Angeles, wherein he describes that he has become
increasingly aware of “older men, there and not there, rigid, unsmiling, that he knew he’d seen
before, not the faces necessarily but a defiant posture, an unwillingness to blur out, like everybody
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Floris Heidsma
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BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
else at the psychedelic events of those days, beyond official envelopes of skin” (129). For Doc, these
men are instruments of the forces unseen, “like the operatives who had dragged away Coy
Harlingen” (129), who threaten the Californian dream. “If everything in this dream of prerevolution
was in fact doomed to end and the faithless money-driven world to reassert its control over all the
lives it felt entitled to touch, fondle and molest, it would be agents like these, dutiful and silent, out
doing the shit work, who’d make it happen” (130). It is the continued working of the described
money-driven world that establishes the inherent vice present within Californian society. Their
agents infiltrate even the most exclusive of surfer community: the mansion of surfer band the
Boards. Coy, too, has been silenced by these forces, “a look on his face so desperate, so longing, and
way too nervous, as if somehow inside this house he had actually been forbidden to speak” (131).
It is in the final absurd scenes of the Topanga mansion that the workings of the forces unseen
culminate; namely, in zombification. After speaking with Coy, Doc and Denis smoke a joint with other
party members, during the course of which they become immensely stoned. However, this leads to a
terrible hallucination because “because Doc knew now, beyond all doubt, that every single one of
these Boards was a zombie...” (132). Indeed this drug induced realisation causes panic and “Doc
suddenly found himself fleeing through the corridors of the creepy mansion with uncertain numbers
of screaming flesh-eating creatures behind him...” (133). Doc, Denis, and by chance meeting also
Jade, manage to escape unharmed, rolling a joint “to keep from freaking out?” (134) as they drive
away headed for Santa Monica. Drugs, music, television and the forces unseen have turned the
inhabitants of the mansion into zombies. Topanga mansion may be discerned as Pynchon’s metaphor
for the realities concerning Los Angeles’ society: impotent, paranoid and consisting of soulless
zombified members who are, as Doc expresses, “undead and unclean”(132). It may be better
California dreaming to not exist at all, as expressed in Denis’ reaction to the Doc’s unclean zombies:
“dead and clean is okay?” (132). The superficiality of California dreaming is zombify-ing and
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Floris Heidsma
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BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
something to escape from. Moreover, Topanga mansion presents a blurring of boundaries between
real and imagined, which raises the question of whether Californian dreaming is a viable reality or a
viable delusion.
Next is the coincidence – or not – of Doc finding the Golden Fang headquarters by looking up
an old address an Ouija board gave him years ago in order to score marihuana with Shasta. The
building itself is “in the old L.A. tradition of architectural whimsy, this structure was supposed to be a
six-story-high golden fang!” (168). A golden fang shaped building is absurd, but indeed as Doc himself
points out, it only maintains L.A. tradition. Dr. Blatnoyd explains to Doc that the Golden Fang is
merely “a syndicate, most of us happen to be dentists, we set it up years ago for tax purposes, all
legit...” (169). It is absurd for a syndicate of dentists to construct a fang shaped building, especially on
the dubious presumption of legitimate tax purposes. Moreover, though, Dr. Blatnoyd’s explanation
also indicates the illusiveness of the Golden Fang. The Golden Fang continuously refuses to be pinned
down as a distinct and identifiable entity and Sportello wonders to himself “let’s see – it’s a schooner
that smuggles in goods. It’s a shadowy holding company. Now it’s a Southeast Asian heroin cartel.
Maybe Mickey’s in on it. Wow, this Golden Fang, man – what they call many things to many folks...”
(159). Sportello is becoming lost in the possibility of the Golden Fang, an entity reminiscent of the
forces unseen and the “mob behind the mob” (248).Therefore, the Golden Fang is absurd as it
functions more as a concept, rather than an entity. The Golden Fang is there for Doc to figure out,
yet it does not supply answers. Another humorous absurdity is that after Dr. Blatnoyd offers Doc
lines of cocaine after determining that Doc is “one of those hippie dopefiends” (169), Doc discovers a
manual on Dr. Blatnoyd’s desk. The manual is titled Golden Fang Procedures Handbook and is opened
on a section titled “Interpersonal Relationships. Section Eight – Hippies” (170). Herein is described
that “dealing with the Hippie is generally straightforward. His childlike nature will usually respond
positively to drugs, sex and/or rock and roll, although in which order these are to be deployed must
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Floris Heidsma
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BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
depend on conditions specific to the moment” (170). Through this Pynchon comments on the
possible simplicity in which Doc’s forces unseen manage to exert control and the lack of free will that
Doc seems to possess. Dr. Blatnoyd uses cocaine to control Doc, and therefore drugs in this “overdrugged” (Wilson 222) state are implied to be a source of docility used by the forces unseen on the
inhabitants. Moreover, this confirms Doc’s prior suspicions that “like something else was going on –
something... not groovy” (170). This building, representational of Californian absurdity, is corrupt.
