Against the Day

Mar 01, 2008

oriana rated it

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Shelves: read-2007, read-2008, phenomenal

Update the second, March 08
Well, well, well [she says, much subdued, pensive; not at all her normal, boistrous, effusive self].

Here we are, March 1, 2008, and I have just closed the cover of Against the Day.

I suppose it's hard to even talk about a tome like this, a thing of this range and scope and breadth. I'd really like to use all the superlatives I can, and then invent new words to describe Pynchon and what he does, because he really is like nothing else ever. I...more

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Feb 08, 2012

Shan Jago rated it

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"As nights went on and nothing happened and the phenomenon slowly faded to the accustomed deeper violets again, most had difficulty remembering the earlier rise of heart, the sense of overture and possibility and went back once again to seeking only orgasm, hallucination, stupor, sleep, to fetch them through the night and prepare them against the day" (Against the Day pg 805)

It was in Banff while reading Against the Day that I fell into a doze and found myself on a cloud-sodd...more"As nights went on and nothing happened and the phenomenon slowly faded to the accustomed deeper violets again, most had difficulty remembering the earlier rise of heart, the sense of overture and possibility and went back once again to seeking only orgasm, hallucination, stupor, sleep, to fetch them through the night and prepare them against the day" (Against the Day pg 805)

It was in Banff while reading Against the Day that I fell into a doze and found myself on a cloud-sodden airship with none other than Captain Beefheart himself. He kept insisting I take the controls since he was so very preoccupied with heaving warheads over the railings which, without having time to fall, instantly morphed into belled flowers and bright-hued butterflies. I watched it all go down through my grimy goggles and tried my best to guide the ship against heavy winds while the Magic Band replenished the Captains supply of rainbow bombs. “What’s he trying to do?” I asked a deck hand whose top hat somehow also happened to be the sails of the vessel. He leaned over the railing and pointed down into the sky where I could now see a monstrous white trout with winged fins gliding below us.
I woke up with Pynchon on my face.

(Umm, wait. Sorry. I couldn’t remember if I was writing a review of Against the Day, Moby Dick, or Trout Mask Replica…)

Captain Beefheart (stick with me, I promise this is leading somewhere) lives on an entirely different plane of aesthetic existence than most. Sure ‘nuff and yes he does. I’ve always thought of him, not as a musician, but as an extremely entertaining cartoon character. He’s the only musical artist, no matter how bizarre (maybe with the exception of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins) that I feel this way towards. Despite the inflection of menace that saturates some of his vocalizing listening to his music is more like watching Starday morning cartoons with a bowl of the Count (that typo wasn’t intentional, but I’m leaving it anyway. It has a nice ring, and I think the Captain would approve). It’s almost as if there isn’t a real person involved in the entertainment; only the fictional creature represented. I mean, who the fuck is Don Van Vliet anyway?

I also feel this way about Thomas Pynchon. Most writers I can at least fathom some sort of personal image of through their works (even someone as reclusive as J. D. Salinger) whereas Pynchon seems almost totally unimaginable. In fact, it’s been suggested by some that Pynchon’s novels were actually Salinger writing under a pseudonym. Or that perhaps he’s like Homer or the architects of Tlön ; a multitude of artists, tradesmen, scientists and whatnot creating a universe. In other words, Pynchon is an enigma, and most of his novels work like puzzles. Against the Day isn’t really any different, though along with Mason & Dixon it is one of his most accessible. I almost think of it as a blending of Gravity’s Rainbow and M&D, which may possibly make it the ultimate piece of Pynchonalia in my mind. The most interesting thing about the novel (aside from the airships – did I mention there’s airships?) is how he uses light refraction imagery and metaphor as a wonderful device to mirror his metahistorical fable with contemporary modern issues. On an altogether different note, and I know it’s a silly (really silly) thought, but I almost wish Against the Day had been his final novel (don't get me started on Inherent Vice). The reason I say this is simply that the concluding paragraph (you'll have to read it to find out what it is ) is just so wonderful, bright, and beautiful that it would be fine if the end of the world as we knew it arrived and those were Pynchon’s last statements (and then his epitaph could read – His creative output reached its peak during the initial stages of the Apocalypse – ) and whoever was left around could use them for inspiration. Because in those last moments, Pynchon finally gives us Hope.
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Mar 15, 2010

tim rated it

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Against the Day, for me, is pure reading bliss. Pynchon effortlessly conjures up magic and grace, stretching them through a full spectrum of absurdly strange situations. His characters often lack depth, but he more than makes up for that in many other ways, not least of all with the shear beauty of his prose.

Of the thousand-and-one topics within this book, my favorite themes dwell on light, time, parallel universes, and dimensional transcendence. Anarchy may be the most prevalent thr...moreAgainst the Day, for me, is pure reading bliss. Pynchon effortlessly conjures up magic and grace, stretching them through a full spectrum of absurdly strange situations. His characters often lack depth, but he more than makes up for that in many other ways, not least of all with the shear beauty of his prose.

Of the thousand-and-one topics within this book, my favorite themes dwell on light, time, parallel universes, and dimensional transcendence. Anarchy may be the most prevalent thread found throughout, but an equally prominent theme, if only slightly less obvious, is the search for Shambhala—both the mythological kingdom said to be hidden somewhere in Inner Asia, as well as the invisible spiritual equivalent located within the Self.

There are stories, like maps that agree...too consistent among too many languages and histories to be only wishful thinking…. It is always a hidden place, the way into it is not obvious, the geography is as much spiritual as physical. If you should happen upon it, your strongest certainty is not that you have discovered it but returned to it. In a single great episode of light, you remember everything.

Regarding light, one character sums up Pynchon’s curiosity with it when he says: I want to reach inside light and find its heart, touch its soul, take some in my hands whatever it turns out to be, and bring it back. One distinctly memorable scene involves an encounter with a tree in Mexico full of giant luminous beetles all flashing on and off together in unison. While watching these magnificent creatures, the observer somehow realizes (I won’t pretend I can convey the same magic Pynchon does, so you will just have to take this at face value) one of the illuminated beetles is his soul, and that the other beetles of light on the tree are the souls of everyone he has ever known. All together these synchronized strobing souls make up one complete radiant soul in the same way that light is indivisible.

