Shadow Ticket

Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket arrives like a cipher slipped under the door of contemporary America.

The milieu of the novel is Milwaukee in the 1930s: Prohibition in the states, the Depression, and a tilt toward fascism gripping the world. Later, the action will move to Europe—specifically, Budapest.

Hicks McTaggart is a former strike-buster who became a private eye in the employ of Unamalgamated Investigations. His boss is Boynt Crosstown. One day, a new case arrives, and Hicks is assigned to it: Locate Daphne Airmont, daughter of Bruno Airmont, Milwaukee’s “Al Capone of Cheese,” and convince the cheese empire heiress to return.

The first hundred pages or so take place stateside; Hicks bumps into various people who may appear later in the novel. Pynchon’s prose sparkles, jokes and songs abound, and some nods to former novels here and there. The dialogue seems to be spot-on for the era.

Hicks is shanghaied aboard a steamer ship bound for Europe, uncertain of how he got on board. Hicks meets a British couple on board, who turn out to be MI5 agents. They want Hicks’s help with something: a troubling turn of events in Europe. Hicks agrees, but knows he will remain focused on his first assignment.  He finds himself, before long, in Budapest and kind of disappears from the story for many chapters.

The “Trans-Trianon 2000,” a 2000km motorcycle circuit through territories of Central Europe is on. The ride is long and, in places, dangerous, intended to converge in Fiume. No need to register, no finish line, no start line—just join when a rider likes and go as far as they prefer. A lot of detail goes into the description of the bikes and their riders. Some Nazi groups wonder if Harley riders are secretly involved in helping Jews escape Germany, as the name of their ride being Harley DAVID-son. Another potentially renegade bike brand is, naturally, the Indian.

Terike, another ‘tomato’ whose can-do attitude and looks catch Hicks’s eye, happens by on her autogyro in time to save him. A former motorcycle courier who has taken to the sky using an “autogyro,” Terike adeptly weaves through cloud banks and around tall trees to guide Hicks to safety.

All while Central Europe is tilting toward fascism and antisemitism.

Lew Basnight from Pynchon’s Against the Day (2006) shows up to move the plot along at some point.

As with any Pynchon review, I am forced to omit 99% of the subplots, characters, and locations that make up Shadow Ticket. ST is a good entry book into Pynchon’s works, as it presents a more or less straightforward narrative structure. Bleeding Edge (2013) is like this, too, with Maxine Tarnow, an accountant turned sleuth.

I found the first half of the novel stronger, as the descriptions of Milwaukee and even NYC were on point. Things became less so and perhaps more unwieldy in the latter half, possibly intentionally, and the soft landing, while nice, was too abrupt for me—I wanted more of the subplots to go forward even if it added another 300 pages. Did big government ransack the cheese mafia, and what do Hicks and Terife do in the coming days of the war?

Here’s hoping Pynchon has some unpublished manuscripts filed away for future novels.