Shadow Ticket Group Read 2025

[rich]

let's not forget Lew Archer. I'm surprised Chandler gets most of the nods
when discussing Pynchon, and when MacDonald is referenced it's from the
first paragraph of Vineland, one of the non-PI books.
Hicks also has definite Archer vibes, the guy who has seen it all, the
world-weariness of things, corruption and malice, high and low. he doesn't
dance, I'll give you that.
Hicks when talking to Lew Basnight (bing!) says he sees the latter as
someone to aspire to which Basnight says I'm sorry to hear that. we know
Lew's story and though a small bit in ST, it's interesting that Pynchon
gives us his 'denouement', and a rather sad one.

rich

On Fri, Jan 9, 2026 at 9:17 AM Corbeau Castrum via Pynchon-l <
pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:

> I think of deaf and dumb as being professional confidentiality, the
> character's essential humility (whether in terms of ego ie their lack of
> righteousness, or more spiritually/preterition), and as related to the Fool
> tarot (which is connected to Tyrone Slothrop in GR if memory serves)
>
> This also connects to Pynchon's own self-image, which is extraordinarily
> self-deprecating as indicated by Slow Learner's introduction (and other
> anecdotes I've heard).
>
> Deaf and dumb is also maybe 2/3 monkeys (sees evil, but hears no evil and
> speaks no evil [if you accept my tendentious interpretation that dumbness =
> not speaking, eg "struck dumb"]) — and doesn't that characterize pynchon,
> his immense knowledge and vision of the world, seeing all this evil in the
> world, but ultimately paralyzed to act upon this vision?
>
> Sent from Monopolistic Pocket Computer™
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> On Friday, 01/09/26 at 21:08 Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Great stuff so let's use Chandler on the detective as Lancelot-like (as
> I remember it; PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong here.)
> >
> > an objective 'professional' knight-errant...more Quixotic than
> Lancelot....
> > Works for love of it.....like heroes
> > is outside marriage in more ways than one..
> >
> > And why 'deaf and dumb"?.....it is all in his head not ascertainable by
> real world senses?...Idealistic, yes but
> > beyond the senses??/
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 9, 2026 at 7:59 AM Corbeau Castrum <filsducorbeau at pm.me>
> wrote:
> >
> >> There are some basic similarities shared between Pynchon's detective
> novels post-ATD, presumably the genre conventions as he understands them.
> They consist of:
> >>
> >> a private detective protagonist (i.e. not police/the state) who tries
> to remain “professional” (“Trying to be professional here,” 3 IV “Hicks
> trying to stay professional,” 2 ST)
> >>
> >> is deaf and dumb (“Deaf and dumb, part of the job,” 4 IV,
> “Professionally D and D,” 36 BE, “D and D, Lino, that’s me,” 26 ST)
> >>
> >> is happy to work without immediate pay (“All on spec, eh?” 7 IV, “Not
> that I mind working on spec,” 11 BE)
> >>
> >> struggles with matrimonials (“I don’t do matrimonials, man,” 191 IV, “I
> hate matrimonials,” 127 BE, “[…] too bad that matrimonials, as you’ll
> recall, were never my line—” 4 ST)
> >>
> >> There are perhaps some other commonalities exclusive to Pynchon's
> detective novels but these are the ones most obvious to me.
> >>
> >> On Friday, January 9th, 2026 at 19:33, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> So, this first chapter alone seems to me most like the beginning of
> *Inherent
> >>> Vice *as TRP sets up
> >>> the private dick and the 'case"...this is obvious I know but back to
> basics.
> >>>
> >>> Q: I am not great detective novel well-read enough nor well noir
> >>> movie-watched enough to know this:
> >>> I know many, many open with the 'dame' visiting our detective and some
> kind
> >>> of human entanglement
> >>> happens that matters for the case....Is it the case that most start
> with a
> >>> new dame that the detective
> >>> has never known?
> >>>
> >>> Or why do both of Pynchon's similar mysteries start with, relatedly, a
> >>> woman with which the detective has some kind of history?
> >>> And, also,although I have to refresh the plot details, Maxine in her
> >>> mystery has a past entanglement emerge (but not at the beginning,
> right?)
> >>> --
> >>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>