Tom Le Clair's review

[Mark Kohut]

Once again, Bloom and Nabokov speak to reading Pynchon: There is no reading
only rereading....

On Wed, Oct 8, 2025 at 12:53 PM Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com> wrote:

> Pretty scathing and mean-spirited, but probably on point.
>
> I think the advent of the internet struck a blow to Pynchon's style. The
> obscure facts, crazy connections and aura of conspiracy that showcased his
> dogged research skills and made his first three books so fun and seductive
> are now available to the masses. You can read the old Baedekers online. Got
> a conspiracy theory? Take a number.
>
> On Wed, Oct 8, 2025, 11:39 AM Erik T. Burns <eburns at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon — Open Letters Review
> > <https://openlettersreview.com/posts/shadow-ticket-by-thomas-pynchon>
> >
> > Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon
> >
> > Shadow Ticket
> >
> > By Thomas Pynchon
> >
> > Penguin, 2025
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > With me, Pynchon is personal.  I’ve been reading him for more than five
> > decades.  His *Gravity’s Rainbow* reformatted my brain and became the
> novel
> > against which I have judged, probably unfairly, all new fiction.  So
> please
> > pardon this unusually personal (and long) review of his new novel *Shadow
> > Ticket*.
> >
> > *Gravity’s Rainbow* is what I call a “monsterpiece”: a very long,
> profound
> > and masterful work that some readers consider a monstrosity because of
> its
> > genre mashing, formal idiosyncracies, and stylistic excesses.  I used the
> > term when reviewing Olga Tokarczuk’s *The Books of Jacob* in these pages
> > and should have used it when I wrote about *Gravity’s Rainbow* at 50,
> also
> > here.  Of all novels written by Americans since World War II, *Gravity’s
> > Rainbow* is the grandest monsterpiece, the twentieth century’s
> *Moby-Dick*,
> > both the monster whale and Melville’s monstrous novel.
> >
> > *Shadow Ticket* is no monsterpiece.  Not even close.  Once rumored to be
> > long, it is 293 pages.  It has no monsters within it, and it’s not a
> > creative monstrosity, some new or even old Pynchonian deformation of
> > conventional narrative.  *Shadow Ticket* coasts merrily along in its
> > detective genre, linear like the gumshoe story *Inherent Vice* but with
> > historical settings, first Depression America and then Eastern Europe 93
> > years ago.  At 88, Pynchon is himself almost historical, and *Shadow
> > Ticket* is
> > his ninth novel.  Maybe he just wanted to have some fun in what may be
> his
> > final book.  But he wasn’t free for fun.  Having published two
> > monsterpieces—*Gravity’s Rainbow* and *Mason & Dixon* — Pynchon had
> created
> > expectations or desires or wishes in his readers.  This one hoped that he
> > would go out with a deep dive into the deep state, even if his book
> > imploded like that submersible descending toward the *Titanic* this
> spring.
> >
> > I should have known better, because in *Bleeding Edge* Pynchon trolled me
> > for just such a hope of depth.  This professor was pleased to be noticed
> by
> > the master but also disappointed.  Here’s a description from my review of
> > the novel:
> >
> > “At the beginning of *Bleeding Edge* a documentary filmmaker named Reg
> > Despard abruptly zooms in and out on scenes, causing viewers cognitive
> > dissonance.  Pynchon makes fun of an academic who submits Despard’s work
> to
> > Brechtian analysis and who praises his film for its `leading edge’
> > post-postmodernism.  I praised a similar scene of disorienting zooming
> > in *Gravity’s
> > Rainbow* as a metaphor for the Brechtian alienation effects of that
> novel’s
> > `epic theater’ in my book *The Art of Excess*.  Foolish me.  Later in
> > *Bleeding
> > Edge*, Despard says he just shoots what is in front of him and intends
> `no
> > deeper meaning.’”
> >
> > Although *Bleeding Edge* includes a “DeepArcher” website down in the
> “Deep
> > Web,” Pynchon was mostly shooting what was in front of him, another
> > investigator on the streets with eccentrics and hustlers in New York City
> > in 2001.  The fall of the Trade Towers had little effect on the novel.
