A Condor's Quill

  In an earlier post, I promised to return to the supernatural/horror motif in Shadow Ticket . Well, here goes. Just a few more or less random thoughts on the subject as I reach the end of the book. First thing is that, on almost every page, the supernatural sneaks up on you. It’s there beneath all the jokes, vampires, apported objects, haunted ships, golems, ghost submarines and other assorted weirdness. If you are like me, you expect it all to resolve into an elaborate Pynchonian gag. But it doesn’t … not quite. What it produces instead, is a lingering sensation that something truly unsettling is going on just beyond our field of vision. Somehow, it all seems to have a connection to history. A history that refuses to stay buried. The earliest hint about this is the book’s epigraph ascribed to Bela Lugosi : “Supernatural, perhaps. Baloney … perhaps not.” The uncertainty inherent in the quotation becomes increasingly important. Early on in the book, the supernatural can perhap...