Thomas Pynchon announces new novel Shadow Ticket, his first in 12 years
Shadow Ticket will be the reclusive, 87-year-old author's tenth book, and like the previous two, it tells a noir detective story.
According to an official description provided by the publishers, the novel is set in Milwaukee in 1932 during the Great Depression, with the 'repeal of Prohibition just around the corner, Al Capone in the federal pen' and 'the private investigation business shifting from labor-management relations to the more domestic kind.'
The synopsis continues: 'Hicks McTaggart, a one-time strikebreaker turned private eye, thinks he's found job security until he gets sent out on what should be a routine case, locating and bringing back the heiress of a Wisconsin cheese fortune who's taken a mind to go wandering. Before he knows it, he's been shanghaied onto a transoceanic liner, ending up eventually in Hungary where there's no shoreline, a language from some other planet, and enough pastry to see any cop well into retirement—and of course no sign of the runaway heiress he's supposed to be chasing.
'By the time Hicks catches up with her he will find himself also entangled with Nazis, Soviet agents, British counterspies, swing musicians, practitioners of the paranormal, outlaw motorcyclists, and the troubles that come with each of them, none of which Hicks is qualified, forget about being paid, to deal with.
'Surrounded by history he has no grasp on and can't see his way around in or out of, the only bright side for Hicks is it's the dawn of the Big Band Era and as it happens he's a pretty good dancer. Whether this will be enough to allow him somehow to lindy-hop his way back again to Milwaukee and the normal world, which may no longer exist, is another question.'
Pynchon was born in 1937 and is considered one of the greatest living novelists. He published his first book, the postmodern satire V., in 1963. His reputation rose with his subsequent acclaimed novels The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) and Gravity's Rainbow (1973). Despite his fame, he has carefully avoided public appearances, and only a handful of photographs of him are known to exist.
Inherent Vice was adapted for the screen in 2014 by Paul Thomas Anderson, an avowed fan of the novelist's work. Anderson's forthcoming film One Battle After Another is thought to be heavily influenced by Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland.
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Sign up to Headlines Europe A digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day after newsletter promotion On the wall of the pavilion there is a quote from Richter: 'Picturing things, taking a view, is what makes us human.' This drove the ire of the Jewish-German artist Leon Kahane, who in his current DIALOG DIALOG DIALOG exhibition counters Richter's take with four blank sheets, mirroring Richter's format, repeating the German master's quote in three languages. Kahane supplements this with photographs of a contemporary neo-Nazi demonstration, pointing our attention towards the real and ongoing problem of antisemitism in Germany. What if the most human thing is in fact to refrain from forming an image? Kahane's empty canvases point to a broader crisis around how to represent the Holocaust. Richter's approach introduces unnecessary pathos, making the evil universally human, rather than an act committed by a specific nation nurtured in a specific culture. But at least it arguably opens an interesting philosophical argument. No such thing can be said about Teller's Auschwitz Birkenau book. His view of the camp is banal, or occasionally sentimental (pictures of souvenir kitsch included). In a moment where the very legacy of the Holocaust is being politicised, it is detached and generalising, blurring notions of responsibility, while seeming worryingly like a vanity project. Visiting Auschwitz has become too easy a way for Germans and other nations alike to show how far they've come; that they're now free of antisemitism. With Teller's book in hand, maybe even that won't feel necessary to some. As artists and as societies, we bear a responsibility to history. If Auschwitz is allowed to become an increasingly empty symbol, and we lose our ability to capture the horror of the Holocaust, how are we going to ensure that future generations understand that it really happened? Agata Pyzik is a critic and author of Poor but Sexy: Culture Clashes in Europe East and West. She lives in Warsaw Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
The Guardian
5 days ago
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A new coffee-table book shows one thing: celebrity artists should not be allowed near Auschwitz
To say that a picture speaks a thousand words might no longer ring true. As images proliferate at an unprecedented rate online, they risk losing their meaning, especially as AI poses a growing threat to the truth of what we see. We might ask why images of the relentless killing and devastation in Gaza, there for all to see, have not yet halted the slaughter of Palestinians. Into this situation comes Juergen Teller, 'enfant terrible' of 1990s fashion photography, who has produced a coffee-table book about the Nazis' concentration and extermination camp in Auschwitz. This goes some way beyond his usual remit. Teller is known for his knack for making pretty things look ugly, as a shorthand for 'authenticity', associated with the grunge aesthetic and so-called 'heroin chic', which made him the most in-demand fashion photographer of his era. 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Sign up to Headlines Europe A digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day after newsletter promotion On the wall of the pavilion there is a quote from Richter: 'Picturing things, taking a view, is what makes us human.' This drove the ire of the Jewish-German artist Leon Kahane, who in his current DIALOG DIALOG DIALOG exhibition counters Richter's take with four blank sheets, mirroring Richter's format, repeating the German master's quote in three languages. Kahane supplements this with photographs of a contemporary neo-Nazi demonstration, pointing our attention towards the real and ongoing problem of antisemitism in Germany. What if the most human thing is in fact to refrain from forming an image? Kahane's empty canvases point to a broader crisis around how to represent the Holocaust. Richter's approach introduces unnecessary pathos, making the evil universally human, rather than an act committed by a specific nation nurtured in a specific culture. But at least it arguably opens an interesting philosophical argument. No such thing can be said about Teller's Auschwitz Birkenau book. His view of the camp is banal, or occasionally sentimental (pictures of souvenir kitsch included). In a moment where the very legacy of the Holocaust is being politicised, it is detached and generalising, blurring notions of responsibility, while seeming worryingly like a vanity project. Visiting Auschwitz has become too easy a way for Germans and other nations alike to show how far they've come; that they're now free of antisemitism. With Teller's book in hand, maybe even that won't feel necessary to some. As artists and as societies, we bear a responsibility to history. If Auschwitz is allowed to become an increasingly empty symbol, and we lose our ability to capture the horror of the Holocaust, how are we going to ensure that future generations understand that it really happened? Agata Pyzik is a critic and author of Poor but Sexy: Culture Clashes in Europe East and West. She lives in Warsaw
