Pynchon Gets LAed

If the 500 Days of Summer Los Angeles map is too pedestrian for your fancy liberal arts school tastes, try Wired's "Unofficial Thomas Pynchon Guide to Los Angeles," courtesy of LA Observed. Pynchon-watchers are pretty sure the author lived in Manhattan Beach in the late sixties and early seventies while he wrote Gravity's Rainbow, and Inherent Vice, his book out next week, is set in Los Angeles during that decline of the hippie era. There's a Topanga Canyon-living Beach Boys-type band in that book, so cross your fingers for a version of Pynchon's stoned, awkward hangout with Brian Wilson in Beverly Hills. [Wired]