Light is living tissue. As the brain is the outward and visible expression of the Mind.

Pynchon has even more fun exploring the nature of time. For what mission have I here, in this perilous segment of space-time, if not somehow to transcend it? Most of the book takes place in the years leading up to WWI. Using the knowledge of the day, Pynchon bombards the reader in mathematical theories on vectors and quaternions in an attempt to push the boundaries of three-dimensional space. All this leads up to his attacks on the so-called ‘forth dimension.’ Even wondering if we can look at the ‘forth dimension’ as if it were time, when it is really something of its own, and ‘Time’ is only our best imperfect approximation.

When dissecting and reassembling time, Pynchon seems to place a keen interest in manipulating it for the reader’s benefit and joy. Pynchon is something of a mystic and trickster. Whatever the number of n dimensions it inhabited, an observer would need one extra, n + 1, to see and connect the end points to make a single resultant. Pynchon must somehow reside in, or frequently visit an extra dimension from the norm. How else is he able to bring back to consensus reality seemingly endless accounts from other realms, parallel universes, and multiple dimensions, all while transporting the reader along with him into those very same worlds?(less)

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Feb 21, 2008

tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE rated it

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Recommends it for: the children of dictators everywhere

Shelves: literature

If you've been hoping that a major new novel wd come out that presents anarchists as heros, then this be it! &, after 5 or 6 wks of reading its 1,085pp off & on I FINALLY FINISHED IT TONIGHT. Now reading it isn't even remotely close to accomplishing something like getting Mumia Abu-Jamal out of jail, but it still feels like an accomplishment anyway. If Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" (1861) was the 1st novel w/ an anarchistic protaganist (the main character, Rudin, was drawn partly fr...moreIf you've been hoping that a major new novel wd come out that presents anarchists as heros, then this be it! &, after 5 or 6 wks of reading its 1,085pp off & on I FINALLY FINISHED IT TONIGHT. Now reading it isn't even remotely close to accomplishing something like getting Mumia Abu-Jamal out of jail, but it still feels like an accomplishment anyway. If Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" (1861) was the 1st novel w/ an anarchistic protaganist (the main character, Rudin, was drawn partly from the young Bakunin who Turgenev was friends w/), then we've already had a healthy history of 157 yrs of novels w/ at least somewhat positively presented anarchist characters.

These might include: Isabel Meredith (Helen & Olivia Rossetti)'s 1903 "A Girl Among the Anarchists", Frank Harris' 1909 "The Bomb" (about the Haymarket Martyrs), &, more recently, G. A. Matiasz's 1994 "End Time - Notes on the Apocalypse". I'd even be tempted to toss in Mario Vargas Llosa's 1981 "The War of the End of the World" but I can also easily imagine a case being made to vehemently deny that one!

Pynchon's, however, is even more epic than the Vargas Llosa, & definitely written from a pro-anarchist perspective. For me, reading it was sometimes uncanny. The 1st bk I read of his was "The Crying of Lot 49" - I probably read it sometime in the mid 1970s. I liked it, but I wasn't as enthralled by it as I might've been lead to believe I wd be by whoever might've recommended it. Then, in 1979, I was co-running an anonymous phone project called "TESTES-3" & a reporter named Franz Lidz wrote about it & compared it to the Tristero in Pynchon's novel.

15 yrs later, I was living in Berlin & reading Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" while spending much or most of my time in the whereabouts of the English Tiergarten where much of the novel's action was taking place. That seemed oddly synchronous.

NOW, being an anarchist & having finished writing a math bk (of sorts) several wks ago, I read Pynchon's latest about.. anarchist mathematicians (amongst many other folks too of course) & the synchronicity just kept kicking in right & left. One of the characters is going to a certain part of the world & I'm thinking something like: Hhhmm, I wonder if one of the people there will have the same name as my exgirlfriend from there? &, uh, Lo & Behold!, yes, there she is! One of the many threads running thru it all is ballooning - my 1st job in Pittsburgh was w/ a ballooning company. None of this tells you much about the novel, I'm just trying to explain my own resonance w/ it.

THE NOVEL: Well, of course, reading it requires a substantial investment of time that might be better spent in something more actively engaged w/ the world. Nonetheless, if you're going to read a novel, this wd probably be, IMO, considerably less of a waster of time than reading anything by Stephen King - something that 100s of millions of people do all the time.

The packaging of the bk is decorated w/ reviewer accolades who, for the most part, avoid telling their readership that the bk flagrantly supports anarchist assassinations of the genocidally power-hungry & the lot. That, in itself, interests me. Do they avoid it in order to bypass their more propaganda oriented publication's editorial strategies? To get past the editors? Or is it the editors who impose the restriction? Or do they somehow just not notice & see it as all good fictional fun? Because, while it is an entertaining bk set ca 100 yrs ago, its political message is still as relevant as ever. (less)

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Jun 28, 2007

Jim rated it

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Recommends it for: Counterfactualists

Against the Day is a book of terrorists.

Bomb huckers, outlaws and anarchists lurk everywhere and—surprise, surprise—nearly all of them are likable. Against the Day is like a Louis L’Amour novel in reverse but instead of the saga of the Sackett family moving westward, endlessly crossing the frontier, Pynchon’s Traverse’s travel from West to East, hurling themselves against the tide of history and humanity and into the teeth of American enterprise during the time when her fortunes wer...moreAgainst the Day is a book of terrorists.

Bomb huckers, outlaws and anarchists lurk everywhere and—surprise, surprise—nearly all of them are likable. Against the Day is like a Louis L’Amour novel in reverse but instead of the saga of the Sackett family moving westward, endlessly crossing the frontier, Pynchon’s Traverse’s travel from West to East, hurling themselves against the tide of history and humanity and into the teeth of American enterprise during the time when her fortunes were being made.

