In the course of ordinary events, a novelist expects, however grudgingly, to compete with rivals, even acolytes. But to discover yourself outpaced by a reality that bears an uncanny resemblance to your own fiction seems to be a particularly painful indignity to bear, a kind of spiritual ransacking.
Pity Thomas Pynchon. Beginning with the cult novels “V.” (1963), “The Crying of Lot 49” (1966) and “Gravity’s Rainbow” (1973), he unleashed a vision of America that now feels all too familiar — a world swathed in conspiracy and trawled by self-appointed sleuths parsing every passing signal and sign, their paths lit by the bright beam of their own righteousness. Everyone is enticed into this orgy of analysis, to feast and gorge on information, to go a little mad in the process.
Surely we don’t need Pynchon to paint us such nightmares today, not when a leisurely morning scroll takes you past so many seething snake pits of suspicion — here, a group performs a close reading of the messages that the man charged with killing Charlie Kirk etched into bullet casings; there, another masses to mock them for taking the inscriptions seriously. The director of the F.B.I. posts a list of open questions about the murder, promising to investigate each one, including “hand gestures” of those standing nearby and seemingly suspicious plane activity. Camps argue back and forth: Israel killed Charlie; it was a distraction from the Epstein files. A former Infowars host wades in: “It just feels like a cover-up on top of a cover-up on top of a cover-up.”
What do you do for your next act when reality has caught up to your imagination? At first glance, Pynchon’s new novel, “Shadow Ticket,” seems bluntly escapist — this is the author in entertainment mode, trying to give us a bit of a holiday. Much has been made of his difficulty, the density of his prose and plots; what’s often overlooked is his serious commitment to silliness and the pleasure principle — a kind of principled waywardness — that motors much of his fiction.
“Shadow Ticket” opens in Prohibition-era Milwaukee. Our hero: Hicks McTaggart — former union buster turned muscle for hire, sensitive lunk, good dancer. The job: a real lulu. The heiress to a cheese fortune has run off with a clarinet player in a swing band, and Hicks is dispatched to bring her home. Off he lopes into a Pynchonian maw of mayhem and slipped mickeys. He dodges bombs concealed as Christmas presents. Women melt into his brawny arms — “lunchmeat,” one breathes, an endearment. A nefarious cheese syndicate keeps him in its sights. So does Hoover’s Bureau of Investigation, keen on recruiting him. A U-boat is spotted cruising in Lake Michigan. Hicks’s assignment (the “ticket” of the title) morphs into another. Herds of supporting characters stampede past — a married pair of British spies, bootleggers, chorus girls and cameos from the expanded Pynchon universe — delivering a little aria or a red herring, then vanishing from the plot.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The post Thomas Pynchon Saw Where America Was Headed. What Does He See Now? appeared first on New York Times.
