False Promises

Twenty years after it was upzoned, Downtown Brooklyn disappoints.

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Into any number of side quests—as the Holocaust comes directly into view.

Shadow Ticket’s setting is a time of “lost people, lost hope,” an era of myriad attempts by Europeans and Americans to recover the losses of the Great War and the Depression, of the perceived bereavement in nostalgic Nazi narratives. Mass media, especially the newly widespread radio, is pushing young Americans to marry and procreate. The global spiritualist movement is in its end days, even though it’s still going strong in Hungary. Several characters seem to inhabit a zombie limbo between life and death. Objects are sometimes transported across time and space through a kind of stage magic operating in real life. All of this movingly literalizes the “geopolitical ghost stories” and overwhelming sense of loss permeating every corner of the book.

Despite the intensity of his subject matter, Pynchon remains hilarious. Most of the book's roughly 100 characters have names worth at least a smirk, including Thessalie Wayward, Boynt Crosstown, and Don Peppino Infernacci. The acronyms, another staple, are even more playful: IMOPIO (Infernal Machine of Presumed Italian Origin), SMEGMA (Semi-Military Entity Greater Milwaukee Area), UTOPIAN (Unless the Opportunity Presents Itself Attack Nobody).