Customer Reviews

Against The Day

5 star:		(57)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The temptation with a huge novel like "Against The Day" is to read it at breakneck speed. Pynchon discourages readers from that option early, signalling within the first 60 pages that this is going to be a tale of many characters, many narrative lines, at times realistic, at others fantastic, often rooted in history, at other times unquestionably about the present. For such a mysterious writer, Pynchon's influences are well known and fully on display here -- the Western scenes evoke Oakley Hall's "Warlock", the discussions of anarchy jibe with Pynchon's own reading (misreading?) of Orwell's "1984", allusions to "Finnegans Wake" are everywhere (even in the name of the comical adventure troop the Chums of Chance.)

The book was savaged by some critics with a notable air of self-pity ... oh it's so long, oh it's so meandering, oh I didn't bother to finish it. Yes, there are major reviews in major American publications where paid critics admitted to skimming over most of the last 300 pages. A crime and a pity, because it's only in the last few hundred pages where "Against The Day" fully reveals itself.

Critics (and readers) who enter this journey with hard and fast rules of what a novel should (or must) be are warned here ... you may very well hate it. Pynchon's characterizations can be muddled at time -- it took a second reading with the help of the superb audiobook (I don't know if they give Grammys for audiobook performances, but Dick Hill's is outstanding and worthy of some kind of award) for me to fully appreciate the cavalcade of characters. There is no central character, no central plot, but there are a multitude of character arcs and human interactions that I found heartbreaking. All of the great drama of human life is here -- but it's told in the signature, detached Pynchon style.

Critics have pointed out one clear flaw -- the book is all over the place. Pynchon jammed everything into this book, leftover threads from every other novel he's written, plus bits from all his favorite books and whatever scientific or philosophic musings he has left on the table. It has the feel of a big book by an aging master who fears that he might not write another. The four Traverse children have enough development for maybe two fully drawn characters. Kit, because of his resemblance to other Pynchon intellectual heroes, you expect to be the main character, but he disappears into the plot for hundreds of pages, much like Tyrone Slothrop did in the waning pages of Gravity's Rainbow. Eldest son Frank Traverse just isn't all that interesting and his meanderings in Mexico are the weakest part of the novel. Daughter Lake and out-of-control drifter Reef are the most compelling of the litter and a book focused solely on them might would have been more tightly focused (Although Kit is clearly needed as a bridge to all the mathematical warfare central to the book's second half.)

So it could have used a more thorough edit ... and yet, I'm glad it's all there. Once you get through it once, you'll be glad to revisit even the sections that seemed dull the first time around. Pynchon wrote a book big enough to encompass all of his thoughts about the fall of leftist politics in the West (as anarchism fell and Marxism rose), the dual nature of, well, nature, the various ways capitalism co-opts science and shapes it to its needs, the thin line between mysticism and mainstream religious faith. It's all there and much much more.

If you take your time and let this big, strange, overwhelming book sink into you (or, again, listen to the audiobook, which by its 20 pages per hour nature forces you to go slow), you might start to think about whether civilization was crushed by World War I and will never recover. Or whether our war on terror is no different from anarchist bombings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Or whether mankind is in a perpetual cycle of rebirth and destruction, always on the cusp of grand discoveries that go hand in glove with horrible threats, both promising beginnings and ends that never quite arrive.

If you want to examine big questions like these and want to be entertained with Monty Python-like broad humor and ridiculous songs out of nowhere and a mix of virtually every genre-prose style in existence, then this might be your book for the next month or two. If not, no worries, there are plenty more books that will suit your needs. As for me, my nine year wait to hear my master's voice has finally ended. Mock me for it if you wish, I'm just glad to have another 1000+ pages to obsess over before I die.

Opinions vary, but the numerous reviews that were produced at the time of this books release will likely be long forgotten by the time most folks actually make their way through this thing. One guesses that these reviewers must have felt pretty agitated being put in a position of having to rush through over a thousand pages of Pynchonian sophistication in the short time they had from receiving their pre-release copies to the start of the holidays. So in a rush to speed read through the thing's numerous characters, and overlapping and not always synchronous plots, and, mainly, the detail points of social and scientific abstractions that abound, seemed an unwelcome nuisance to deadlines for last weekends book section.

Taken at a more leisurely pace, this novel is, in fact, very accommodating, especially compared to the delightful, but verbage challenging Mason Dixon. Far from the blur of comically named stereotypes that have been alleged, the characters are more than adequately drawn with sufficient depth, if not to the unusual (for him) affection that Pynchon displayed for the aforementioned boundary makers.

