Play Book Tag discussion

“Does cheese, considered as a living entity, also possess consciousness?”

Existential noir or Looney Tunes scenario? You decide, as you follow private detective Hicks McTaggart in Milwaukee, 1932 try to track down and bring home a runaway princess, the daughter of a man known locally as the Al Capone of Cheese,

It’s a new Thomas Pynchon adventure so, no matter where you start, you are guaranteed to become discombobulated

I can understand why it takes more than ten years for the author to publish something new: underneath the wacky actions and the burlesque actors lies a very solid foundation of research. The atmosphere feels authentic because one never knows for sure what is invented and what is actual trivia from 1932, what is relevant to the plot and what is just a detour. Most of all, the story is immersive for the intensive use of slang and of cultural references, in particular when we arrive in the Central Europe / Balkans part of the novel, at least for me as a native of the region.

Many are the rabbit holes waiting to trip the serious reader who wants to fact-check the author, and many are the rewards for those who can put aside the book in order to learn more about such things as the Maxfield Parrish nude pictures, an actress named Toby Wing, the Sombrero of Uneasiness, IMOPIO (Infernal Machines of Presumed Italian Origin), a hi-jacked Hungarian submarine from WWI currently hiding in Lake Michigan, Ojibwe spirit quests, pre-owned autogyros in tip-top condition barely flown, Sticky Toffee Pudding, Jack Rose cocktails the size of birdbaths, belinographs, 500 cmc Moto Guzzi racing motorcycles, contraband Ankhesenamun cigarettes, flying watermelons, theremin vacuum tubes, pareidolia, dedicated cruciverbalists, a lamp so stupefyingly tasteless it makes nonsense of the tasteless-lamp category itself, slivovitz effects on clarinet reeds, Blavatskian narkomats or the role of teuthologists in Valdivia Expedition of 1898-99.