Shadow Ticket Thomas Pynchon

Not for the faint of heart. It's a Pynchon all right, dozen of characters with weird names like Dippy Chazz, Stuffy Keegan, Glow Del Vasto, Hicks McHaggart, that last one being some sort of P.I. back in the 30's, Milwaukee. Too close to Chicago for confort, end of prohibition, recession in full bloom and Al Capone in the pen. Got a ticket to go on a wild goose chase, quite literraly as he is supposed to find and get home a (gasp!) cheese heiress who seems very good at vanishing and pop up at unlikely places like Budapest or Fiume. Budapest because things there tend to vanish and reappear much more that we are used to (my lighters and my keys still do that a lot !) and Fiume (now Rijeka) because it was at that time a kind of no-zone where just about anything can happens, even an undescript U-boat from WWI smuggling Jews out of harm, plenty of it for them at that time, with all those ustachis, nazis, fascists, growing more greedy and lethal each day. 

How strange is that, writing about fascism in the years to come ? There is always a double-take when you read Thomas Pynchon. Usually, it is sotto voce, like when he describes the strikes in Colorado and the repression to go with. But powerful nonetheless. The man can write like Tolstoï ou Hugo, and next chapter would look like a Shelton comic. He can write like nobody. I remenber this scene in "V" : a woman, walking along a beach. Two pages in a single sentence. Dot to dot. And not a fault, not a lack in time, just perfect. Un tableau de maitre. I remenber writing it down, just trying to get the gist of it. La manière.

And so yes, expect plenty of those sentences which turn right to left before finding their final dot. Dialogues coming out of nowhere and getting back there, always some kind of vanishing and things that are not always what they seem. Also people who are not what they are. Plenty of double-triple-agents in Budapest, the whole game for the next WWII, soon to appear on your screen.

Like I said, not for the faint of heart.  Took me two weeks to read it and I am not exactly sure what it is I was reading. What character I would like to be on that mess. Up to you, brother sister reader, and the best of luck.

Addendum : when seen from above, one could only notice that "Against the Day" is set at the beginning of the 20 century. "Shadow Ticket" in the 30's, "Crying of the Lot 49" in the 60's, "Vineland" and "Inherent Vice" in the 70's, "Bleeding Edge" in 2001. Pynchon has actually rewritten the history of the USA for the whole twentieth century. (If you're not too picky, you can add to that "Mason & Dickson" which happens at the time of the founding of the USA.)