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PTA's Inherent Vice script should have won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. It took me reading the novel, then watching the film multiple times, then listening to the audiobook to understand Pynchon's work.

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Love Gravity’s Rainbow! I took its whole approach to the world as a dare to write something highly unconventional in grad school, and when the prof handed us back our papers he asked me to stay after class. “Tom,” he said, “what the hell is this?” “I thought Pynchon’s book basically required that I escape the bounds of the conventional academic paper, so I took a shot at doing something different,” I replied. “Well, I can’t accept it,” he replied, “I need you to produce a ‘coin of the realm.’” I won’t belabor the point; I wrote a conventional paper. But man, what a novel!

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