ST etc

[Joseph Tracy]

The ending reveals that we are in an alternate history of the US. Not 
merely a fictionalized portion of that history but something that could 
have happened if the Bankers Plot, revealed by the plotter's intended 
choice for a president to replace Roosevelt, Smedley Butler, had 
succeeded.  This is part of the distinct difference in tone and style 
from where America headed in the Roosevelt years.  Shadow Ticket plays 
like the society has become an extension of somewhat canned noir movies 
where everyone talks like a movie tough guy or a hard boiled dame: 
Cagney, Robinson, Bogart. Noir is the shadow style invoked rather than 
the upbeat style of a Capra with warmer voices like Jimmy Stewart or 
William Holden Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell.  Perhaps the intent was to 
remind the reader of where the gangster/cop style favored by our current 
Capone of Cheese came from; how it slowly went out of fashion after the 
war, revived by McCarthy and the red scare movies, and finally was 
superseded by more suave and sophisticated combination anti-fascist, 
anti-commie heroes like James Bond and Cary Grant and later Jack Ryan. 
Hollywood has had a big role in shaping the national mythology for a 
long time, even after WW2 rewriting that history to exclude the Russian 
Army from the victory over the German war machine, and to exclude 
Gypsies, communists, the gay and antifascist dissidents from those 
murdered in concentration camps though historians say they were 
collectively larger in number than the murdered Jews. They are still not 
included in any of the many movies about Nazi atrocities  I have seen, 
or in Shadow Ticket.  WTF?

    I think the noir style of ST is oversaturated with Hollywood but it 
says something about the role of self image as a mythic force that 
shapes how people see themselves and their world  and what they are 
willing to accept as the role of government, the role of war, the role 
of enemies,  the balance between workers and owners, the nature and 
appeal of 'the leading man' or 'sugar daddy' or 'protector soldier' or 
'law enforcer' .

    The role of alcohol and other mind altering substances is an 
important part of the cultural mileu of ST though it manages to hide in 
the shadows cast by radioactive cheese, like Pete Hogsbreath in the 
shadow Tyrannosaurus Rump, or like its theoretical opposite of  upright 
drug-free Christian Zionism in the same shadow. Go figure.

Other topics worthy of a few riffs: Cheese, Sacco and Vanzetti, Jazz and 
klezmer, the nonexistence of Japan in a WW2 era novel, Hungary, 
motorcyle culture, labor history in 40s Wisconsin, Gun molls and 
heiresses, the long history of private ' law enfocement'. Cocaine in the 
30s and 40s, the presidency of Herbert Hoover.



On 4/5/26 11:43 PM, Michael Bailey via Pynchon-l wrote:
> Changing the (a) to “ass-backwards” ,  maybe go that way for awhile (pondering)
>
> … the parting missive (291-293) from the kid, who without the umbrage of McTaggart’s shadow ticket would be like a young apprentice under his (McTaggart’s) developing aegis, but instead was being like shunted off from the Chicago private dick cohort and onto riding the rails with Zinnia, a young female companion who dreams of Hollywood Stardom - “They’re always looking for ‘us Ruby Keeler types’”,
> https://youtu.be/hV2ZwftnaHg?si=wKfwlPfjxkTdaKpO
>
>
> and why not? Who’s to say that that, and Skeet’s detecting ambitions in the larger market, won’t work out? The Lake Michigan shore, America’s Riviera, will keep on keeping on without Hicks or Skeet or Zinnia - Elliott Ness and his ilk will arrive to clean up Chicago, and community organizers there, among many others, will bring to fruition Langston Hughes’ prophecy about a black President - I can’t find this poem, am I mistaken, I’m sure I read it a few years ago - he predicts to the exact year a black President…breathtaking!
Not according to AI search, but AI gets stuff wrong.
>
> Lew Basnight, with a friendly loan, obviates their necessity for riding freight trains, good of him, and shares some sobering takes - “another one of those pep talks you guys are so good at.” I guess Lew moved back to Chicagoland/Milwaukee from LA himself? Or simply that he gets around.
>
> The letter’s a nice reminder of where McTaggart’s come from, with no return address but at least a promise to pick up again (the correspondence, not that particular  letter, that is - he must’ve mailed the letter for McT to’ve gotten it, right?)
>
>
> “Maybe they’ll keep finding new ways to be innocent.”
> I like the way Skeet thinks.
> Also, “Best pals always”
>
>
>