> > *Bleeding
> > Edge* lacked the usual Pynchon hard edge as well as depth.  In my
> review, I
> > speculated that one source of Pynchon’s earlier authority and depth as a
> > novelist was his ability to occupy and revision historical periods, as he
> > does in his two monsterpieces and in *Against the Day*, his longest
> novel.
> > In *Shadow Ticket* his mix of historical research and wacky invention
> (one
> > never knows which is which) makes it more substantial than the
> > contemporary *Inherent
> > Vice*, but this new detective plot offers no cognitive dissonance, no
> > monstrosity disorientation.  As one of many walk-on characters says to
> the
> > obtuse Private Investigator protagonist, “Leave the deep thinking to
> others
> > and get on with the action.”
> >
> > Although the action and the P.I. in *Shadow Ticket* do move from
> Milwaukee
> > to several European countries, the innocent (or guilty) abroad is
> familiar
> > from many Pynchon novels all the way back to his first, *V.*  As usual,
> his
> > characters have fanciful names.  They could be an alienation effect, I
> > suppose, but they don’t push the reader to think about the people and
> > politics—the purpose of Brecht’s alienation effects.  The characters
> often
> > talk about the movies of the time, and many of the characters seem
> > satisfied with playing familiar cinematic roles (the dangerous broad, the
> > sentimental sap).  They speak then contemporary slang and have old-movie
> > repartee, which must have been fun for Pynchon to write, a challenge like
> > the 18th-century British English of Mason and Dixon.  Because point of
> view
> > is the usual Pynchonian selective omniscience, he’s free to do whatever
> he
> > wants, sometimes bandying, sometimes brooding.
> >
> > Near the end of *Gravity’s Rainbow* there’s an odd parenthetical passage
> in
> > which a voice sounds like a novelist talking to his publisher: “I know
> what
> > your editors want, exactly what they want” — a plot that can be
> > outlined.  *Shadow
> > Ticket* has one, and here it is:
> >
> > In Depression and Prohibition Milwaukee, Hicks McTaggart, a slab of a man
> > even more dense than that “tanker” Tyrone Slothrop of *Gravity’s
> Rainbow*,
> > works busting heads at union strikes.  After he believes he has almost
> > killed a man, Hicks decides to become a P.I. and is tutored by Lew
> > Basnight, a detective in *Against the Day*.  Hicks works for, it
> appears, a
> > nationwide and maybe even worldwide detective firm called U-Ops.  Mostly,
> > though, Pynchon has him hanging around speaks, talking with the usual
> crew
> > of Pynchon oddballs, and keeping an eye out for attractive women. Hicks
> has
> > a part-time (and two-timing) girlfriend who worries about him because he
> > seems threatened by the Mafia, early-adopting American Nazis, and the
> > federal government. But the first half of *Shadow Ticket *is low energy
> > hugger mugger until Hicks rescues one Daphne Airmont, the 20-something
> > daughter of the millionaire cheese baron Bruno Airmont who, suspected of
> > financial crimes, has disappeared.
> >
> > In the second half of the novel, Hicks is dispatched to Europe to bring
> > Daphne, now keeping company with a swing musician, back to America.
> > Although Hicks several times crosses paths with Daphne, he is reluctant
> to
> > pressure her back to the States. He also meets Bruno, the “Big Cheese” of
> > cheese, but doesn’t try to turn him in.  Hicks has gone native in what he
> > feels is a culture more permissive than Milwaukee.  If you need an
> earlier
> > avatar, think Lambert Strether in *The Ambassadors*.
> >
> > In the last fifty or so pages, Pynchon thankfully diminishes Hicks’ role,
> > and the novel’s focus scatters among characters of different
> nationalities
> > with various political loyalties and motives.  These figures include, but
> > are not limited to, Bolsheviks, Nazis, British spies, and motorcycle
> > enthusiasts. The scenes in the final pages of *Shadow Ticket* resemble
> the
> > chaotic “Zone” in *Gravity’s Rainbow*, but, unlike this new novel, it
> had a
> > few well-developed characters to balance the frequently unbalanced folks
> > wandering across the Zone’s downed or disputed borders at the end of
> World
> > War II.
> >
> > To really have something substantial in common with Pynchon’s
> > boundary-crossing monsterpieces, *Shadow Ticket* needed to be much
> longer.
