Pynchon's Shadow Ticket from a Deleuzean Perspective

The contents of Thomas Pynchon's novels can easily be termed a multiplicity. "A multiplicity is defined not by its elements, nor by a center of unification or comprehension. It is defined by the number of dimensions it has" - A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze & Guattari, p. 249.  The dimensions in Shadow Ticket include: the rise of Fascism and Nazism in America, the Chicago Mafia, music, the paranormal, general history, a transatlantic ocean voyage, a train ride across the midwest and east USA, labor unrest, detective adventures, a submarine adventure, international spying, humor, vampires, a golem, bowling, motorcycle gangs, early flying machines, etc, etc, etc. 

"Since its variations and dimensions are immanent to it, it amounts to the same thing to say that each multiplicity is already composed of heterogeneous terms in symbiosis, and that a multiplicity is continually transforming itself into a string of other multiplicities, according to its thresholds and doors"  - ibid, p. 249 (italics in original). In this case, the thresholds and doors may consist of active readers who see and possibly explore the connections into his other books or the connections to music, films or technology, etc.

The central protagonist in Shadow Ticket, Hicks McTaggart, may have received his surname, in part, from the early 20th Century metaphysician and philosopher J.M.E. McTaggart. McTaggart, an enthusiastic interpreter of Hegel is largely known these days for his self-explanatory essay "The Unreality of Time." James Williams, known as an excellent explainer of Gilles Deleuze, argues that the latter used McTaggart, among other things, as foil to come up with his own theories of Time in Difference and Repetition. Hegel serves as another foil and contrast for Deleuze's philosophy so Williams' argument appears plausible. He makes his case in the presentation "Deleuze's Answer to McTaggart: Series and Disjunctive Syntheses."  Williams also points to similarities between the two philosophers. Unfortunately, the audio sounds pretty terrible so I recommend watching with closed captions for those interested.

As stated previously, reversal appears a motif in Shadow Ticket (ST = 69; see the gunplay reversal technique in chapter 6, etc). I suggest that Hicks McTaggart in various ways reverses the characteristics of J.M.E. McTaggart. For example, the latter McTaggart worked as an academic at Trinity College, Cambridge, England while the former McTaggart works on the street as a P.I. Interestingly, given that Hicks is a fictional character, he seems more human, down to earth and relatable than the analytical J.M.E. Finally, as we shall see, Hicks McTaggart acts more in accordance with Deleuze's theories while J.M.E. seems more opposed to them.

Pynchon name-checks Deleuze and Guattari in Vineland, a novel with evident connections to Shadow Ticket as has been previously shown.  Looking at TP's oeuvre through the Deleuzean lens has precedent though not to any great extent. Stefan Mattessich took a crack at it with Lines of Flight - Discursive Time and Countercultural Desire in the Work of Thomas Pynchon (Duke University Press 2002) which I have mixed feelings about. It often reads as difficult as the most recondite of either Deleuze or Pynchon. Not all of us are scholars. Coming out when it did, Mattessich only reaches Mason & Dixon with his Deleuzean analysis. I will attempt to avoid too much jargon for the Deleuzean newbie.

Hicks McTaggart works at the Unamalgamated Ops detective agency. To amalgamate means to form into "one organization or structure," basically to form a unity of some kind. To operate unamalgamated means the opposite of that. This recalls Deleuze and Guattari's (D&G) concept of the Rhizome where they contrast a set unified structure which they call "arborescent" using the model of a tree with roots, with something like grass which grows like a rhizome. Most of the botanical type of rhizomes that the model is based on grow underground via horizontal stems as opposed to vertically planting roots. This makes their network mobile as opposed to sedentary trees whose horizontal growth and mobility is limited to how far they cast their seeds. Rhizomatic proliferation appears nonlinear, non hierarchical, decentralized and chaotic, not subordinate to an organizing principle or amalgamation into a particular form or structure. Any point in a rhizome can connect with any other point. Thus a rhizome effects a multiplicity of different aspects as opposed to the single entity of an arborescent model. 

