Shadow Ticket as "Prequel" to Gravity's Rainbow

 

As I make my way through Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket, I’m increasingly in agreement with those who think of the novel as being in some ways a kind of prequel to Gravity’s Rainbow. (For me, the feeling first really took hold once McTaggart awoke aboard the Stupendica. The parallels to Slothrop’s journey on the Anubis abound).

Pynchon’s latest is not, of course, a prequel in the usual sense. There’s no chain of characters or events, for example, leading neatly from one novel to the other. Chronologically, however, and in terms of themes, tone and even temperament, Shadow Ticket definitely feels like it takes place in a liminal zone just before the world of Gravity’s Rainbow emerges fully into being.

In terms of chronology … Shadow Ticket takes place in the early 1930’s, when the forces that ultimately produce the catastrophe of WWII are beginning to mass. The events in Gravity’s Rainbow, of course, occur near the end of that process. By then, those forces – military, technological, industrial, capitalist, communist and fascist – have become vast interconnected mechanisms operating largely beyond the control of mere individuals. Reading Shadow Ticket with that in mind, I find myself less interested in the individual details of the novel’s plot per se and much more intrigued by the …well … shadowy machinery that seems to be humming behind and animating those details.

Thematically …The protagonist of the novel, Hicks McTaggart, is a detective. The world he moves through, however, increasingly refuses to behave in the way that the world of a conventional detective story should. There are too many connections, too many organizations operating behind and through other organizations. What’s more, the apparently unrelated events of the novel begin to look suspiciously like parts of a much, much larger whole that is coalescing just beyond McTaggart’s immediate field of vision.

Sound familiar? Of course, it does. That Pynchonian sense of paranoia – which reaches its peak in Gravity’s Rainbow – is already there in Shadow Ticket. Hicks, along with the reader, is haunted by the vague but persistent idea that what looks like coincidence may actually be a system. Note also that the gothic horror and supernatural elements that are such prominent motifs in the book only add to that impression. (More on that in a future post).

On the technological front … In Gravity’s Rainbow, the V-2 rocket becomes the ultimate expression of the Pynchonian universe: science, money, war and a vast capitalist bureaucracy of death all converge in a single object and are delineated by the fell parabola of its descent. The construction of that machinery has just begun in Shadow Ticket. Consider in that context, the U-13 submarine haunting the depths of Lake Michigan and the basis of Bruno Airmont’s fortune, the product called Radio-Cheez. The parts are there already, but “some assembly” is still required.

As a prequel, therefore, Shadow Ticket is a falling barometer signaling the arrival of a weather front that will become the full-fledged storm of Gravity’s Rainbow.

I’ve also seen Shadow Ticket characterized as “Pynchon-lite.” On one level, it’s easy to see why. The book is faster, leaner and less intimidating than either Gravity’s Rainbow or Against the Day. On another level, however, I think that labelling it as such is somewhat misleading. The material in the book is being played with a lighter touch. That material itself, however, is far from light. Beneath the gothic-infused detective-story plotting and the jokes, is a substantial novel about power, technology, fascism, global conspiracy … and the precarious nature of freedom. What if, the novel asks us to consider, history is being shaped by forces and systems none of us can clearly see and over which even governments and corporations (let alone individuals) have no control?

Finally, and to mix our metaphors even further …

Hicks McTaggart is a big guy. Still, we discover that he’s quite the dancer. Well, Shadow Ticket is definitely lighter on its feet than Gravity’s Rainbow. Even so, there’s still plenty of weight to the text. So far, and for a relatively diminutive book, I’ve found it no less entertaining.