Doc learns that Wolfmann may be an inmate in a mental institute called Chryskylodon. Tito
informs Doc that it is Greek meaning golden fang. Chryskylodon presents questions of sanity and
confinement within Inherent Vice. Doc is able to enter as a guest on tour. During lunch, Doc notices
that the white wine he’s drinking really has more of a yellow colour than white. Attempting to check
the label he “‘noticed an ingredient list several lines long, with the note, in parentheses, ‘continued
on back of bottle,’ but whenever he tried, as casually as he could, to have a look at the label on the
back, he noticed he was getting these stares, and sometimes people even reached and turned the
label away so he couldn’t read it’” (187). Not knowing the contents of the wine, Doc and perhaps
even the entire table have now been drugged, making their current lucidness questionable. More
importantly, Doc’s sanity is undermined by the doctors through their act of turning away the label.
Doc’s attempt at reading the label is made to appear out of the ordinary, as something not done. The
reverse is also true; the doctors’ acceptance of the absurd wine bottle and their attitude towards
Doc’s scepticism is crazy. Another question of sanity is when Doc encounters an orderly who is
wearing “the exact tie Doc had failed to find in Mickey’s closet, the one with Shasta hand-painted on
it, in a pose submissive enough to break an ex-old man’s heart, that’s if he was in the mood” (190).
By wearing the erotic tie the orderly’s professionalism is violated, making his, and therefore all the
workers, sanity questionable.
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BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
Coy Harlingen, too, is present at the institute, who Doc encounters to his utter surprise in
the Chryskylodon’s meditation grotto. This is odd as being an inmate; Coy is expected to be confined
to the premises. However, Doc has occasionally encountered Coy outside of the institute. The spatial
confines are therefore put into doubt as the door may simply be open, which results in Chryskolodon
being depicted as an absurd confinement. Reminiscent of the Topanga zombies, Coy and Doc
manage to talk by avoiding suspicion as long as they walk “slow and stoned” (191). It is through Coy
that Doc learns of the Golden Fang’s scheme of “vertical integration” (192). If the Golden Fang,
essentially drug dealers, “could get its customers strung out, why not turn around and also sell them
a program to help them kick?” (192). This system is effective and would continue unhindered “as
long as American life was something to be escaped from” (192). Drugs are therefore again depicted
as an element of control. The Golden Fang has truly invested in the inherent vice of Los Angeles. The
disillusionment behind California dreaming forces its seekers to find solace through other means:
drugs. Coy again manages to simply vanish before Doc’s eyes.
At a later stage, Doc arrives at the Nine of Diamonds casino in Las Vegas. The casino setting,
naturally, plays with the idea of probability and chance. Doc is out to find Puck Beaverton and his
partner Einar, who has “these hypersensitive hands… that can feel through the lever, feel the exact
point where each of them reels lets go one by one” (226). This means that Einar exerts control over
the game and does not depend on luck. As a result, Puck and Einar run a scheme: Einar wins and Puck
collects. Doc catches Einar winning on a machine as “a quantity of JFK half-dollars began to vomit out
of the machine in a huge parabolic torrent… Einar nodded and stepped away…” (231). Einar is
therefore capable of beating the ideal absurd situation. However, as is typical of Pynchon, misfortune
still strikes “when suddenly the laws of chance, deciding on a classic fuck-you, instructed Puck’s
nickel machine also to hit... At which point Puck, as if allergic to dilemmas, broke for the nearest exit”
(231-232). Puck is unable to choose from which machine to collect the winnings and consequently
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# 4028120
BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
wins nothing. Pynchon uses this as a metaphor to describe Puck’s lack of free will: the forces unseen
have decided that both machines are an option. As such, Pynchon provides the perfect allegorical
situation for Absurd theatre, dismantles it, and then, adhering to his incongruous writing, again
humorously illustrates the unpredictability and misfortune of the world by having Puck and Einar win
simultaneously. Moreover, Doc’s reaction to witnessing this scene is simply to “claim what looked by
now to be several cubic feet of nickels” (232).
Public image is absurd in Los Angeles. At the handoff between Doc and the Golden Fang
operatives, the latter come disguised as “a wholesome blond California family in a ’53 Buick Estate
Wagon... a nostalgic advertisement for the sort of suburban consensus...” (349). This description is
clearly ironic and again presents an incongruity due to that the operatives are disguised as the
unsuspected suburban dream family. This should only increase the paranoia and distrust present
within Doc’s view of society. Humorously absurd is Doc’s perfect civility towards the dad, offering
him “a hand with this?” (349). Moreover, though, this shows that Los Angeles’ inherent vice and the
forces unseen have almost whimsically infiltrated the most secure of both American and Californian
values: that of family.
Doc’s questing is briefly put into doubt along the way. At one point on the beach Shasta
makes Doc wonder to himself “Shasta had nailed it. Forget who – what was he working for
anymore?” (314). It is through this questioning that Doc fully realises the Absurd nature of his
lifestyle. Doc doesn’t usually work for cash customers, but instead “assumed he’d been out busting
his balls for folks who if they paid him anything it’d be half a lid or a small favor down the line or
maybe only just a quick smile, long as it was real” (314).Instead, Doc works in a transaction of favours
and a sense of decency for something worth his while and this is what supplies Doc with meaning, if
not any material wealth. The memory of Shasta and the favour she asked is enough to spur him on.