D&G's rhizome model appears as the introduction to A Thousand Plateaus (ATP), the second volume of their Capitalism and Schizophrenia series. They both introduce the concept along with the book as a rhizome. Being rhizomatic literature (the chapter and book), thus a multiplicity, it looks at writing from that model therefore providing some insight into the often convoluted and digressive style of Mr. P.  D&G conceive a book as a literary machine with a productive function. "We will never ask what a book means as signified or signifier; we will not look for anything to understand in it" . . . "Writing has nothing to do with signifying. It has to do with surveying, mapping, even realms that are yet to come" (ATP, p. 4 - 5). Of course the central activity in Mason & Dixon concerns surveying and mapping. I postulate that the realms yet to come concern untapped abilities in the largely occult aspects of the human brain and nervous system. This territory or territories shows up in TP's novels as the paranormal or (so-called) supernatural. 

The contrast between arborescent and rhizome doesn't present a strict dichotomy in D&G's schema. An arborescent structure can have rhizomatic offshoots; rhizomatic networks can settle in to a unified organization. As they put it: "There exist root or tree structures in rhizomes; conversely, a tree branch or root division may begin to burgeon into a rhizome. The coordinates are determined not by theoretical analyses implying universals but by a pragmatics composing aggregates of intensities. A new rhizome may form in the heart of a tree, the hollow of a root, the crook of a branch" (ATP, p. 15).

The arborescent plot of Shadow Ticket concerns detective Hicks McTaggart's assignment to locate and bring back home the cheez heiress Daphne Airmont. The novel has any number of rhizomatic digressions having little to do with the plot except tangentially. An obvious one being the subplot of Stuffy Keegan and the adventures of the mysterious submarine that courses throughout the book. Another recurring branch concerns the subject of apport and asport – objects mysteriously disappearing out of thin air (asport) or appearing out of thin air (apport) which we first hear about in chapter 5. Rhizomes produce multiplicities; multiplicities of all kinds abound in Pynchon. D&G will say that a rhizome is "defined solely by a circulation of states." We see a circulation of  ever changing states in all of Pynchon's novels. 

* * * * * * 

"The first theoretical element of importance is the fact that the war machine has many varied meanings, and this is precisely because the war machine has an extremely variable relation to war itself. The war machine is not uniformly defined, and comprises something other than increasing quantities of force."

– ATP, p. 422

Deleuze and Guattari initially conceptualize the war machine as that which resists the State either individually or collectively. The war machine manifests and proliferates outside and against the State. This pole of the war machine doesn't have violent war as its primary objective. It's only when the State appropriates the war machine turning it into a military institution and an army that we see war as we commonly know it. D&G call this total war. 

Related concepts include nomadology, and the difference between smooth and striated space. Nomads are in constant flux and movement; they are fluid having no fixed address. Historically, Eskimos, Mongols, and Bedouins lived nomadically moving as their environment changed. Touring musicians live as nomads. D&G expand the definition to include figurative as well as literal nomads. Anyone flexible in their thinking, so-called "free-thinkers" not rigidly bound to dogmas, ideologies and belief systems operate as nomads. Deleuze himself famously disliked traveling living most of his adult life in the same area of Paris yet nomadically travelled far in his thinking, intellectual expression and his own philosophy characterized by coming up with different nomenclature for looking at similar ideas in a different way. For example, smooth space describes a body without organs, aka the plane of consistency, aka the intense egg, etc. Nomads oppose fixed identity.

Striated space includes any space (mentally or physically) with a grid over it. For instance, roadways, traffic lights and street signs striate a space indicating where and when one can or cannot go. Oceans, deserts or steppes mark a smooth space. Any kind of meditation can mentally induce one into a smooth space. Smooth spaces typically go in between striated spaces. "But more generally, we have seen that the war machine was the invention of the nomad, because it is in its essence the constitutive element of smooth space . . ." (ATP p.417).

Back in the day, the protests against the Vietnam War functioned as a war machine. Hippies lived nomadically sometimes entering a smooth space via psychedelics and other consciousness raising technologies. Now we have the No Kings protest movement as a war machine against the State. Individually, anyone fighting against their complacency or working to break out of fixed, limiting beliefs constructs a kind of internal war machine for doing so. The Gurdjieffians describe a "war against sleep" as a fight against automatic, mechanical behavior. The Book of the Law provides instructions for the construction of a war machine at the beginning of its 3rd chapter. 

