See it here.
The map features places and locations from Pynchon’s books, as well as from his personal life (like when he worked for Boeing after college, and the time he met and got high with Brian Wilson, who apparently didn’t have much to say once the weed kicked in).
It also mentions Tommy’s, which took me back to my high school years and many, many late-night trips to the famous L.A. burger joint (I’m assuming the map is calling out the original location on Rampart and Beverly). In Inherent Vice (see post below), when characters get the munchies they go to this “burger navel of the universe.”
And here’s what Mark Horowitz had to say about Pynchon’s new novel: it’s “an homage to those bygone days [the 60s and early 70s], plus something no one expected from the notoriously private author: a semiautobiographical romp. Set in the twilight of the psychedelic ’60s, Inherent Vice is stoner noir, a comic murder mystery starring a detective who—like stories of Pynchon himself—smokes bales of weed, obsesses over unseen conspiracies, and relishes bad TV. (The Big Lebowski meets The Big Sleep.) And if you map the novel against Pynchon’s life in LA, it really does tie the whole room together.”
(Anytime I come across a Big Lebowski reference I’m feeling good.)
Another Pynchon post, you say? Yes. To be honest, though, I don’t think about Pynchon much anymore. I used to. But now I don’t. And now I’m not so sure I remember what I used to think.