Penguin’s Movie Tie-in Cover for Pynchon’s Inherent Vice book

When Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice hits the theaters — in December, 2014 — Penguin Books, Pynchon’s publisher, will be ready with a movie-tie-in cover for the paperback edition of the novel.

While it retains the neon text treatment of the original cover, the surf-shop imagery (created by Darshan Zenith) is replaced with the neon-infused face of Joaquin Phoenix (as Doc Sportello), with characters and imagery from the movie — à la Klaus Voorman’s illustration for the cover of the Beatles’ classic mid-60s LP Revolver — tangled in Phoenix’s hair. Pretty cool….