These are not basement anarchists building bombs with English dynamite but mavericks employing the very tools used to extract wealth from countless mines with little or no thought to the human cost. Yet in recent reviews by Kirsch and Kakutani, we’re led to believe that the Traverse family’s relationship to violence makes them morally inferior, as if the gears of Capitalism weren’t leaving a trail of corpses in its wake, as if violence was an instrument to be used only as a last resort, as if bombs don’t make sense, as if life wasn’t cheap and getting cheaper by the minute.

If most novels are like nature narratives on the Discovery channel, Pynchon’s are like long shots of ants scurrying about in an ant farm; at first their antics seem utterly random, but the more one watches, the deeper the suspicion that the participants in the drama are communicating with one another in meaningful ways. To put it another way, the organizing principle of the modern novel is the family; Pynchon is interested in systems.

Pynchon's novels have been dizzyingly dazzling from the get-go. His first novel V. has all the earmarks of his mature work. His early stories, his self-proclaimed juvenilia, were celebrated for his astonishing maturity to the same degree that his most recent work is being castigated for its outrageous silliness. Embedded in Kirsch’s and Kakutani’s criticisms are their disappointment at Pynchon’s refusal to come around to the fluorescent side of the moon and commit to hyper-realism; Pynchon cultivates such extreme fandom because his readers understand that they have to come him.

The Chums of Chance are simultaneously characters within the novel and characters in a series of boy’s adventure books called The Chums of Chance (the first of literally dozens of doubles at work in the novel). The Chums fly around onboard airships filled with an assortment of impossible gadgetry. But as the years wear on and the Chums become salty old vets in their own right they come to question where their orders are coming from, and why they should carry them out the way they’ve always carried them out when their work seems not to make a bit of difference on the ball of confusion below. Like the Flying Dutchman, they become the stuff of storybook fantasy while the world erupts in total war.

Perhaps in some way Kirsch and Kakutani see their own situation here: assigned a tiresome chore, they carry it out without relish or zeal because the results fail to register an impact on the landscape.

Critics: abandon ship; Pynchon fans: full speed ahead.

(Excerpted from a review that appeared in November 2006 at The Elegant Variation:
[http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/2006/11/remains_of_agai.html])

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May 23, 2007

Marcus Mennes rated it

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Recommends it for: those with strong median nerves

At 1085 pages, accommodating hundreds of characters, locales, sub-plots, digressions, etc., "Against The Day" isn't exactly summer beach reading. I bought my copy the day it was released (Nov. 21, 2006) and started reading that day. I'm currently (May 23, 2007) on page 892. This pace doesn't reflect a lack of desire, or even time, but rather a cautious appreciation of this book. I figure writers gamble and devote years of their lives preparing a book, while the reader invests mere hour...moreAt 1085 pages, accommodating hundreds of characters, locales, sub-plots, digressions, etc., "Against The Day" isn't exactly summer beach reading. I bought my copy the day it was released (Nov. 21, 2006) and started reading that day. I'm currently (May 23, 2007) on page 892. This pace doesn't reflect a lack of desire, or even time, but rather a cautious appreciation of this book. I figure writers gamble and devote years of their lives preparing a book, while the reader invests mere hours, or days digesting it. Given that Pynchon just turned seventy, and given the ten (or more) year spans between his novels, this could well be his last...so I'm milking it.

Pynchon has always been given the rap of being "difficult." True, you'll want to keep a dictionary close at hand, and those who desire a linear plot with fully developed themes and characters will certainly be disappointed by this novel (as goes for any of his other works), yet for the persistent few, his writing is able to elicit a kind of "unhealthy mental excitement."

In a sense, you need to learn how to read Pynchon, and really, the only way to read him is to surrender to his onslaught. It requires a spirit closely related to John Keats' concept of negative capability: "that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason..." In other words, the ability to let go, and read for sensation rather than full comprehension. Once you get into Pynchon's rhythm, style, and are able to crack his codes, there is, on nearly every page a kind of "aha!" moment. He lays little tripwires in the prose, so that upon careful reading, or re-reading, the running jokes and poetic asides have a renewed, and lasting vitality. Whether it is a turn of phrase, a strange metaphor, or a moment of comedic timing that produces a l.o.l. moment of absurdity, I am continually forced to put down the book, and silently marvel at this man's capabilites as a writer. He is a mad genius, a luminary, and I would argue, one of our national treasures.

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Mar 11, 2008

Guy rated it

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Recommends it for: Non-ADD masochists.

Recommended to Guy by: Conrad

Assigning a number of stars to this book could easily confuse me and occupy my time for days. Could, in fact, be the subject for a mischievous, Rabelais-ian dissertation if I were interested in a Ph.D. in American Literature. Could, in other words, take years, and still be beside the point. I think I'm going to eschew doing so. Because, what the fuck?

Run your mouse/cursor over two stars and the window says, "It was ok." Of Against the Day I would say, "true, and y...more

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Sep 27, 2007

Erin rated it

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Pynchon is a historian/mathematician who writes fiction. His novels make up a time line of world history from an American perspective. They are explorations into the myriad causes of how, as a world, we have arrived at where we are. His serpentine plots are portraits of the complexities of the world equation, where the choices of a few powerful men affect billions of human and non-human variables in subtle and sometimes invisible ways.

Against the Day covers the turn of the 20th ce...morePynchon is a historian/mathematician who writes fiction. His novels make up a time line of world history from an American perspective. They are explorations into the myriad causes of how, as a world, we have arrived at where we are. His serpentine plots are portraits of the complexities of the world equation, where the choices of a few powerful men affect billions of human and non-human variables in subtle and sometimes invisible ways.

Against the Day covers the turn of the 20th century--a time of great upheaval and change that altered the structure and definition of not just America, but the world. Industrial Revolution, imperialism, the immutable religion of capitalism, the creation of an ultra-rich class through blind greed and the heartless exploitation of the desperate lower classes, and the subsequent spawning of perverse ideals that not only falsely justified the sins of the ultra-rich, but made their exploitations seem dutiful and just to power-hungry and warped minds...Social Darwinism, elitism, trickle-down theories, etc.

