Shadow Ticket (!)

[J Tracy]

I don’t even check Facebook regularly these days but saw the blurb there this morning.  

Are all Pynchon’s fiction after the stories in Slow learner  variations on something one might describe as Satirical Surrealistic Detective Fiction ? 

Is that the genre for industrial civilization? A genre kicked off by Edgar Allen Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle. The other genre i see here , as old as storytelling, is the confrontation with monstrous predatory forces whose modern forbears are Faust, Frankensten and supervillains. Anyway,  ’Normal’ detective fiction and fantasy battles seems to be by far the most common genre writing in libraries these days. It’s an odd parallel because Pynchon takes the basic usefulness of  investigation/detection into every realm about which people are curious including other dimensions and real historic characters and events. 

Pynchon’s version gets dense,  layered,  thought provoking, horrifying and funny in a weird balance between entropy, brilliant satire, history reconsidered, paranoia and narrative coherence. Perhaps this approach of detection and confrontation with powerful and dangerous organizations,  and the resulting dilemma of whether to  seek escape vs  the  fading possibility  of public exposure and indictment of crimes is natural to the weaponized age we live in.  

IFound this in a search but it came with a warning  of possible criminal intent. 
Fake tickets, or what is also known as shadow tickets, or tickets with a temporary flight schedule or an itinerary, are non-genuine bookings that are created mainly to show the existence of a flight reservation.  ???  Are these those computer printout tickets you take to the airport to get your real ticket?

>> the same image popped into all our heads.
>> 
>> But remember the video blurb that was released ahead of Bleeding Edge? At
>> the time, if I recall correctly, some of us wondered if it was a parody.
>> But it really wasn't.
>> 
>> On Wed, Apr 9, 2025, 8:37 AM Mike Weaver <mike.weaver at zen.co.uk> wrote:
>> 
>>> At his age the idea of parodying himself possibly has a lot of appeal.
>>> Can we assume he wrote the blurb?
>>> 
>>> On 09/04/2025 12:57, Laura Kelber wrote:
>>>> The description certainly sounds like a Pynchon novel, to the point of
>>>> parody.
>>>> 
>>>> On Wed, Apr 9, 2025, 5:05 AM Michael Bailey <
>>> michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Wow! Yeehaw!
>>>>> 
>>>>> Can this be?
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Wed, Apr 9, 2025 at 4:39 AM Erik T. Burns <eburns at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>> 
>> https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/316427/shadow-ticket-by-thomas-pynchon/
>>>>>> --
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>>>>>> 
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>>>>> 
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