New Pynchon Novel! Part 6
Musing Outloud about Thomas Pynchon's Writing
Welcome back to my round-up of Notes posts on Pynchon’s writing in anticipation of Shadow Ticket coming out Oct 7, 2025.
Essentially here I went all in on cover art. As of time of writing (May 19th) there is no book cover released for Shadow Ticket.
Catch up with my previous Pynchon dailies here.
Day 33 of new Pynchon novel,
Zachary Dillon yesterday commented on his interpretation of the Mason & Dixon first edition cover, which I found to be a very good interpretation, and I had already planned to mention my favorite covers, so there you go.
Against the Day 1st edition: like Mason & Dixon, this cover is minimalist while looking both distinct and holding references to the text. The title is written in three different fonts, two of them in progressive drop shadow, as if viewed through a piece of Icelandic spar, an optical effect mentioned often in the book and referencing branches of possible realities. A little international stamp on the lower left is broken, as if a secret missive that has been opened before delivered to you, and if I recall correctly the language on it is fake but it looks like famous diplomatic stamps of the 19th century.
I also have a personal fondness for it because it was the first time one of his books was newly published in the time that I knew about him, and I didn’t know it was coming so did a double-take and had to look closer. Was this really happening? The book still feels like a private hallucination of mine, it’s just wayyy too aligned with my interests.
Bleeding Edge 1st edition cover: at first I didn’t like it. Looks like a cheap airport bookstore technothriller. But then someone pointed out that it The dark volumes on the left and right not only look like a server farm but also the Twin Towers. Oh. And I’m a sucker for holographic foil.
Gravity’s Rainbow, Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition: no smart reason for liking this one, I love glitch art, textural / stain / decay stuff, this one has sort of a look like an ink-smeared vintage printout of a bomb target landscape, it’s just pretty and cool.
The Penguin Vintage editions: including Vineland here as an example but basically they’re all like this, same font and different drawings but each with a distinct leading color, these are the most playful and kaleidoscopic of his covers that give a visual business to match his prose. They covers are a little like comic books and I think his books would make great comic books, even more than I think they'd make good movies.
Against the Day Penguin trade paperback edition: A lot of Pynchon covers seem to refer to early modernist art movements to mixed success, but this one really gets me aesthetically because I love mazes, cubism, art deco, futurism, and there’s a bit of implied retrofuturism. The disappearing airship is an extremely smart visual and referential touch, the only thing I don't like about it is with the pilot facing down a seemingly art deco city makes it Gravity’s Rainbow coded.
Day 34 of new Pynchon novel coming out, during my search for covers to download I discovered a lot of neat new ones, but boy do V. covers tend to be boring and unimaginative. The majority of them are minimalist and lean into tweaking the character “V” with typographic effects. My own copy is not great in that regard.
However I did find these two covers, which are brilliant. Of course one of them I'd proudly read in the subway and the other I’d be reticent. But it would be nice to have.
I also discovered this outstanding, truly exceptional fake cover designed by someone on Reddit. And I can't fucking find it again. Kicking myself for not downloading it, because anyone republishing V. should buy it from that redditor, it was outstanding work.
Day 35 of new Pynchon novel coming out, one of my absolute favorite of Pynchon’s dad jokes is
“Suture self, as the surgeon sez”
I forget the provenance but I believe it was actually Mason & Dixon?
Anyway yesterday I lost a dance competition against a wet floor and split my left eyebrow open such that I needed stitches. Thus I employed the “suture self” pun at every possible opportunity.
Side note that before I went to the doctor to do it, I genuinely stood in the bathroom and watched the wound bleed and considered whether I could, in fact, suture myself. Instead I suited myself, in other words dressed, and got it done professionally and (actually) painlessly.
[Note, my injury occurred on Monday, May 12th]
Day 36 of new Pynchon novel, while looking for favorite covers I discovered other covers and now, for sure, I can say that I have some least favorite Pynchon book covers:
The Vineland first edition cover. I have this one. The photo of burning woods does nothing for me, thematically or vibes-wise. Overly serious.
The infamous V. Penguin paperback version. “MMmm, three alligators… no sign of V…” Plays like how I would make a mockup V. cover in Photoshop for memes and lulz, but I feel like the designer grokked the comic book-meets-”serious literature” quality of Pynchon’s writing and performed it in a completely tone-deaf way.
Slow Learner Bay Back Books paperback edition. Oh. My. God. This is like the designer not only didn’t read them (it happens) but just went with the first and most obvious idea and didn’t even… distinguish it. It’s a bad idea sung off-pitch about the wrong topic in a completely forgettable way. There is nothing childish about Pynchon’s work and his introductory essay uses the term “slow learner” in a less depreciatory manner than the term implies, much like his essay on Luddites. I can't imagine what someone buying a book because of that cover ended up feeling reading the actual text.
In the process of looking up covers for commentary I learned thomaspynchon.com has some very useful cover galleries.
I also am experiencing Mandala effect because I could have sworn there was a famous and popular Gravity’s Rainbow cover that was essentially Andy Warhol's Velvet Underground & Nico cover with a rocket replacing the pink meat of the banana, that despite its popularity I hated, but I can’t find any evidence that cover existed!1
To read my previous Musing Outloud essays:
5 Flicks to Get Cinematically Fit | FilmStack Challenge #3
As this monthly series is taking shape, I’ve had to adjust the name of it. First I titled it Ted Hope’s Challenge, because Ted Hope was the one who wrote the challenge. Then I called it the Hope for Film Challenge because it was bringing in a whole community of his readers. Now it’s squarely the FilmStack Challenge, which nomenclature others got to far ahead of…
New Pynchon Novel! Part 5
Welcome back to my round-up of Notes posts on Pynchon’s writing in anticipation of Shadow Ticket coming out Oct 7, 2025.
New Pynchon Novel! Part 3
Welcome back to my round-up of Notes posts on Pynchon’s writing in anticipation of Shadow Ticket coming out Oct 7, 2025. You can catch up with my previous notes here:
To read more about books:
Bookreading Memories
Two weeks ago I posted Moviegoing Memories, a roundup of personal experiences I’ve had at the cinema that I originally posted to Facebook about four years ago and decided to transfer to Substack.
Living in Dark Psyches
I started alternating reading an unread book with re-reading a previously read book off my shelves somewhere in the midst of the pandemic lockdowns. It started largely as a question of how to organize shelves:
Independently Published Books I Own
My mother used to buy books of poetry from her friends. She even once bought the mystery novel of a daughter of a friend of hers. I, a judgmental teen, once snootily asked her, “How do you know the books are good?”
Send a Venmo tip!:
This Mandela will be resolved in a future Pynchon daily digest.
Re: the Warhol banana, you are thinking of Steven Weisenburger's companion to Gravity's Rainbow! Great post.