While this book traverses the globe, much of it is set in Central Asia. In the complicated history of Central Asia lies the epitome of all that is wrong and evil about capitalism and imperialism. Greed and exploitation, murder, and subjugation without any apparent guilt. The belief in ignorant savages and their enlightened saviors. (Check out The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk)

Invisible forces are used consistently as metaphors by Pynchon to describe the quality of the effects of the aggregation of evil in the world. There are obscure clues and symbols that can be found, which seemingly lead you on the path to answers and truths, but which, in fact, lead you into deeper and more confusing labyrinths. Trying to find a solution to a puzzle, the frustration of constant failure creating more confusion and opening up several other murkier paths that are probably dead ends. See The Crying of Lot 49. Meanwhile, the negativity and hopelessness engendered by the powerful throughout history is infused into the common man and, in turn, creates and nurtures an unstoppable behemoth that will destroy the world. Terrorism, backlash, minor skirmishes and revolutions. Also on an individual scale: mental sickness, nihilism, paranoia, demons, self-debasement, misery...

Bleak...but not to worry, because there are always those great songs that are interweaved into every Pynchon book that are rest stops in the larger confusion of the whole. And humor, albeit dark humor, is also a main component. What better tools are there than songs and humor to battle or ignore for a time the complexities of the world? Maybe watching television or drinking or buying useless shit? Probably not reading an 1100 page book about confusion. Oh well.(less)

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Apr 28, 2008

Daniel rated it

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Recommends it for: everybody who feels like they can handle 1085 pages of distilled awesome.

Like all Pynchon novels I've ever read, this one completely defies encapsulation. I can either wave my arms helplessly and mumble "you should just read it" or I can say "this book was about X and Y" and then feel all dirty, like I have to write to the author and formally apologize.

Like most of Pynchon's work, Against the Day doesn't have your typical central plot followed by a small group of protagonists. Instead, there are broad themes embodied by a large cas...more

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Jul 30, 2008

Cynthia rated it

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It took me a month to finish this book, and when I was done with all 1,085 pages I had expected to feel relieved, even ebullient. Instead, I was kind of sad it was over.
This is a beautiful, moving book, very sad but also very silly.

It's one of the easiest Pynchon books to understand, along with Mason and Dixon, and one of the easiest to get through, in part because it doesn't have large sections that are really really sad and twisted, as is the case with Gravity's Rainbow and...moreIt took me a month to finish this book, and when I was done with all 1,085 pages I had expected to feel relieved, even ebullient. Instead, I was kind of sad it was over.
This is a beautiful, moving book, very sad but also very silly.

It's one of the easiest Pynchon books to understand, along with Mason and Dixon, and one of the easiest to get through, in part because it doesn't have large sections that are really really sad and twisted, as is the case with Gravity's Rainbow and V (one of my all-time favorites). I disagree with the critics who say Pynchon doesn't create characters you can sink your teeth into; I felt that his characters (and there are a LOT of them) are so poignant and sad I don't think I could have made it through this book if I'd they'd been any more fully developed.

Having said all that, it's not exactly like reading Janet Evanovitch. Pynchon is a literary treasure but he doesn't really "write books" like other professional authors. He doesn't really create a plot, which is maybe why his books are so long. He just keeps going until, I guess, either he gets exhausted or his publisher makes him turn it in or, I dunno, his printer breaks down.

It helps to know a few things going into this book. It helps, actually, if you can keep a laptop with WiFi next to you while you read so you look stuff up as you go along. But, some tips that might help (and I"m sure I"ll forget or miss a bunch, so anyone who reads this should feel free to add more in 'comments')

First, Pynchon is easiest to read if you don't come to it with an expectation of a normal story arc and normal plot development. There isn't a beginning middle and end, really, and only one character (Cyprian) has a classic epiphany.
Don't try to find one, or you'll be disappointed. Just read and enjoy every page as it comes to you. Trust me, you'll find yourself getting totally involved in what's happening.

There are so many many characters and they all speak in a kind of distinctive voice, I found it helpful to assign a well-known actor to many of the recurring characters. The Chums of Chance, for example, seem like utter twits until you try reading Darby in a Denis Leary voice and Chick Counterfly in an Owen Wilson voice. For the evil Scarsdale Vibe I used Christopher Walken and for his sidekick Foley Walker I found John Heard (remember him from Big and the Milagro Beanfield Wars?).

Curiously, I could never find actors to fit the supposed three main characters of the book, the three Traverse boys. Somehow they seemed the least coherent of all the characters in this book.

Everyone will tell you this is a wacky travel tale about anarchists and corporate greed. I didn't think so. I think it was basically kind of an existential book; there are all these characters searching desperately for redemption in a world that's completely chaotic and out of control and heartless. In the end the ones who find it, find it in love (yes, can you believe it? In Thomas Pynchon?) and in the trivial details of everyday life. Over and over the most insightful characters repeat that it's love and trivia that are the only refuge from life.

But that doesn't stop all these characters from trying to find redemption in insane areas. Math and science, for example. You always feel like you need a pHd in physics when you read pynchon. But in a way, he makes all the math and science nerds the bad guys; they've gotten too involved in things that are too refined.

There are SOME science things you need to know, though. But before I get into them, i have to go feed my family dinner, an act that is trivial and loving.

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Apr 08, 2008

Steve rated it

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Recommends it for: eggheads, Gnostics, heretics, anarchists, occultists

Recommended to Steve by: Pynchon is among my favorite writers

Shelves: thomas-pynchon

Against the Day is unlike any other book I have ever read, and one that defies review. Thomas Pynchon’s latest epic tips the scales, packed with 1,086 pages of wonderful characters, marvels, and a tapestry of themes. Ostensibly a novel of revenge, AtD is also (among many other things) an extended rumination on various kinds of light, from the mundane to the esoteric. As the title implies, this is no glorification of spiritual Illuminism so much as a cautionary tale about excesses of light set ag...moreAgainst the Day is unlike any other book I have ever read, and one that defies review. Thomas Pynchon’s latest epic tips the scales, packed with 1,086 pages of wonderful characters, marvels, and a tapestry of themes. Ostensibly a novel of revenge, AtD is also (among many other things) an extended rumination on various kinds of light, from the mundane to the esoteric. As the title implies, this is no glorification of spiritual Illuminism so much as a cautionary tale about excesses of light set against the consolations of night.

