<\/p>\n
Fans of Thomas Pynchon are the kind of people who thrill at plot detours involving a giant adenoid<\/a> about to swallow London. They can recite his famously bonkers character names, like Roger Mexico, Mike Fallopian and Scarsdale Vibe. They have read the 1,085-page \u201cAgainst the Day<\/a>\u201d \u2014 twice.<\/p>\n Right now, they\u2019re in heaven.<\/p>\n The famously reclusive author\u2019s first piece of writing in 12 years arrives next week. His ninth novel, \u201cShadow Ticket,\u201d seems to have all the hallmarks of Pynchon\u2019s most beloved works: a zany plot, ridiculous puns, shady political organizations, many absurd proper nouns.<\/p>\n All of those Pynchonian elements can be found, too, in \u201cOne Battle After Another<\/a>,\u201d filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s loose adaptation of Pynchon\u2019s \u201cVineland\u201d starring Leonardo DiCaprio. It\u2019s being talked about as one of the finest movies of the year, and it is bringing Pynchon\u2019s writing to unsuspecting new audiences.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also a surprising choice for Anderson, even though he already made one close adaptation of a Pynchon book \u2014 the trippy detective yarn \u201cInherent Vice<\/a>\u201d \u2014 in 2014. \u201cVineland<\/a>\u201d was divisive upon its 1990 release, in part because of the 17-year wait that came after his National Book Award-winning \u201cGravity\u2019s Rainbow,\u201d a postmodern masterpiece about World War II, V-2 rockets and, yes, a giant adenoid threatening to devour London (briefly, kind of). With \u201cVineland,\u201d he offered a lovable, shaggy work that followed former 1960s revolutionaries during the Reagan-era war on drugs, with a plot that managed to contain a separatist republic, screeds about television and a Godzilla-like force of destruction. It does not scream \u201ceasy to adapt.\u201d<\/p>\n For academics who\u2019ve spent their lives studying Pynchon, a blockbuster comedy-thriller adapted from \u201cVineland\u201d that cost at least $130 million to make is nearly unthinkable. Even stranger is the hype around it, talk of Anderson\u2019s potential first Oscar and a loving reception from mainstream moviegoers, with an A rating from the audiences polled by CinemaScore<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Anderson, who built up some goodwill among Pynchon fans (self-described \u201cPynheads\u201d) with that faithful take on \u201cInherent Vice,\u201d has taken the basic plot of the Pynchon novel and left behind what he didn\u2019t need. Joanna Freer, a lecturer at the University of Exeter, sees \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d as a fascinating modification where some of Pynchon\u2019s spirit still punches through.<\/p>\n \u201cEspecially with this film, Anderson seems to be pulled toward wanting to be commercially successful, while at the same time pulled toward trying to adapt somebody whose writing is almost the most anti-commercial writing you could possibly have,\u201d Freer said. \u201cSomehow, in \u2018One Battle After Another,\u2019 he\u2019s pulled off a spectacular merger of those two aims.\u201d<\/p>\n Not long after \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d begins, it\u2019s clear that it diverges from \u201cVineland\u201d just as much as it retains some particulars. Sure, Anderson\u2019s adaptation includes Pynchon references all over (including a few nods to \u201cGravity\u2019s Rainbow\u201d), but most importantly, the film keeps the novel\u2019s basic setup.<\/p>\n Spoilers below, Pynheads.<\/p>\n We first meet left-wing activists Bob Ferguson (DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) while they work for a radical organization, fall in love and have a baby, Willa (Chase Infiniti). The couple is chased by Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), who develops an obsession and then a physical relationship with Perfidia. After a run-in with the law, Perfidia rats out her comrades and enters into witness protection without Bob or Willa. Years later, Willa is in high school and Lockjaw comes back for her because he believes he is her father.<\/p>\n The political context that underlies these events is quite different. In the 1984-set \u201cVineland,\u201d the feds return to the novel\u2019s titular California town as part of the repression of the war on drugs. \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d shifts the action into the 21st century, where Lockjaw runs a detention center for immigrants and his return to find Willa comes under the guise of a roundup in a sanctuary city. And while Bob\u2019s counterpart in the novel is framed for growing marijuana by a government that wants to come after him, the Bob here is just a stoner with memory problems.