Shadow Ticket

Patches of unintelligibility are nothing new in Pynchon, but usually a coherent world view gleams upward from the murk. Modern life, in his grim estimation, is entirely controlled by capitalism and technology, forces relentlessly destructive to the human soul. Those who perceive this total control are prone to paranoia, leaving them mistrustful and lonely, while those who seek to profit from it are dragged into depravity. You can’t beat this system and you shouldn’t join it, so the only option is to somehow duck out of its range. That’s why Pynchon is drawn to drifters and dropouts, to borderlands and hidden worlds, like the Zone in “Gravity’s Rainbow,” and the interior of the hollow earth in “Mason & Dixon” and “Against the Day.”