October 2025 Issue: Chicago Architecture Biennial (Print Edition)

A Golden Ratio Taking the measure of Thomas Pynchon’s “Shadow Ticket” "Lugosi’s line is the epigraph for Thomas Pynchon’s newest novel, the long-awaited 'Shadow Ticket,' a Depression-era noir set in Milwaukee, Chicago and the Hungarian hinterlands. 'Shadow Ticket,' slang (depending on who you ask) for a travel ticket made without payment or any sort of under-the-table, off-book assignment, unfolds in this same inter-war period of world-making and unmaking, of conspiracy and uncertainty, and America’s role in all of the above." (Annette LePique) Overture to Mäkelä An early and close-up look at the Chicago Symphony music director designate "Leading either orchestra would be unprecedented at such an early age. (Mäkelä will be the youngest-ever music director of the CSO and second youngest-ever chief conductor of the Concertgebouw.) But to lead both the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra simultaneously is like running Chrysler and General Motors at the same t