The accessibility of the book also comes from a consistent level of humor, more droll than uproarious compared to his earlier work. It is this consistency of observation and discourse that makes Against the Day stand out from all that has proceeded it. In a way, it seems somewhat reminiscent of the stylistic change that Melville produced in The Confidence Man that distinguished it from the dramas that proceeded. Like the new novel here, there is a constant motion to the story as the focus changes from on character to the next, producing a works that are more esoteric than heart-wrenching.

Is too much of a good thing bad? Not if you have the time to savor all the wondrous elegance that goes into it. As long as you don't have a deadline haunting, you may find this the best voluminous post-modern epic of all (at least since Barth's Letters, and requiring a lot less effort).

I'll be the first one to admit that I'm a radical Pynchonophile. And I'll be the first to admit that Pynchon is not for everyone; reading his books requires patience, an eclectic sum of knowledge (or the willingness to browse through an encyclopedia), and the ability to, every so often, accept that you will never fully penetrate the mysteries that the author creates. Against the Day is no exception.

Yet the Pynchon of Against the Day is not the Pynchon of Gravity's Rainbow. 33 years ago, that Pynchon was loading every page with deep emotion, fear and paranoia in a sort of urgent desperation. Now, this latest book contains many of the same themes that have followed Pynchon throughout his long career, yet with much more refinement, finesse and subtlety than ever before. The plot is more complex than any of Pynchon's earlier works, but also (strangely enough) easier to follow than the last part of 'Gravity's Rainbow' or even some of the disjointed flashbacks of 'V.'

The plot itself, like any Pynchon novel, is secondary to the themes of the novel, the mood that is created, the sheer weirdness of a Pynchonian world. It involves the murder of a Colorado anarchist, a group of 5 boys traveling the world in a balloon conducting secret missions, academic competition in early 20th century Germany, time travelers from the future, and the evil plans of a corporate tycoon. Sideplots and tangents include a journey inside a hollow earth, an attempted murder using mayonnaise, the search for a mythical central Asian city, and a group of magicians touring Europe. The sacred hotshots of history are side by side with the profane, as Franz Ferdinand drinks himself silly at the Chicago World Fair of 1893, and David Hilbert teaches a group of young mathematicians who spend their free time doing drugs and engaging in duels over women and mathematical proofs. Pynchon flawlessly combines the elements of humor, love, drama and fear to create an unforgettable narrative that almost, but not quite fits together into something rational.

Yet this very rationality is what Pynchon is out to mock and satirize, using everything from the technology present at the World's Fair to mathematical debates of the time. Much like the V-2 rockets of 'Gravity's Rainbow' and the eponymous V of 'V.', light exists as an extended metaphor in 'Against the Day.' The book begins with a quote by Thelonious Monk: "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light" and spends the next 1000+ pages exploring the effects of this light-bringing technology that began at the turn of the last century. Dynamite, quaternion mathematics, photography, a strange rock known as 'Iceland spar' the refracts light into bilocutions--all are part of Pynchon's strange way of commenting on our own dependence on technology and, even more so, logic and rationality. Scientists and academics go throughout the book searching for proof of a 'fourth dimension' of Æther, something beyond the three dimensions we live in, some unworldly dimension to put our faith into. Unsurprisingly, this fourth dimension goes undiscovered. This desperation for some sort of scientific rationality to put our faith into and our failure to find it is the main theme of the book, and perhaps Pynchon's works as a whole.

The book is long, unwieldy, and at times it is hard to see how everything fits together. Many reviewers have expressed their unhappiness in the book's length and numerous plot tangents. In the end, however, this is what makes Pynchon Pynchon. Is there any other way for the author to express the complexity and bizarrities of the modern world? The convoluted plotlines are what gives the author is famed originality.

In the end, while not for everyone, the book will reward the patient and those willing to wade through scores of characters and plot points to become one of the first great novels to comment on life in the 21st century by using the characters from the beginning of the 20th.

It took me over a year to read this book, and as I skimmed through some of the more "professional" reviews of Against the Day, many of which appeared roughly a year ago or even earlier, I can't help but think, "Maybe they read it too fast?"

For there is much that is infuriating about Against the Day. Primarily, it's the fact that at 1089 pages long, there is no way to minimize the effort required to read it. Second, the plot is maddeningly elliptical, and it takes close to 400 pages before you really grasp what, exactly, is going on. Third, Pynchon fills Against the day with digression- not exactly a new phenomenon when it comes to fiction, but after your fifteenth twenty five page exegesis on Balkan geography or Albanian culture or whathaveyou, it's easy to see how a reviewer might be frustrated.