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that Bob uses a vape pen throughout instead of rolling joints \u2026 signifies the legalization of marijuana and how that\u2019s no longer the point of entry of a villainous, racist political repression into the lives of ordinary people. Today, it\u2019s immigration,\u201d said Michael Mark Cohen, professor of American studies at the University of California at Berkeley. \u201cAnd so it gives way from DEA to ICE as the enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n But Anderson\u2019s adaptation also zooms in to stuff as minuscule as character names. Pynchon has always been known for his hilarious monikers \u2014 Steven Lockjaw\u2019s analogous character in the novel is Brock Vond \u2014 but Sascha P\u00f6hlmann, professor at Technical University Dortmund and the co-host of next year\u2019s International Pynchon Week, thinks Anderson located the right balance for his revitalized characters. \u201cLockjaw is actually a better name in a way. It\u2019s just as Pynchonian,\u201d P\u00f6hlmann said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a parody, it\u2019s also not just imitation, but it just makes sense in its own right.\u201d<\/p>\n Anderson\u2019s film takes further steps to update Lockjaw\u2019s character, showing us his initiation into a white supremacist organization called the Christmas Adventurers Club. Lockjaw was involved once in an interracial relationship with Perfidia \u2014 a major problem for an organization that is dedicated to \u201cracial purification.\u201d To make sure he doesn\u2019t have any difficulty in joining the Christmas Adventurers Club, Lockjaw decides to chase Willa down and have her killed.<\/p>\n Lockjaw\u2019s murder plot springs much of \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d into action, but it also runs in contradiction to the emotional crux of the movie: the tender, parental relationship between Bob and Willa. Even if Lockjaw actually is Willa\u2019s biological father, as the movie suggests, Bob is her dad<\/i>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s clearly saying that genetics don\u2019t really matter,\u201d Freer said. \u201cIt\u2019s about the relationship, and that\u2019s what fatherhood is. Probably something like that, that kind of updating would have been done in conversation with Pynchon. I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if Pynchon wanted to see these kinds of changes to his own work coming through in the film.\u201d<\/p>\n Whispers around Anderson adapting \u201cVineland\u201d began to spread just after he burst onto the scene with \u201cBoogie Nights\u201d and \u201cMagnolia\u201d in the late 1990s. With the kaleidoscopic structure and endless characters of \u201cVineland,\u201d a close translation was a challenge. \u201c[T]he problem with loving a book so much when you go to adapt it is that you have to be much rougher on the book to adapt it,\u201d Anderson told Steven Spielberg at a recent screening<\/a>. \u201cYou have to kind of not be gentle. So I struggled for years to try to adapt it.\u201d<\/p>\n Anderson said in the film\u2019s production notes that he received Pynchon\u2019s blessing, although it\u2019s unclear ultimately just how involved the novelist was. But \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d remains a thrilling adjustment for Pynchon scholars and fans, a modernization that maintains the verve, politics and humor of the original book.<\/p>\n \u201cIn this age of general political venality, to have Pynchon\u2019s voice rising to the surface to me is so exciting,\u201d Cohen said. \u201cI\u2019ve been waiting my whole life for this.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fans of Thomas Pynchon are the kind of people who thrill at plot detours involving a giant adenoid about to swallow London. They can recite his famously bonkers character names, like Roger Mexico, Mike Fallopian and Scarsdale Vibe. They have read the 1,085-page \u201cAgainst the Day\u201d \u2014 twice. Right now, they\u2019re in heaven. The famously […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2029532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[366356,344285,387056,333476,387057,380102,357900,387055],"class_list":["post-2068539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-battle","tag-bob-ferguson","tag-joanna-freer","tag-paul-thomas-anderson","tag-pynchon-fans","tag-steven-j-lockjaw","tag-thomas-pynchon","tag-vineland"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/In-Black-Rabbit-Jason-Bateman-and-Jude-Law-are-brothers.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2068539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2068540,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068539\/revisions\/2068540"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2029532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2068539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2068539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2068539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}