Taking place in the years prior to World War I, depicted as a sort of historical tipping point here, AtD explores many fascinating themes: Orphism, anarchism, espionage, the elusive nature of freedom, Utopian dreams, Shambala, secret societies, Tarahumara shamanism, peyote visions, doppelgangers, sexual escapades, emergent plutocracy, time travel, the 4th dimension, Icelandic spar, intelligent dogs, Gnostic inversions, Tarot trumps, super-weapons, Lovecraftian monstrosity, Bogomils, hollow Earth theories, Nicolai Tesla, Central Asia, the set of all sets that have themselves as a member, rembetica, fezzes, ukeleles…

The novel begins with the Chicago Exposition of 1893, and some of the best and funniest writing is devoted to this event. Here we first become aware that although this is a book that begins more than a century ago, it sheds a lot of light on our contemporary world and its problems. Much of Against the Day follows the lives of the Traverse family and their acquaintances. Webb Traverse, the patriarch, is an anarchist dynamiter who is done in by hired guns working for the mining company, the owner of which, Scarsdale Vibe, is the novel’s designated vile plutocrat. The task of vengeance falls to Traverse’s three sons, Kit, Reef and Frank. Traverse’s daughter, Lake, marries Deuce Kindred, the man who shot her pa.

This is an incredibly sprawling and tempestuous read. Erudite passages collide with goofy gags, spontaneous musical numbers and puns. Woven throughout the pages is a hilarious parody of juvenile adventure novels and pulps featuring a zeppelin crew of boy adventurers, the Chums of Chance, inspired by the likes of Tom Swift and Doc Savage. Theosophy is also lampooned as T.W.I.T., the True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys. Then there are the Visitors, who come from the future or possibly another dimension. “They have been crossing here, crossing over, between the worlds, for generations. Our ancestors knew them. Looking back over a thousand years, here is a time when their trespassings onto our shores at last converge, as in a vanishing-point, with those of the first Norse visitors.”

I will admit to my share of bafflement at much of the math, and confusion generated by a multitude of characters that pop in and out of the narrative like prairie dogs. In the beginning, I leaned heavily on the in-progress Pynchon wiki to help decode obscure historical references, foreign phrases and greater context. But in the last few hundred pages, I surrendered to the flow which carried me hither and yon beyond my wildest expectations.

One of the interesting things about finishing this book is rereading reviews of it. It seems that more than a few reviewers didn’t finish reading it and covered their retreats with bluster. One or two actually admit to skimming. Malcolm Jones of Newsweek arguably takes the best approach and serializes his review in an attempt to keep pace with the novel:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15771953/sit...

Having lived with this book for three months, I can’t imagine reading it on a deadline. It’s accessible even if one doesn’t run all of the references to ground, but I would recommend savoring it and doing a little bit of reference legwork. If it touches on a subject you happen to relish, you will find plenty of delightful in-jokes and references. But even without a compass, you can appreciate this wild and wide-ranging ride, by turns hilarious and horrifying, intimate and cosmic.

For those interested in Pynchon’s meta-fictional innovations, a running theme of doubling is woven through the book, along with the material symbol of doubling, Icelandic spar, which acts as a sort of mystical lens. Toward the end of the novel, the narrative splits off into an alternate fictional “reality,” one in which we discover the destinies of the major characters as they unfold there. Even in this alternate reality, one character makes an escape into yet another reality, where he is informed that he just returned from Shambala. Fans of the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics will find much to enjoy here.

As long as Against the Day is, I didn’t find myself wanting to skim pages or eager for it to be over. I savored the experience to the very last page, enjoying Pynchon’s ability to conjure so much in this play of light and darkness. Ultimately, the experience of reading becomes lysergic, phantasmagorical and transcendental. The novel, like Biblical Leviathan, swallows you whole and spits you out, exhausted but happy to be alive, on some strange beach.
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Apr 11, 2008

Ned rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: people who don't like to read

Shelves: current, favorites

I've taken to typing up large pieces of this book and posting them on random places on the internet. All are duly quoted and attributed, because credit should be given where it is due, as this story deserves a distribution farther, wider and stranger than more than all but just a few have attained. It deserves imaginary distribution, it needs to be read by the people, yes and yes, as well thru lenses kept hidden by governemnts and secret societies the world over. It needs to be read by people ...more

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Aug 08, 2007

Michael rated it

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The imaginative density of this book is truly a marvel. Every page, every chapter, every sentence is filled with humor, humanity, and wacky literary, historical and philosophical ideas. Like all of Pynchon's fiction, one must simply allow the author's immense creativity to take you wherever he feel like, and in this book it is an awful lot of places. Set in the years before World War I, Against the Day is, as near as I can tell, Pynchon's homage to the 19th century dime novel - featuring all man...more

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Mar 27, 2011

Adam rated it

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Shelves: steampunkery, literature-disguised-as-science-fic, literature-fantastique

Pynchon at his most accessible yet lengthy(so long I kept thinking I was being reminded of another novel and realizing it was an earlier section). A million intersecting ideas, characters, and plots wrapped in ribald humor and paranoid speculation, reading sometimes like H.G. Wells meets Cormac McCarthy tied all together with a flair of Dante, Conrad, and Borges. One of Pynchon's best, up there with M&D, G.R. and V.(all initials...I win). Pynchon parodies and pastiches L.A. noir, gothic western,...more

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Nov 14, 2007

Paul Jensen rated it

· review of another edition

It took me 11 months to read this epic novel. It's the most demanding book I've ever read. It even inspired a vacation (pilgrimage?) to Colorado & the San Juan mountains. "Against the Day" is exhausting, frustrating, confusing - but I couldn't get it out of my head. Amazing. I'll never forget the experience of reading this book.

