SHADOW TICKET (i)

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Opened with excitement - NEW PYNCHON! - slogged through the first hundred pages feeling as though I was reading someone trying to write like Pynchon without any of the joyous perplexity and thrill of being lost in his worlds. Considered putting it down, thinking that maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind, visions of Cormac McCarthy's last being a slog and hoping this wouldn't be Pynchon's last fictional offering though time is a cruel mistress but, by triple digit page numbers, the story started moving, the characters started clicking and it felt like Pynchon. Lesser Pynchon, certainly, but his brain was there. And so was mine. Hoping it holds for the rest of it (another hundred pages or so). Not recommended for anyone wanting to give Pynchon a first go: guaranteed you won't get the appeal. I've read everything he's written and I barely made it to solid footing here.

THE PASSENGER / STELLA MARIS (McCarthy, 2022)

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While I preferred STELLA MARIS to THE PASSENGER – not saying much, but both characters were far more interesting than those featured in THE PASSENGER, one of them far more interesting than they were in the latter – I couldn't shake my disconnect to, well, everything throughout: I don't mind being lost – in fact, I've always loved being lost in the winding paths of McCarthy's mindpages – but this wasn't that: this was something... less. One of my notes read, "... first time reading McCarthy that I feel like I'm reading his interpretation of someone else's work.”

While both PASSENGER and STELLA showed glimmers of McCarthy at his best, those glimmers were few and far between: I want to believe that I'm wrong about all of the above and that a re-read of both would change my mind and perhaps it would – but I'd prefer to not give it more time than I already have; a stinging disappointment that the return of one of my biggest inspirations was so uninspir/ed/ing.

My complete reading list, from 2013 to the present, lives here.