Thomas Pynchon Reveals First Novel in 12 Years, ‘Shadow Ticket’
Thomas Pynchon has revealed his upcoming novel, Shadow Ticket. It marks the critically acclaimed and notoriously camera-shy author’s first book in 12 years.
Penguin Random House announced the novel, its Oct. 7 release date, and its synopsis on Wednesday.
Like Pynchon classics, including Gravity’s Rainbow, Against the Day, and Vineland — which serves as the inspiration for director Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film One Battle After Another — Shadow Ticket is an immersive quasi-historical novel, a postmodern mystery set in the Great Depression era 1930s that jumps continents and will likely feature an army of offbeat characters.
The publisher attempted to summarize the book’s plot in a lengthy synopsis:
“Milwaukee 1932, the Great Depression going full blast, repeal of Prohibition just around the corner, Al Capone in the federal pen, the private investigation business shifting from labor-management relations to the more domestic kind 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.”
The 87-year-old author’s most recent book, Bleeding Edge, was published in 2013. Since publishing V in 1963, Pynchon has been infamously reclusive. He never poses for press shots—the few that exist are either yearbook photos or unauthorized paparazzi snaps—and rarely conducts interviews. He did, however, make a notable voice appearance on The Simpsons, where his cartoon cameo pictured him with a paper bag placed over his head.