Shadow Ticket

In Gravity’s Rainbow, Pynchon depicted the violent death throes of fascism at the end of World War II. From the chaos of the collapsing Nazi regime, the characters find themselves in the Zone, a geographic space in which preexisting structures and mental barriers break apart. The Zone represents the final days of fascism, yet Shadow Ticket, set a generation before the events of Gravity’s Rainbow, shows fascism as a rising tide. Taking place in 1932, a year before Adolf Hitler seized power in Germany, the novel shows the extent to which fascism and Nazism were already present in American and European societies. Shadow Ticket functions as a counterpart to Gravity’s Rainbow in this respect, depicting the historical and cultural forces that led to the rise of fascism and positing a counterfactual history in which this poisonous ideology takes root in the US as well as Europe.   

To many of the novel’s characters, fascism represents a novel response to the social and economic devastation that followed World War I. The dinner conversation with Uncle Lefty illustrates the ease with which many ignored the racism and violence of Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric so long as it did not appear to be directed at them. According to Lefty, “Der Führer […] is der future” (29). A former policeman with ties to institutional power, Lefty believes that Hitler has been treated unfairly by the press, attributing this supposedly unfair treatment to antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish control of the media. Later, Alf Quarrender frames the rise of fascism as “a second chance, not only for Germany but for all civilization” (136), an opportunity to correct the mistakes of the end of World War I. While they may not be explicitly fascists, these men’s willingness to entertain the ideology illustrates the widespread loss of faith in democracy after the destruction of World War I, as economic insecurity made many people willing to scapegoat minoritized communities and put their trust in authoritarian leaders.

Shadow Ticket suggests that the United States is not immune to the ideological threat. As well as Uncle Lefty’s defense of Hitler over casserole, Hicks gradually becomes aware of the broad fascist movement hiding in plain sight in America. Lefty takes Hicks to a well-appointed bowling alley. The “expensively designed” (63) interior suggests that this movement—the bowling alley is actually a gathering spot for young fascists—is well-funded and popular. Inside, Hicks runs into an old acquaintance who has changed his name to sound more German. These fascists, Hicks realizes, are not just distant, isolated political extremists. They are people he knows, from similar backgrounds, and their movement has resources. The only official response to the rise of fascism is outdated and ill-equipped. There are “half a million” (62) fascists in the United States, Lefty claims, and they are ready to overthrow the government at any time. By the end of the novel, they have done exactly that. While the victory of American fascism is counterhistorical, the novel’s depiction of a well-funded fascist movement in the US aligns with historical reality. Of the many fascist and pro-Nazi organizations in the US, the largest and most influential was the German American Bund, established in 1936 with the express goal of promoting Nazi ideology in the US and promoting an alliance between the US and Nazi Germany. The Bund ran several Nazi training camps in New York and New Jersey and organized a now-notorious rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden in February 1939, in which an audience of roughly 20,000 listened as Bund leaders delivered virulently antisemitic speeches and called for the establishment of an openly white supremacist US government. Shadow Ticket departs from reality only in showing what might have happened if this movement had been victorious. 

In Europe, the disintegration of the Kingdom of Hungary illustrates the breakdown of social structure that paved the way for fascism. The old borders have collapsed, leaving people with a fractured understanding of their national identity. D’Annunzio has marched into Fiume—a city that has changed hands numerous times in the decades before his arrival and is presently bifurcated between Italian and Yugoslavian control—in the name of fascism, while guerilla training camps are being set up on the borders. Fascism is seizing upon the fractured identities, giving a sense of purpose and identity to the traumatized young survivors of World War I. Antisemitism is ubiquitous, with the Vladboys turning their violence on anyone who might be Jewish. Their directionless blunt force shows the vapidity and incoherence of fascism as an ideology, yet their power and energy warn that these deficiencies will not prevent fascist victory, at least in the short term. Fascism in the novel is a fundamentally violent ideology resisted with violent force ,whether from on-the-run jazz clarinetists or “a sort of snub-nose golem” (226). The Zone is being established, war is seemingly inevitable, and fascism is the fuel that powers the machine violently, terribly forwards toward the brutal conclusion.