Shadow Ticket II: Dance the Noir Away

 

In my previous post about Pynchon’s ShadowTicket, I mentioned that the novel’s protagonist, Hicks McTaggart, was a very good dancer indeed. The deeper I get into the book, and Hick’s dancing becomes more and more prominent, I’ve begun to wonder exactly what Pynchon is up to in giving old ‘Hicksie that particular talent. Here are some brief preliminary thoughts based on my own reading as well as a few things I’ve come across elsewhere in commentary about the novel.

Let’s start with the fact that McTaggart is a former strikebreaker. His body was once, not too long ago in fact, employed as a rather blunt instrument of force. It goes without saying that strikebreaking is an inherently physical business … and then some! Violence is always there, either at the forefront or lurking just beneath the surface of things. Hicks certainly has the physique for it. But, interestingly enough, when we meet him at the start of Shadow Ticket, he’s turned his back on his former profession.

Hicks the goon has become Hicks the P.I. and, most interestingly for our purposes here, he’s become Hicks the dancer.

Ironically, in fact, the same physical intelligence that once made him an effective strikebreaker has made him a talented dancer. Only in Pynchon, right? Dancing requires strength, certainly, but also fluidity and responsiveness. (Not that I’d know that from my own experience. I’m not a dancer. But one would assume). You have to effectively “listen” to or coordinate with another person, anticipate his or her movements, adjust your own, and then move seamlessly together without overpowering your partner … or stepping all over their feet. Hicks’ physical competence – his muscle memory – remains. What’s changed for him is what he does with it.

Shadow Ticket is, in many important ways, a novel about history. Dancing for Hicks is about history too; or more precisely, alternate (personal) history. That activity offers a glimpse of the man he might have been if his physical gifts had (earlier) found a different outlet. The former strikebreaker’s body, once used to enforce someone else’s power and will, becomes an instrument of improvisation, cooperation, entertainment and pleasure.

There’s a particularly cool Pynchonian irony in all of this as well. Consider … Hicks is especially good at navigating a complicated physical sequence on the dance floor. At the same time, he’s frequently stymied and bewildered by the increasingly labyrinthine geo-political and criminal world he inhabits everywhere else. (This motif becomes more prominent when our hero arrives in Europe).

Hicks can negotiate a dance floor with ease and aplomb. He can read his partner’s movements, anticipate what should come next, and somehow keep the whole shebang flowing smoothly. In the broader political and criminal madhouse of Shadow Ticket, on the other hand, that same confidence is put sorely to the test. He’s constantly trying to figure out who’s manipulating whom, what larger unseen game he’s been thrust into, and what the hell his next move should be. (The title of the novel, of course, anticipates this: what is the real case, what real ticket has Hicks been sent to close?)

History keeps buffeting Hicks around. On the dance floor, at least, he gets to move in synch with it. But, will that, as the dust jacket blurb provided by the publisher (Penguin), “be enough to allow him somehow to Lindy-hop his way back again to Milwaukee and the normal world, which may no longer exist?”

We’ll see, won’t we?