Is Shadow Ticket in direct dialogue with The Great Gatsby…
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Is Shadow Ticket in direct dialogue with The Great Gatsby?
There seems to be a lot of riffs on the Great Gatsby in Shadow Ticket. They don't take place in the same decade, but they both seem to be about an American dream (at least how I was reading Shadow Ticket).
1. In both, there is the pursuit of a wealthy woman. Gatsby wants Daisy. Daisy wants at some level to be with Gatsby as well. Hicks meanwhile is pursuing the cheese heiress. Yet, the cheese heiress has no desire to be found or brought back. She's always just slightly out of Hicks' reach. She's leaving.
2. There's a shining house in both. In Gatsby, we get the green light on Daisy and Buchanan's dock. Gatsby's house is a shining house with its parties. Both have to do with wealth and prestige and making it. In Shadow Ticket, there's the villa towards the end, but it just attracts the dregs of society. There's the bike race with weirdest individuals.
3. They both have characters that seem legitimate but are involved in criminal activity.
4. Both have characters who go to Europe but have vastly different experiences. Gatsby is able to reinvent himself in Europe in many ways. He gets the education, he acquits himself well. Hicks, meanwhile, just gets lost. He doesn't speak the language, he can't find what he's looking for, and he's always trying to return.
I get that Shadow Ticket is within Pynchon's absurdist style in which he shows that not all is what it seems about America and success. It just seemed to me that Shadow Ticket seemed to be speaking directly against what Fitzgerald wrote.
Curious what others thought about Shadow Ticket and if they saw the same connection.
#entertainment
There seems to be a lot of riffs on the Great Gatsby in Shadow Ticket. They don't take place in the same decade, but they both seem to be about an American dream (at least how I was reading Shadow Ticket).
1. In both, there is the pursuit of a wealthy woman. Gatsby wants Daisy. Daisy wants at some level to be with Gatsby as well. Hicks meanwhile is pursuing the cheese heiress. Yet, the cheese heiress has no desire to be found or brought back. She's always just slightly out of Hicks' reach. She's leaving.
2. There's a shining house in both. In Gatsby, we get the green light on Daisy and Buchanan's dock. Gatsby's house is a shining house with its parties. Both have to do with wealth and prestige and making it. In Shadow Ticket, there's the villa towards the end, but it just attracts the dregs of society. There's the bike race with weirdest individuals.
3. They both have characters that seem legitimate but are involved in criminal activity.
4. Both have characters who go to Europe but have vastly different experiences. Gatsby is able to reinvent himself in Europe in many ways. He gets the education, he acquits himself well. Hicks, meanwhile, just gets lost. He doesn't speak the language, he can't find what he's looking for, and he's always trying to return.
I get that Shadow Ticket is within Pynchon's absurdist style in which he shows that not all is what it seems about America and success. It just seemed to me that Shadow Ticket seemed to be speaking directly against what Fitzgerald wrote.
Curious what others thought about Shadow Ticket and if they saw the same connection.
#entertainment
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