Shadow Ticket Group Read 2025

[j e l]

Hicks seems more like Hammett's Continental Op...you could describe him as
the Anti-Continental-Op.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Continental_Op

And he does not seem like Chandler's Marlowe or MacDonald's Archer. He's
not his own man, doesn't have his own agency (<-- this right here)...he
works for someone else who's always calling the shots. He gets summoned and
sent wherever They want him to go...for reasons unknown...

--jel

On Fri, Jan 9, 2026 at 7:35 AM rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>