A word to the otherwise

Toms Pynchon and Allen star in the Get Wit Picks of April, or is it May?

Often you can’t see them coming.

One of my favourite movies is The Big Lebowski: Endlessly quotable dialogue, perfectly convoluted plot, threaded through with life lessons that ring true, and plenty of bowling.

So when Thomas Pynchon, one of the All Time Greats and a famous recluse who has cameoed with a paper bag on his head not once but twice on The Simpsons, wrote a Lebowski-coded Los Angeles detective novel called Inherent Vice, I thought, yes! More slacker noir! This is the milieu we need!

But it didn’t quite work. And neither did Paul Thomas Anderson’s film adaptation. I willed it; it stayed a dream.

Of course, PTA hit a home run with One Battle After Another (which really should have been in this great New York Times story on the logbook of misremembered titles at the Lincoln Center cinema), based on Pynchon’s Vineland.

Meanwhile Pynchon went to Milwaukee for his most recent novel, Shadow Ticket. And this time, it worked.

He’s got his trademark ludicrous character names (Hop Wingdale…