> > This reviewer, now posing as a renegade “editor,” wants the author to
> halve
> > the American expository half, triple the length of the European action
> > half, provide some backstories for the many characters, reduce the
> > coincidental meets and miracle rescues by air, keep the talking golem if
> > necessary, start with cheesehead comedy and transition to the kinds of
> > serious political intrigues that led to World War II (and to *Gravity’s
> > Rainbow*).  At the very end of *Shadow Ticket*, a submarine captain
> > describes “an urge more ancient than anything he knows of to go deeper,
> to
> > descend, rivets creaking, into depths legendary.”  This doesn’t happen in
> > or with the novel.
> >
> > The changes I’ve “recommended” would have made *Shadow Ticket* more
> > artistically monstrous, and the novel would also have fruitfully
> resembled
> > a non-Pynchon monsterpiece about the same space and time, William
> > Vollmann’s National Book Award novel *Europe Central*.  In addition,
> > Pynchon’s title would have gained density.  A “ticket” is the word used
> by
> > P.I.’s to refer to a case or assignment.  Hicks’ ticket is initially
> > straightforward, but it changes and leads readers into the unfamiliar
> > shadowland depicted in the novel’s last pages.  Unfortunately, the too
> > numerous characters in this novel’s abbreviated Zone are like the shadows
> > on the wall in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.”
> >
> > Maybe the octogenarian Pynchon wanted what predictable editors and many
> > readers want.  Or he didn’t have the time or energy for—or, of course,
> > interest in—transforming his surface-skimming detective story into
> > something “deeper,” to use the operative word here.  If you’re a fan of
> > Pynchon, you’ll probably want to read *Shadow Ticket*.  But be warned.
> You
> > will find that what might be clever or funny inventions to newbies are
> > sometimes shadows of earlier Pynchon materials.  Most of the following
> > examples are from *Gravity’s Rainbow* where Pynchon suggested that
> objects
> > are alive and have souls.  In *Shadow Ticket* it is cheese and
> > motorcycles.  The “They” of *Gravity’s Rainbow *reappear, as do the Tarot
> > deck and the assertion that information is more valuable than money.
> > Slothrop quests for the killer rocket 00000.  Hicks searches for the most
> > tasteless lamp ever invented. “Nothing so loathsome as a Sentimental
> > Surrealist,” says Pynchon in *Gravity’s Rainbow*, but the word
> > “sentimental” is all over the text of *Shadow Ticket*. When Slothrop is
> > confused, he stutters words beginning with “a.”  Now Hicks has that tic.
> > There are an outlaw submarine, pet pig, and a bomb thrown into water in
> > both *Gravity’s Rainbow* and *Shadow Ticket*. We have songs again, along
> > with cute meets and witty kiss-offs.  *Vineland* and *Mason & Dixon* have
> > “mopery.”  Now it’s “aggravated mopery.”
> >
> > Pynchon has a long bit in *Shadow Ticket* about asports and apports,
> > disappearances and reappearances during séances.  Perhaps he was aware of
> > familiar materials reappearing in the novel, and they became part of the
> > fun, possibly some winking self-reference for the delectation of his
> fans.
> > Or maybe he forgot what he had imagined earlier.  For me, who believes
> > fiction should defamiliarize, the reappearances and repetitions were not
> so
> > much fun as sad. The sociologist Max Weber, a probable influence on
> > *Gravity’s
> > Rainbow*, would have called Pynchon’s refamiliarization “the
> routinization
> > of charisma.”
> >
> > Even the supposed mastermind villain of *Shadow Ticket* is short on
> > charisma. A pop up character describes Bruno Airmont as a “deep
> desperado,”
> > but he’s no monster.  Arguing with her lover about her father, Daphne
> says
> > he’s like a fake “monster in the Tunnel of Love,” maybe guilty of “family
> > crimes, bad blood” but no outsized threat.  Gaining a monopoly on cheese
> > production doesn’t compare with Hitler’s rocket technology that a
> character
> > calls “a monster by the tail” in *Gravity’s Rainbow*.  Novels don’t have
> to
> > use the word “monster” to become monsterpieces.  I quote Daphne on Bruno
> to
> > suggest the low stakes of the action in *Shadow Ticket*, the limitation
> of
> > much of the novel’s purview to the personal, “evil” as a bug in an
> > individual not a feature of the cultural systems that Pynchon anatomized
> in
> > his monsterpieces.