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Oct 05, 2011

Markus rated it

· review of another edition

The Aether. It pervades all as an invisible canvas allowing light, sound, heat, gravity, matter to predictably and sometimes unpredictably race through it,infinitely . This is the canvas Thomas Pynchon has chosen to construct a vast novel employing 100's of characters in roughly 20 pre WWI years. Given that we now know the Aether theory has been displaced by the time space continuum, it all kinda makes sense.

Oh its whacky, don't get me wrong. Plenty of drug use, strange sexual practi...moreThe Aether. It pervades all as an invisible canvas allowing light, sound, heat, gravity, matter to predictably and sometimes unpredictably race through it,infinitely . This is the canvas Thomas Pynchon has chosen to construct a vast novel employing 100's of characters in roughly 20 pre WWI years. Given that we now know the Aether theory has been displaced by the time space continuum, it all kinda makes sense.

Oh its whacky, don't get me wrong. Plenty of drug use, strange sexual practices and terrorism fill in the details of what basically is a revenge plot. However, calling this book a revenge novel is like calling Bolano's 2666 a detective story. Amid the havoc are moments where Pynchon reminds us that he is a great writer, as Uber-observant:

"Up here the view of the sea continued as gray as ever, the wind no colder than usual, perhaps a minimum austerity of growth, all in shades of white, buff, and gray, pale grasses, failing by the visible margin to be green, bending to the wind together, a million stalks all held to the same exact angle, which no scientific instrument would measure. "

and then immediately turning tender:

"She looked to every horizon, taking her time, saving south for last. Not a wisp of smoke, not the last, wind muted cry of a steam siren, only the good-bye letter waiting this morning on her work-table, held now like a crushed handkerchief in her pocket, in which he had given her his heart-but which she could not open again and read for fear that through some terrible magic she had never learned to undo, it might have become after all, a blank sheet."

It doesn't even matter who "she" is. One of a hundred. And maybe its where the book loses its intensity and gets diluted. It is basically impossible to keep track of the characters and tangential plot twists. Yeah, often the characters break out into song and yeah there's some cheesy dialogue but there's also this describing a character on mescalin:

"Frank wanders...enchanted with everything, stalls selling mangoes and star fruit, agave fermenting in terra-cotta bowls, ristras of dark purple chilies strung to dry,...death's-heads and skeletons of raw sugar which children come running up to buy with obsidian coins bearing likenesses of notable Halucinati, and run off crunching the sweet splintery bones which dim light in here passes through as amber..."

As Frank wanders, so does the reader- and plenty. Beginning with the World's Fair in Chicago with the airship boys- The Chums of Chance, and ranging over the American West, spice markets in the Middle East, central European dance halls and all the Aether that exists in between. Its an expansive tome but rewarding nonetheless (even if it takes you all summer).

I could go on about the metaphorical use of optics, light, and elemental chemistry and mention cameo appearances by Nicola Tesla, but you get the idea. Its Pynchon so hopefully you know what you're getting into. But on second thought, you still won't ever really know, and that's why this is the guy.

(less)

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Dec 09, 2009

Mark rated it

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Shelves: peerless-fantastic-deserted-island

When did I start this, April? Yes, it took me 5 months to make it through this epic novel while reading 20 pages at most a day. And no, as usual, I didn't understand every thing I read. Accepting this very fact, the general lack of complete understanding about what I'm reading, is the first step in making it through any Pynchon novel. Rather than being confused and frustrated I let the words cascade into my brain and realize that no one does it quite like Pynchon. With that said every Pynch...more

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Jul 10, 2008

Lee rated it

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Recommended to Lee by: it recommended itself

Shelves: fiction

I really enjoyed this book, actually more than any of his others. I won't say it's "better" because I've never taken the time to try to understand the complexities that people like so much about Gravity's Rainbow. Maybe Against the Day is just easier. But I don't think so. The tone is lighter, even though it's about the the end of the world, in a sense - the collapse of the old world order in the runup to the first world war, which Pynchon paints as the moment when the window of re...more

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May 14, 2008

Nikki marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: own

Up until last July, I worked at the best used bookstore in Manhattan (don't take my word for it, check out Cometbus #50). One week before moving half way across the country, I saw Against The Day on the shelf. At my store. For $7.00. Which would have been $4.90 with my employee discount. First edition, beautiful dust-jacket, never been cracked.
Up until that moment I had completely forgotten that Pynchon had written a new book, but I had to have it. So I ran behind the register and ...more

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May 01, 2008

Eddie Watkins rated it

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This might very well end up being my favorite Pynchon novel. But I don't know, since if I were to become a one-author-reading hermit all of Pynchon's novels would be there with me, as they are the hands-down most rereadable novels I've ever read (with Nabokov a close second).

I would place this next to Gravity's Rainbow as his two most ambitious novels, but there's something about Against the Day that I like better. In many ways it's like reading a massive young-adult novel, there's j...more

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Mar 09, 2009

Nate rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: post-modernism, favorites

Some works are so densely, elaborately planned and plotted that any map to their intricacies would necessarily be longer than the work itself. This, I think, is the justification and promise of post-modern literature, with works reaching further in all directions and via as many tools as possible. Against the Day is one such work: almost any given line or action may upon study be split, like light through a prism, into a full spectrum of significant motifs.

And so Against the Day serv...moreSome works are so densely, elaborately planned and plotted that any map to their intricacies would necessarily be longer than the work itself. This, I think, is the justification and promise of post-modern literature, with works reaching further in all directions and via as many tools as possible. Against the Day is one such work: almost any given line or action may upon study be split, like light through a prism, into a full spectrum of significant motifs.

And so Against the Day serves as a refracted history (beginning in history's common beam, yet bent slightly away) of how the bright promise and "unshaped freedom" of the turn of the century was "rationalized into movement only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing floor" of the 20th century's Great Wars. The quoted lines refer to the stockyards of the novel's opening setting and microcosm: Chicago, 1893, with the "White City" of the World's Columbian Exposition running into the stockyards where cattle that once roamed the western plains unfettered were brought to slaughter.

