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 cast of irregularly-appearing characters. This really, really works for him, since the themes he writes about are usually too big to fit inside the experience of just a few people. There are other Pynchon hallmarks too: his usual themes of science, anti-establishment sentiment, paranoia, and the unexplored/unexplained are all present. People do crazy drugs and have weird sex. It's a wild, organic novel, and you'll feel right at home if you've read Mason and Dixon or Gravity's Rainbow. (Oh hey, you should read Mason and Dixon and Gravity's Rainbow.)

This particular book deals with the general state of the world around the time of the first World War. The thing is, there's almost no space in this 1085-page tome devoted to boys in the trenches - the war itself. The consequences of the war are definitely felt by many of the characters, especially the ones stuck in eastern Europe right around 1914, but this is not quite a novel about World War I. The book deals much more directly with some of the other major landmarks of the turn of the last century. So since talking about themes ends up giving a clearer impression of the book than talking about plot, here are some things Pynchon wants us to think about:

The Michelson-Morely experiment was performed in 1877 and fundamentally changed the way people perceived space - no more luminiferous aether. The late 19th century also marked a shift in mathematics from Hamilton's quaternion system to a description of space based on vectors. The first forays into powered aviation (airships, not airplanes) and industrialization were happening in the late 1800s. And finally, this time period saw the beginning of the modern labor movement. Consider the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the 1886 Haymarket Massacre, or the 1892 Homestead Strike.

This last subject deserves a few words for itself because this is how the book kicks off. A century ago, labor relations was a deadly serious thing. Workers struck because they were being paid less than nothing to perform life-threatening, back-breaking work. In response to a strike, workers could expect to be beaten or shot by state militias, the national guard, armed pinkertons, or (in the case of the Homestead strike at least) huge government-incited vigilante groups.

This is the environment in which the book opens. Webb Traverse is an agitating, anarchist mine engineer working for Scarsdale Vibe, a 1900s-era ultra-capitalist poster boy. To deal with Traverse, Vibe hires a few killers who come for him in the night. A large part of the book is devoted to following the Traverse children as they part ways and grow up, with their lives significantly shaped by this visceral, bloody, and very personal conflict between workers and owners.

Another major (and totally great) thrust of the book follows the Chums of Chance, a group of boy adventurers who pilot a powered airship. They never seem to get older but they, like the Traverse family, sort of kind of stay tangentially involved in world events simply by being in certain places at certain times. The Chums of Chance are jointly and severally awesome and a fantastic capstone to the turn-of-the-century aesthetic of the novel.

Pynchon has a revolutionary imagination and this book overall was extremely fun to read. The hitch is that this book is 1085 pages of Pynchon. (And I just realized that, as a consequence, this review is huge too...) There really is something to be said for a reading experience so prolonged and intense that the author ends up hollowing out parts of your brain and building his own theme park in there. The tradeoff, of course, is that this is not a book you can read casually. You can't just read five pages every night while you're falling asleep - I tried that for a while and got nowhere. It takes sustained effort. It's corny and cliche to say this, I know, but Against the Day is most definitely one of those books that gives back as much as you're willing to put into it.

I loved this book and when I was finished with it I felt really good about everything in general. If you already know you like Pynchon or if you're up for a challenge, I strongly, strongly recommend this book.