Mike's right. An addiction is hard to break...METAPHOR REVEAL FROM SHADOW TICKET SO DELETE IF NECESSARY

[Mike Weaver]

Mostly written before Joseph responded, nearly deleted but wotta hell, 
here's my weekend supplement.

-----------------------

There'll be no end to Pynchon as long as people read books, But that 
doesn't make Shadow Ticket any more than it is. Rich is right, the voice 
is still there, which makes for good reading, but there's no subversive 
perspective showing in what I've so far read and the lack of emotional 
intensity reflects the disengaged life he has chosen to live.

His refusal to engage with the public world has no doubt made for a much 
more relaxed life than he would have otherwise had but it has deprived 
him of the material he needed to continue to write great books. It's 
back to that John Barth quote - with Pynchon the virtuosity remains but 
the passion - that comes from engagement  - has been lost in the calm he 
has chosen. The authorial voice in GR covered the whole gamut of 
passions but in everything that followed there was a detachment, a 
storyteller's viewpoint.

I've no complaint about how he's lived his life, I thank him for the 
effect on my life his books have had on my ways of seeing, but what 
works as a political act in one era becomes, down the line, no more than 
a lifestyle choice.

In Been Down So Long Farina paraphrased Lord Buckley on the Nazz - 
having a hipster character say of Gnossos - "He got them pretty eyes. He 
wants everyone to See what he See".  That's Pynchon too. 'Pretty' only 
really works in the original, neither Farina or Pynchon seeing pretty 
the way Lord B had Jesus do. Though the reference, coming near the end 
of the book, was probably meant ironically, given Gnossos is about to be

figuratively crucified.

Cheers
Mike

On 11/10/2025 12:50, Mark Kohut wrote:
> I still want to pretend Pynchon still matters on what is still the Plist
>   despite the last two deep state hombres declaring the end of Pynchon.
> Pynchon is buried in the deep state now. "Come back, Shane"
>
> I've left off my comments about this, since I'm on leave from my own
> glossing,  when I sent this to a larger group of friends or near-so, people
> who don't want me gone..;.yet...
>
> All I will say is this made the hair on the back of my neck stand
> up----Nabokov on feeling great writing, in this case one of the most
> brilliant metaphors
> from the guy who is still a genius....
>
>
> "Since about 1930,immigrants arriving at Ellis Island have been receiving
> boxes of Jell-O plus a Jell-O mold in the shape of some famous US
> landmark....This one they're handing Hicks happens to be the Statue of
> Liberty. Plus a handy kitchen-size pamphlet full of creative Jell-O
> recipes. "
>
> "So,I'm an immigrant now?"
>
> "Maybe not to the US as you know it.Maybe to the future US we in the Bureau
> expect to see before long." [ it is 1934 in the novel]
>
> .....and a sarcastically witty exchange as the Bureau guy defines the
> rights-lessness of the new immigrant...."....loyalty oath and so forth"
>
> "A Statue of Liberty made of Jell-O. Where do you start eating it? The
> head? The torch? "
> --
> Pynchon-L:https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l