Balanced against its infuriating nature are several counter-points which lead me to the opinion that Against the Day is actually a superb, enjoyable novel. First of all, the plot isn't that difficult to grasp:

Basically, anarchist coal miner Webb Traverse is killed at the behest of evil industrialist Scarsdale Vibe. He leaves behind three sons and one daughter. Most of the book involves the attempts by Webb's sons to avenge their father's death. In the process, they have many adventures in places like Mexico, Germany, the Balkans & Central Asia. They meet, marry and have kids during the course of their adventures. Along the way there is a lot of math, a lot of physics and a lot of mumbo jumbo.

Together with this basic revenge plot is the interwoven story of the Chums of Chance, a bunch of boy adventurers who circle the globe in their zeppelin. The Chums of Chance don't really directly encounter the Traverse's, but they figure in the background of many of the locations.

And that's basically it, in terms of plot. Of course, with Pynchon, narrative focus is the least of his worries, and if you aren't down for digression, then sir or madam, you have no business reading Thomas Pynchon. In order to enjoy the digressions, you need to have some idea of the mise-in-scene, so to speak- the backdrop- the current events that form the setting for Against the Day. The time and place is roughly the 1870s to the end of World War II- 1918 or thereabouts.

So if you want to get the most out of Against the Day, have a working familiarity with historical events like the Chicago World's Fair, Labor History of the American West, Mexican politics in the 19th century, European Diplomacy in the Balkans before World War I, Theoretical Mathematics and Physics of the 19th century, The Cult of Pythagoreous in Greece, The "Great Game" i.e. Central Asian diplomacy in the 19th century/20th century & Pulp Adventure Novels from the early 20th century. Personally, I'm about 4/8 on that list, and that was just about enough.

It's clear that one of the contributing factors to the enormous length of Against the Day is Pynchon's fondness for the theme of doubling. Each character seemingly has a double, and many events seem to have their own double within the text. The doubling also appears as a species of Icelandic Rock that creates human doubles (instead of just reflecting them). In a certain sense, it's fair to say that the obsessions with doubling turns a 500 page revenge yarn into a 1000 page novel that, if diagrammed, would look something like a modern conception of an atom, with all the particles whirling around the nucleus.

I was fortunate that I spent the year between purchasing and reading the book reading up on some of the background subjects, more or less by coincidence, but this is not a book to rush, and not a book you want to read "cold" or more likely as not, you won't finish.

This book represents the best of Mr. Pynchon's novels. I appreciated all of his works but here is the culmination of his art. As with Mr. Zimmerman's recent concert tour, we now have an artist of the 1960's, who has transcended his comfortable art form. Unlike V and Gravity's Rainbow, which exhausted us with genocide and holocaust, Against the Day not only suggests Tom Swift, Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and Dickens but Cervantes and Shakespeare's The Tempest as well. This novel has great beauty, and, unlike some recent reviews have suggested, reflects the art that the 21st century requires. It is not just an echoing of past ideals. It is a novel that was written by a father concerned by the future of his child. Our time needs not only the humor of Groucho Marx and the Pythons, but this Pynchon as well, as we stumble into the future that Mr.(s) Bush, Cheney, and Bin Laden have given us. My only concern is that Mr. Pynchon has buried his staff and that we may no longer hear from this magician any further.

Having at long, long last reached the end of this monster--with, on my own part, quite as many diversions, side-trips, digressions and submissions to entropy as the Traverse clan and their cohorts experienced--I feel fully entitled to say at the end of the very long day (and "Day"): mmmmyehh.

Other reviewers have sufficiently rehearsed the plot, such as it is (and the whole point of the book is: "it isn't"). Open the book at random--and you may as well, for there's little to be gained from reading it sequentially--and you're almost guaranteed to find, on any given page, a startling turn of phrase, a striking metaphor, an inspired simile, or a rapturous, descriptive prose-poem. Which is to say, all these years on, Pynchon's gift for the English language is undiminished. Joyce, Nabokov and Gaddis are really his only peers in the last hundred years.

