Eric Wagner reviews Pynchon's 'Shadow Ticket'

 

[Eric Wagner, author of An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson and Straight Outta Dublin: James Joyce and Robert Anton Wilson, recently contributed to the Vineland online reading group discussed in yesterday's post. -- The Management].

Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon. Penguin Press, 304 pages, released Oct. 7, 2025. 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

The novel opens with a quote “’Supernatural, perhaps. Baloney...perhaps not.’ - BELA LUGOSI in The Black Cat (1934)." The Monkees film Head used a clip from that film of Bela saying that quote. Bela Lugosi appears in Pynchon’s Against the Day. Pynchon mentions the Monkees on pg. 232 of Inherent Vice. TCM will show The Black Cat on Tuesday, October 21, 2025. Boris Karloff also appears in that film. Mr. Karloff loved cricket, and cricket plays a minor role in Shadow Ticket, but not nearly as big a role as bowling plays in the novel. All the bowling references made me think of my father, a very good bowler. The novel takes place in 1932, the year of my dad’s birth. 

Shadow Ticket made me laugh out loud many times. Cheese played an important role in Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon, and it plays an even bigger role in Shadow Ticket. Reading the ending of Mason & Dixon when it came out in 1997 helped prepare for my dad’s death later that year. Reading the new Pynchon novel reminds me of visiting my mom the last few years of her life. When I would say goodbye to her, I would wonder if I would ever see her again. I feel blessed to get to read the new Pynchon novel, but I don't know if he will ever publish another one. I know he tends to work on multiple projects at once, so who knows what books may emerge in the future.  

When I started reading Pynchon in 1983, he only had three books out, and it looked like he might never publish again. My friend Paul Chuey had told me about The Crying of Lot 49, and we had both read Tim Leary's accounts of reading Gravity's Rainbow while in solitary confinement. Paul got me Gravity's Rainbow for Christmas in 1983, and it took me four years to finish it. 

Now we have ten Pynchon books and a bunch of secondary material (little of which I've looked at). The Huntington Library has his papers. I wrote to them about looking at the papers, and they said they did not have the papers available for viewing yet. Their tone did not seem encouraging. I don't know if they will allow me near the papers. I don't know if I will ever read Pynchon again after reading this new novel. We will see. 

When I finished reading Shadow Ticket a few minutes ago, I declared it a masterpiece, whatever that means. One could read it as a commentary on the world in 2025. It includes a wealthy man who does not pay his bills and who lusts after his daughter. It includes a U-boat used for smuggling, suggesting the submarine Leif Erickson used for smuggling in Illuminatus!.  

It contains wonders.