This history is told mainly through the broad social forces of labor, capitalism, and anarchy all bumping against one another, violently or not, across thirty years and hundreds of significant characters. But these motifs blend and overlap with the concurrent history of math and physics, so it is also a book about electricity, about bilocations, about vectors and quaternions and graspings at academic fourth dimensions (and so, briefly, time travel), and, pervasively about light, which so suffuses every corner of the work that I could resist picking its up its language here. But fortunately, despite the complex conceptual wash, and as with V, Pynchon is fairly clear in laying out his palette -- fortunately since this nearly 1100-page supernova is rather more densely interconnected than the thematic dichotomies of V, even as it spews (seemingly?) extraneous material in all directions.

Against the Day is certainly among Pynchon's best (in fact, it would be a reasonable starting point for new readers, if not for sheer length), but it's also Pynchon: digressive, intermittently plotted, and full of references that fly straight by me or will require considerable additional consideration to fit into a relevant spot in the workings. But what makes this novel burn so brightly is that even with this cast of hundreds, the book is largely carried out by believable, memorable characters capable of leading the reader through even the most absurd or divergent mirrored funhouse halls.(less)

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Dec 03, 2007

Andy rated it

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As always with Pynchon the total lack of an ending or conclusion can be a bit frustrating, but at this point I'm over it. As usual, a sprawling, encyclopedia of a novel, with so many intertextual references the head spins (a short initial list would include: H.G. Wells, Artaud, B. Traven, Hemmingway, Kipling, etc etc.). Loosely structure around the adventures of the Traverse family following the murder of their father, a coal-miner and anarchist militant, in the Colorado Labor Wars of the last d...more

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Dec 05, 2007

Tony rated it

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Shelves: fiction

Reading this was the mental equivalent of running the iron man, I'd imagine. I would like to have given it 5 stars, but I'm in a conservative mood and want to reserve 5 for those few books that really blew me away. This was a well-done and exhaustive book, but lacking just enough in a few key elements that I feel okay about just the 4. Definitely worth reading but not life-changing.

I thought there was room to care about the characters more than I did, as they suffered from the moveme...moreReading this was the mental equivalent of running the iron man, I'd imagine. I would like to have given it 5 stars, but I'm in a conservative mood and want to reserve 5 for those few books that really blew me away. This was a well-done and exhaustive book, but lacking just enough in a few key elements that I feel okay about just the 4. Definitely worth reading but not life-changing.

I thought there was room to care about the characters more than I did, as they suffered from the movement of the plot and its manifold expressions of the central thematic concerns of the book. Maybe a sidebar: does Pynchon have an aversion to the word 'love' and, if I may pursue this a bit further, the concepts generally attendant to it?

The arrival and impact of the war itself felt somehow diluted after most of the book had been spent on the time leading up to it, the characters' individual premonitions thereof foreshadowing a far greater and more terrible event than what was shown to eventually come to pass, if one is to rely on the narrative for the correct cues - and knowing the emphases of modern historical education, at least here in America, these might be the only recourse for the reader who never took his or her own independent interest in the time period.

History has buried the tragedies of the first, 'Great' War beneath the rubble of its sequel and more recent progeny, and it would have been more effective to grant it a more profound aspect than what I felt emerged. Without this, it's dangerously close to being the standard blackboard exercise of WWI=onset of mechanized warfare=irretrievable turning point of the history of civilization, more an intellectual understanding than one requiring and invoking further the appropriate quickenings and palpitations of heart, which is to deny this event's place in history as anything more than a foundational moment of worse, starker tragedy still to come.

And I say this because I believe the point Pynchon attempts to make is exactly the opposite - that this was the ultimate moment, an incipient tragedy repeated in every motion and breath to come after it, an international death of not only unprecedented numbers of people, but of ideas, beliefs, and freedoms - an entire world and history that can't be side-stepped in favor of the somewhat more glamorous and morally-straightforward conflicts to come.

I'd also say that I found the book a bit unbalanced - the momentum slows disastrously in later parts, even as the most historically consequential years are compressed into paragraphs and brief chapters; there are greater gaps between the revisitation of different parts of the narrative which can confound the reader not in possession of an encyclopedic capacity for the memory of names and the events transpiring earlier in the book to those characters; and the elements of the fantastic seem often enough at odds with the historically rooted parts of the story, neither of which seem sustained at any consistent rate commensurate with their respective roles.

I'm sure there's at least a bit of purpose in some of these choices - hell, it's Pynchon, there was probably a lot of purpose in nearly all of them - but it's probably too soon after finishing it for me to have properly reflected on them. But first impressions often being the best...

This is a mess, I'll have to clean it up a bit...(less)

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Feb 19, 2008

Darrell rated it

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Shelves: reviewed

Against The Day is Thomas Pynchon's best book since Gravity's Rainbow. It takes place during the turn of the century in North America, Europe, and Asia with a large cast of characters including magicians, cowboys, miners, an airship crew, industrialists, mad scientists, gamblers, anarchists, secret societies, and spies among others. It's a very enjoyable read, although I did start to find it tedious around page 900, but it quickly became interesting again, and by the end of it, I even found mys...moreAgainst The Day is Thomas Pynchon's best book since Gravity's Rainbow. It takes place during the turn of the century in North America, Europe, and Asia with a large cast of characters including magicians, cowboys, miners, an airship crew, industrialists, mad scientists, gamblers, anarchists, secret societies, and spies among others. It's a very enjoyable read, although I did start to find it tedious around page 900, but it quickly became interesting again, and by the end of it, I even found myself wishing it was just a bit longer.

The heart of the story focuses on the family of Webb Traverse, an anarchist who dynamites railroads in protest of unfair working conditions. When he gets murdered, his sons Reef and Frank decide to avenge his death, which is complicated by the fact that their sister has married one of the hitmen and their younger brother Kit has accepted a college scholarship from the man who paid to have their father killed.

There are numerous detours along the way as the three brothers travel around the world and get swept up in history. We get to know the stories of several other characters whose paths crisscross so much it gets hard to keep track of them all.

