Bpacc > Recent Status Updates

Yep, still reading this. I took a break for a couple months due to other occupations, but am committed to getting Schattenfroh done.

It helps that this one has gotten much stronger since my last update. Much of the book is more vulnerable and raw than I'd expected from such an esoteric text. That scene with Michael Lentz and his father in the nursing home... Jesus, man.

I don't know what it says about me that I think the difficulty of this book has been greatly exaggerated. Honestly, I found Ducks, Newburyport way harder to get into than this.

Regardless, this is actually pretty fun so far. It's delightfully unhinged and way funnier than reviews would have you think.

I fucking adore this book. Nobody likes it when someone pipes up with this phrase, but it feels like this novel has gone over everyone's head. It's such a beautiful closing of the loop for Pynchon, and barring a catastrophic failure in the final leg of the story here, I think it'll be able to go blow for blow with his other works.

I don't know if this will be a controversial opinion, but so far Shadow Ticket is far and away my favorite of Pynchon's P.I. trilogy. It's so incredibly atmospheric and moody, while also feeling more human and than either Bleeding Edge or Inherent Vice. Every single time I even open the book I'm transported back to 1930's Milwaukee - it's magic.

I! AM! IN! MISERY! AND THERE AIN'T NO ONE TO COMFORT ME, OH YEAH

Ever come across a plot twist so incredibly stupid and contrived it feels like it was made in a lab to piss you off.

Somehow the editing gets worse as the book goes on. I can only assume that literally no one aside from Audra read some of these later scenes.

Narah is a Temu version of Lace Silksong I will not be taking questions.

All the lore reads like "And here's another clue for you all: the Walrus was Paul."

This book is like 300 pages but it's taken me almost two months to get 60% of the way through. Take from that what you will.

How is this still going.

There's been like four separate times in this novel where a rape implication has been dropped out of absolute nowhere. Chase is alone with Reika? The text implies she fears he'll rape her. Chase pushes Reika out of danger? Reika implies a rape connotation. Reika doesn't know who her blood dad is? He must've raped her mom and run off!

I know I of all people have no right to say this, but have some tact good lord.

There is a scene in this book where our main character remembers getting whipped by her teacher like an actual slave as a child. This scene comes out of nowhere, and is only present so, I am not making this up, Reika can realize that the person who stopped her from getting whipped is a character she just met. What is this. Why did no one stop this. Why did Audra Winter think this was a good idea.

How am I only a third of the way through this. Why does this feel like it's longer than Infinite Jest. Why is any of this happening?

Y'know, the typos and bizarre grammatical stuff, what really gets me about this book is how little anything is explained, and how little reason you're given to actually care. Audra Winter just assumes you care about her world as much as she does, and that's a fatal mistake indeed.

“I hate how the Hub blocks out the dark skies,” Chase rambled
on, reaching his arm out—his long arm out—to pretend to trace the Stars
with his index finger. He was tall. Conveniently tall. 6’4”, maybe 6’5”.
With arms that looked like they could reach the top of the arch."

Started reading this out of morbid curiosity, and it's worse than you've heard. Every paragraph is like walking on the sidewalk but then suddenly the concrete disappears and is replaced with ice.

There's a moment where the narrator explains what she means when she calls her father "Dad."

I'm not joking.

"Dad, Avia's father and my adoptive father, had drawn it for me years ago..."

Picked this one up as a blind buy from my local bookstore based on the high reviews and (fuck it, I'll admit it) fantastic cover. So far, that proved to be a prudent decision. The opening story, Annie 2, immediately became one of my favorite short stories I've read in a hot minute, and My Immaculate Girlfriend was pretty interesting too. I'll see how the rest of it goes.

I feel like this book is what you'd get if you took any other Dennis Cooper novel and sucked out all of the interesting bits. All you're left with are his confused, disconnected characters raping and pillaging one another - which just isn't enough to carry a book, especially when the prose is as overly written and turgid as this.

So far this is, and it gives me no pleasure to say it, a genuine miss from Cooper. It feels like a pale imitation of his early work, without the emotional rawness of something like I Wished to offset it. Good grief.

Oh so *that's* why the last act of this book is considered so weird.

Maybe it's just my youthful years reading too many epic fantasy series with dramatis personae that number in the hundreds, but I haven't found this one too hard to keep track of? It's definitely getting more entropic as it goes along however, it feels more and more like the book is coming apart at the seams, which for once, isn't a complaint.