> >
> > I was admittedly sketchy describing the plot of *Shadow Ticket* because
> the
> > story and characters elicited little intellectual engagement, and the
> novel
> > caused me no fear.  “Paranoia” is the psychological term most often
> > associated with Pynchons’s work, but I prefer “fear.”  I had no fear that
> > “horrors” (such as a gross movie about food) in *Shadow Ticket* could
> > impinge on my life and no fear that I would be mystified by *Shadow
> > Ticket* when
> > finished reading.  Because of my tepid response to the book, my attention
> > turned to its author: why write this novel?
> >
> > Since almost nothing is known about Pynchon the author or man, one is
> > forced to speculate—as one would about the meanings of his novel were it
> a
> > monsterpiece.  Although reportedly tall and self-conscious about his
> > appearance, Pynchon is no monster.  Not even an “art monster.”  I know
> > someone who had dinner with him.  They talked about New York real estate.
> > The genre limitations and frequent repetitions in *Shadow Ticket* have me
> > thinking of the author as an organ grinder that one still sees in tourist
> > areas of European cities.  Organ grinders are usually older men who dress
> > up in period costumes and push through the streets the machines from
> which
> > they crank out over and over a small repertoire of simple, familiar, and
> > entertaining tunes. The organ grinders I’ve watched appear to revel in
> the
> > pleasure that their audiences display, even if it’s the pleasure of
> > witnessing an amusing anachronism rather than the pleasure of listening
> to
> > tortured music.  So maybe my initial notion—that Pynchon just wanted to
> > have (and maybe give) fun—is not so far off, and readers should enjoy one
> > last turn of the crank for what it is.  I would if I could, but the
> descent
> > from *Gravity’s Rainbow* to *Shadow Ticket* is too steep and deep for me.
> > I wanted Pynchon to remain a crank, a writer willing to take original or
> > crazed ideas to and even beyond their aesthetic limits.
> >
> > Two other authors of monsterpieces who are often associated with
> > Pynchon—William Gaddis and Don DeLillo—also wrote short final books.
> > Gaddis’s *Agape Agape* was partly about the player piano and Americans’
> > lust for entertainment.  DeLillo’s *The Silence* was partly about
> > television and that same lust updated.   In old age, the novelists
> attacked
> > machine-delivered popular “art.”  Because Pynchon keeps cranking, *Shadow
> > Ticket* ultimately suggested to me a motive and explanation deeper and
> > bleaker than having fun.  In Russell Banks’s last novel *Foregone*, the
> > terminally ill filmmaker/narrator keeps going on and on and on for a
> > documentary film crew because, he says, telling his story keeps him
> alive.
> > With Banks in mind, I wonder if Pynchon keeps writing to keep writing to
> > keep living, doing what he has been doing all those decades he was never
> > seen in public.  Keeps writing in *Shadow Ticket* a similar story with
> some
> > of the same materials.
> >
> > Banks’s protagonist dies.  In *Shadow Ticket* no major character dies,
> and
> > there’s no conclusive end to the story. Yes, the deaths of millions are
> > foreshadowed with the rise of Hitler, but they are in the novel’s future.
> > Like Slothrop, Hicks keeps averting death in the present. In *Gravity’s
> > Rainbow* millions had already died, and in the first line, “A screaming
> > comes across the sky,” we have the sound of future deaths, our deaths
> > launched from afar.  There is no screaming in *Shadow Ticket*, just the
> > repetitive and simple music of the organ grinder cranking on and on,
> > dodging that final ticket to what he usually calls the “Other Side.”  I
> > think it’s not an idle rhyme to say, “No death, no depth.”
> >
> > Organ grinders in earlier times were sometimes given money to stop
> playing,
> > to move on.  I’m glad you are still here with us, Thomas Pynchon, but you
> > have written two monsterpieces.  You have done more masterful work than
> any
> > of your contemporaries.  Now you can stop.
> >
> > *Tom LeClair is the author of two critical books, two volumes of essays,
> > and eight novels.  At 81, he keeps on writing reviews.*
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>