Pynchon gives his readers a lot of credit, which is both flattering and frustrating. Those who already know something of history will enjoy the book more than those less well versed. For example, there's a bit at the beginning that is hilarious only if you know who Franz Ferdinand is. Pynchon includes other inside jokes that only make sense to the already initiated, such as a conversation between characters in El Paso that makes sly reference to the Marty Robbins song El Paso City. It would have gone over my head if I hadn't already been familiar with the song. I get the sense my cultural illiteracy caused me to miss out on a lot of other parts of the book.

The book is still enjoyable even if much of it goes over your head. Pynchon doesn't write typical historical fiction. His airship crew, for example, have a talking dog, fly through the center of the earth, come in contact with time travelers, and wind up in a parallel universe. When the rest of the novel gets in danger of becoming too weighty, he always returns to the crew of the Inconvenience to lighten things up a bit. His style of writing is so unique, that it's enjoyable to read even if you don't understand it.

Weighing in at over 1000 pages, Against The Day is certainly a commitment, but one well worth it.(less)

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Jul 24, 2008

Phillip rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: anyone with eyes and ears

Recommended to Phillip by: no one...i walked into the store and there it was...

Shelves: fiction, 50-favorite-books

I just finished this great book, and it's one of the funniest tomes I've ever crashed and dynamited my way through. Most enjoyable!

Pynchon no longer seems like he's trying to prove to the world what a great writer he is - he's too busy having fun creating truly ecstatic prose. The ending was a trascendental experience, it seemed most appropriate to resolve his enormous fugue with the transcendence of time and space via the potential in light. Vectorists indeed...

And in an...moreI just finished this great book, and it's one of the funniest tomes I've ever crashed and dynamited my way through. Most enjoyable!

Pynchon no longer seems like he's trying to prove to the world what a great writer he is - he's too busy having fun creating truly ecstatic prose. The ending was a trascendental experience, it seemed most appropriate to resolve his enormous fugue with the transcendence of time and space via the potential in light. Vectorists indeed...

And in another sense - the book never ends...which is totally appropriate. Things in life never fully "resolve"...and this works for me in ways that the circular (read terminal) form of say, Finnegans Wake wanted to work, but was ultimately an act of self-consciousness.

On a more sober note, I would tell my women friends that this is rather boisterous masculine narrative, and while you might criticize Pynchon fro residing too often on the darker side of the sacred/profane construct, it makes the longed-for resolutions all the more satisfying when they come. The assemblage of human conflict in this novel is great, as is the collection of folly. While the gender scale may be tipped in favor of the masculine, there are more than a few dynamic women characters that will take the reader by surprise.

Pynchon is able to explore complex gender themes through the lens of dozens of core characters, all fussing the balancing act of existential ideals and moral conflict while the world collapes into the first world war. The book is an enormous catalogue of landscapes, stunning outfits, overflowing feasts, erotically-charged hats, enviable sex acts (in most cases), scientific theories, mind-altering drugs and libations, natural disasters, military and guerilla attacks, dialects, silly songs, local and regional histories, and a handful of families whose lives intersect in fascinating ways.

The basic story line starts with labor issues in Colorado in the late 1800's. Webb Traverse is an anarchist who uses dynamite to foul the flow of capitalism as it seeks to extend into the west. Turns out folks like Scarsdale Vibe, of the Vibe Corporation (set on dominating the world through globalization) don't like it. They send killers. Bad Things happen. Lives are changed and families are scattered around the globe as revolution breaks out in Mexico, the decaying Hapsburg Dynasty plunges Europe and the Balkans into WW1, and spies and adventurists scan the globe in search of Shambhala, altered states of consciousness, and keys to bending the laws of science. All the while the reader is aware that Pynchon is pushing this often fantastic history lesson to tell us about the world we live in today.

Keep in mind that Against the Day clocks in at over 1,000 pages, and it's well worth the walk if you're up for longer narratives. It's one of those books where you're being introduced to countless people, some who tread water and keep up with the flow of the novel, others who fall behind and disappear without a trace. If you're comfortable not knowing how all the pieces fit for say, at least 600 pages, but see more and more clearly as time goes on, then invest some hours in this one. You'll be glad you did.(less)

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Mar 12, 2007

Mikey rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Pynchon fans only

Shelves: fiction

Good lord, where to start? Pynchon's novels are always very difficult to describe, but the main thread (such as it is) in Against the Day is a family revenge drama. Of course, like in the rest of Pynchon's works, there are a million different other things going on, and the author really taxes our ability to keep track of them all. Really, this is sort of the point, that the world doesn't unfold neatly into a simple narrative, and that the world throughout the ages - even in the novel's period...more

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May 18, 2007

TC rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Probably the closest Pynchon's gotten yet to any sort of human solidarity with the characters he spins out into his elaorately intertwined work, and though its set a hundred years in the past, taking on the language and fabric of the time only like Pyhchon can do, AtD follows an otherwisely expectedly Pynchonesque, bloated bag of personalities as they try to find their own way, their own positions, roles, inhabitations, dreams, lives, loves, etc. in a time of radically diversive forces winding t...more

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Dec 26, 2008

Jpeeples marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Got it for Xmas 2008. Will I finish reading it by Xmas 2009?

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Jun 10, 2008

Robert rated it

· review of another edition

Not an easy read - hundreds of characters over a 30 year period - but once you get the hang of it, it's one of Pynchon's funniest books. What's it about? Light. Time travel. 9/11. Anarchy. A changing world that is as much today as it is then. It's turn-of-the-century boy's adventure, a western (I'll bet Pynchon's seen Leone's "Duck You Sucker"), even Victorian pornography. Yes, it's long, but like "Gravity's Rainbow" and "Mason Dixon", it's worth the trip.

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Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine added it · review of another edition

The Seattle Times sums up critical reaction to Against the Day best: "Like Bruegel's painting ��Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,' this is a portrait of mankind's attempt to transcend our mortality__or at least push up against its very edge." Thomas Pynchon's previous novels, including V., The Crying of Lot 49,and Gravity's Rainbow, tested boundaries as well__not only of our own human understanding but of the fiction craft itself. This newest offering contains familiar elements__a whi

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