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BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
The final passage of the novel describes Doc driving along the existential highway and
missing all the exits due to the heavy fog:
Then again, he might run out of gas before that happened, and have to leave the caravan,
and pull over on the shoulder and wait. For whatever would happen. For a forgotten joint to
materialise in his pocket. For the CHP to come by and choose not to hassle him. For a restless
blonde in a Stingray to stop and offer him a ride. For the fog to burn away, and for something
else this time, somehow, to be there instead (369).
Due to the resolution of his absurd quest, Doc now briefly lacks purpose and meaning, but in a spirit
similar to Camus’ Sisyphus, he is content until the next quest, the next challenge is nudged out of the
fog by forces unseen.
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Floris Heidsma
# 4028120
BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
Conclusion
Pynchon’s paranoia throughout his novels is reminiscent of the Absurd as described by Camus and
Nagel, as both share unmistakably similar theme illustrating the struggle that man faces without a
clearly existent ordering entity. Within Inherent Vice, Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello is the character portrayed
to brave this struggle in the form of an Absurd quest: an undertaking granting purpose, and at times,
serving only as a viable delusion in a meaningless world.
Doc must pursue the Golden Fang in the hopes of restoring Shasta. Even at the quest’s
conclusion, the Golden Fang remains an enigmatic force, one that surpasses mere paranoia and is an
actual powerful entity. Moreover, they seem to only be a part of California’s inherent vice. Absurdity
within Inherent Vice is commonly presented through humorous incongruity. These incongruities
often violate established meaning, such as Sloane’s bikini mourning and Wolfmann’s ties. However,
only the reader is aware of the humorous absurdity as Doc is simply accepting. Disorientation is a key
aspect to depicting Doc’s struggle along the quest, often presented through spatial distortion, such
as represented by absurd constructions such as zomes. Highways symbolise the unknown journey of
the quest and the lack of meaningful destination. Paranoia and the forces unseen, often presented
within absurd situations, such as the zombification at Topanga mansion. Moreover, California
dreaming is depicted as an Absurdist reality as it is questioned to be a viable reality, or a viable
delusion. In this regard, sanity, also, is questioned. A clearly recognisable Absurdist setting is
presented at the casino in Las Vegas. The relation between free will and the notion of probability and
chance are commented upon at this stage. The actual resolution of the quest does not particularly
relieve Doc, nor grant him a permanent sense of fulfilment. Doc does not gain anything, and only
waits for the next quest to come along and give him a temporary sense of purpose, which bears
similarity to Camus’ absurd Sisyphus.
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Floris Heidsma
# 4028120
BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
This thesis sought to illuminate to what extent Pynchon instils paranoia within the absurd
reality imposed upon the central character in Inherent Vice during his quest. Paranoia is almost
omnipresent in Inherent Vice, and by extent also in the depicted absurd reality. The Absurd depicts
frustration of desiring meaning in a meaningless world. Paranoia, in a sense, provides this sense of
meaning. It is Doc’s paranoid conviction of meaning and signification that, in a way, prevents him
from becoming explicitly aware of the Absurd, unlike the reader. Only at times does he question the
nature of his quest, yet this doubt is quickly dispelled. Along his quest, analysis shows that Doc rarely
becomes aware of the absurd, and that his paranoid conviction supplies the pretense of meaning
sought after in Absurdist reality, in a similar fashion to how anti-paranoia has been reject by a
number of Pynchon’s previous characters.
However, although an absurdist trend may be discerned, it would not be correct to say that
Pynchon truly is an absurdist writer in the same way as playwright Samuel Beckett or writer Albert
Camus is. A main problem in the comparison would be that in Pynchon’s writing his characters
substitute the inherent absence of structure with another paranoid form of ordering entity.
Consequently, paranoia is more of a self-imposed reality, rather than one that is. Absurdism only
seeks to discover how an individual is able to deal and live with the absurdity inherent to their
existence. It does not replace the absence of an ordering entity with paranoid suspicion.
This thesis sought to illustrate Thomas Pynchon’s iconic themes of paranoia and antiparanoia and to present these themes in relation to Absurdism, and Pynchon’s Inherent Vice, a more
recent novel that has yet to be discussed extensively. In future reference, Pynchon may be compared
and contrasted to well-established Absurdist writers, or other works containing absurd and possibly
drug induced elements, such as Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Moreover, the development of
the Absurd as a contemporary theme present in literature may be studied, in order to establish
whether Absurdism truly is a state of being inherent to the modern world.
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Floris Heidsma
# 4028120
BA THESIS
Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
Works Cited
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Paranoid Detection: The Absurd Quest in Inherent Vice
English Language and Culture
Supervisor: Simon Cook
Word Count: 8306
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