The war machine has a presence throughout Vineland with its opposition to State Fascism and its war against drugs best exemplified by the macho Brock Vond and his cohorts. The war machine appears far more subtle and occult in Shadow Ticket. 

"It would seem that the war machine is projected into an abstract knowledge formally different from the one that doubles the State apparatus." – ATP, p. 362. I've outlined some of the coded "abstract knowledge" that can go towards resisting fascism in the first post of this series. TP alludes to this kind of abstract knowledge in the opening Bela Lugosi quote: "Supernatural perhaps. Baloney . . . perhaps not." We're talking about knowledge that leads one to Initiation which from one viewpoint means becoming more yourself; connecting with your real purpose in life or at least a path toward discovering what that might be. Resisting the fascism of someone telling you how to live or what you should be doing. 

Much of the "supernatural" knowledge presents itself allegorically, metaphorically or in code. Some of it may be possible to individuals motivated toward sensitizing their nervous systems to receiving energy normally filtered out. The various instances of telepathy throughout Shadow Ticket give an example of that. The novel may hint at how to develop more extraordinary abilities, but it doesn't directly provide techniques. It does paint scenarios illustrating such abilities recalling an old occult formula: first it exists in IMAGINATION then in WILL then in REALITY. Hicks's initials form a cypher that = WILL. 

Some of this abstract knowledge seems impossible to put into practice, or if possible, a long way off for the average person. The ability to asport or apport objects that Thessalie tells Hicks about in chapter 5 comes quite easily to some of the characters later on. Maybe this is baloney, maybe it's in the future? Thessalie also introduces Hicks to the science of psychometry in the same chapter. This art can be attempted by anyone. Meditate on an object and try to receive impressions from it. Not every object will be what they call a reading object, i.e. give off impressions. Trying this at a museum that displays antiquities may help. These are just some examples. There seems a great deal of nomadic abstract knowledge in Shadow Ticket, much of it coded. Digging it out requires paying close attention.

How to receive useful abstract knowledge gets shown in chapter 15 when Hicks gets his fortune from penny scales that seems to be trying to tell him something important. "By now Hicks is used to this sort of thing, a network of penny scales all over town plus Chicago that can recognize him personally even blocks away. Must be done with radio waves somehow." In this case the information is trying to save his life. This provides an illustration of one way the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel communicates. Some organization (a State of some kind) appears to be trying to kill him. Whatever intelligence coming through the penny scale seems to be trying to save his life. Eventually Hicks listens and dodges a bullet. 

Most of the main characters appear to live a largely nomadic existence. Hicks seems to get involuntarily thrown further into one after getting drugged in Harlem and waking up on an ocean liner bound for Europe. He spends the rest of the novel in various places in eastern Europe finding residence nowhere; always on the move nomadically. Daphne Airmont runs away with a clarinet player on tour before ditching him. Some of the action takes place on the Trans-Trianon 2000 motorcycle tour which encompasses a 2000 km circuit. 

"The nomad has a territory; he follows customary paths; he goes from one point to another; . . . A path is always between two points, but the in-between has taken on all the consistency and enjoys both an autonomy and a direction of its own. The life of the nomad is the intermezzo. Even the elements of his dwelling are conceived in terms of the trajectory that is forever mobilizing them"  - ibid, p. 380 (emphasis added). 

Generally speaking, an intermezzo consists of an interlude between two substantial aspects like a brief musical passage between two larger movements. In this context I would say the intermezzo of the nomad goes in between two fixed identities. Hicks starts out as a gumshoe in Milwaukee. He ends up in Hungary with a new girlfriend and considers leaving the detective business to get into espionage or something else. The intermezzo also recalls the Bardo, the between lives state, a space which exists between the death of one identity and the birth of another. Death and the Bardo have a significant presence throughout Shadow Ticket.

D&G talk about two poles of the war machine. One pole shows State sponsored war; what's going on in Iran and the Middle East as I write this. The other pole consists of what Pynchon writes of as a subtext in Shadow Ticket and his other novels: "it is when the war machine, with infinitely lower "quantities," has as its object not war but the drawing of a creative line of flight, the composition of a smooth space and of the movement of people in that space." . . . "War machines take shape against the apparatuses that appropriate the machine and make war their affair and their object: they bring connections to bear against the great conjunction of the apparatuses of capture or domination."