Shall we add writing tasting notes for an American macro lager to the accruing ridiculousnesses of this blog? You already know it’s a cold crisp refreshing uncomplicated thing. Does anyone really want to hear about it if there’s a hint of corn, a touch of carbonic bite? Way back when I drank Rolling Rock, I more or less left the description at “not much flavour” and I must say that still seems altogether the wisest path.

Pynchon’s Coors six-pack appears in the fridge of Shasta Fay Hepworth. Shasta hovers like a dope cloud over all of Inherent Vice, but it’s really her absence driving most of the book. When she eventually reappears towards the end of the book, Doc finds her at her flat above a surf shop in Gordita beach:

She was barelegged in some kind of Mexican shirt, pale purple with some orange embroidery on it, and had her hair wrapped in a towel, smelling like she did just out of the shower. He knew there was a reason he’d fallen in love with her back then, he kept forgetting it, but now that he half remembered, he had to grab himself mentally by the head and execute a quick brainshake before he could trust himself to say anything.

Inherent Vice, p. 303

Shasta introduces Doc to her dog and rattles around in the kitchen for a while. She returns bearing a six-pack of Coors and, it turns out, some weird Manson-family inflected sex fantasises. The beer is, uh, sure the blander of the two.