There Goes My August

It turns out that another big new book release has been recently announced; this time for a book I might read. Yes, that's right: the next installment of my love-hate relationship with Thomas Pynchon's genius and wonderfully witty, yet long, complicated and hard work masterpieces, which have exhausted my mental faculties on several holidays now. Oh, and it helps if you've read the whole literary canon. Of all the world's languages. The new book is called Inherent Vice, which sounds to me like a Tarantino movie. 

According to the blurb:

Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon— private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog.

This seems vaguely reminiscent of Girlfriend in a Coma, maybe with some additional Coupland thrown in for good measure, combined with Raymond Chandler. It does also sound as though there might be something resembling a plot, amid the marijuana haze, though, which is good news. Sportello, incidentally, is the Italian for "ticket window." Perhaps that will have some significance or maybe it's just a cool name.

Here's the strange thing, though: the book has only 384 pages. Shurely shome mishtake? Is there a missing "1" at the beginning of the page count?