Alas, all these years on, his vices are also undiminished. I come to Against the Day having read V. the year before (and having read all Pynchon's other novels at various times prior to that) and what strikes me is that here is an artist who has completely failed to develop over the years. Everything he does well, he did equally well in 1963; everything he does poorly (plotting, characterization, pacing, editing) he still does very poorly. Indeed, the similarities between V.and AtD are so striking--both concerned with the Great Game, woo-woo metaphysics and pseudoscience, and an imminent apocalypse--that they often read as if the one were a rewrite of the other.

Is it so unreasonable to expect a little artistic development in 45 years? I, for one, don't see it. In AtD, Pynchon gives us exactly what we've come to expect...and this, to me, is not the hallmark of a great artist, it's the hallmark of a one-trick pony. It's a hell of a trick--one that kept me entertained for several years--but at this point it's time to learn a new one.

Too, except for Pynchon cultists, I defy anyone not to be bored for long stretches of this bloated opus. The Virginia Quarterly reviewer hit the nail squarely on the head when he called Pynchon a "pub bore": someone who has half-digested mountains of random facts at his disposal and is determined to blow your mind with his erudition. Think: Cliff Clavin on steroids and crystal meth. For every genuinely interesting bit of period (1893-WWI) arcana that he's unearthed there must be a dozen of interest only to historians and steampunk obsessives.

Still, just when I'd get fed up, I'd get drawn back in. Parts of the book are certainly as splendid as anything he's ever written...and if there's a lot of the twee, the tedious, and the inane to wade through in between flashes of inspiration and insight, no adventure worth its salt--as the Chums of Chance might have it--is free of its dangers and doldrums. Pynchon fans will read it as a matter of course. Pynchon newbies, however, would be well-advised to get their feet wet with V., Gravity's Rainbow, or Mason & Dixon.

I should say that I haven't even finished the book yet, though I'm far enough into it to safely say that I've gotten my 20 bucks worth (Amazon's prices are great on new books, are they not?). All pretension aside, this is quite simply one of the most pleasurable reads I've encountered in years. I've read reviews both positive and negative, both sides having some valid points. I think the naysaying is a bit unfair. Why rate this wonderful book against some criteria created by Gravity's Rainbow, or any other book. On it's own merits, Against the Day is a work of genius.

The language is beautiful of course and the plot just dense enough to keep readers hooked. The pages *are* full of some very long sentences, but readers with patience and fortitude will not be disappointed.

This is my first Pynchon read and I was apprehensive at first due to the following things I had heard (none true, so far about ATD) about Pynchon:

-the language is difficult
-the format is confusing/alienating

These things are not entirely true, from my perspective. After reading the first half of ATD, I can safely say that anyone who's had a decent run in with the likes of William Faulkner or James Joyce can expect to find no difficulty reading this latest Thomas Pynchon novel.

While yes, there are somewhere around 100 notable characters, Pynchon has their lives and behaviors overlapped in such a way that makes them easy to remember. As a reader, I find myself becoming intimately acquainted with many of the characters. Many of them are so dynamic that it really is difficult to determine what exactly is going to happen next, who will next cross who's path, etc. Many characters are related (larger families like the Traverses and the Vibes account for a large part of the novel's plot) Characterization is truly an exciting element of the novel and very well done by the author.

For the first 100 pages or so, I was wondering if the science-fiction elements that I perceived early on would dominate the novel. While sci-fi doesn't dominate the novel, Pynchon has created this incredible other-world in which certain characters are able to habitate and many other characters seek fervently. I thought maybe that this would get tired and at least appear tacky, but there's a heavy mist that covers every inch of fantasy in this book, making things much more mystical and appealing--and after all, the Earth is only so big. Pynchon runs the Earth through a nice big hunk of Iceland Spar and now we as readers are able to enjoy not only the known Earth as setting for ATD, but also some alternate dimensions. All sorts of strange inventions are mentioned (I won't spoil it for anyone yet to read the book) and many modern physical laws are broken.

Historically, the book covers from roughly 1890 to 1920 (roughly, mind you). Some of the details seem pretty well-researched, though it seems also that Pynchon has created certain details with similarity to their actual real-life counterparts, though differing in minor amounts. The regional landscapes are incredibly described. There is very good continuity, with regard to temporal and cultural details.

The plot, generally, involves a battling between what I'd call high-capitalism and slippery anarchism.

Here are some themes:

Doubling
Divergence
Time Travel
Government
Big Business
History/Perception of History
Electricity/Technology

There's an extensive Cameo made by Nikola Tesla, which make the book interesting. The book's first pages include a disclaimer warning that inference to likenesses between characters and real-life figures is discouraged, but this to me almost seems more a flag denoting the opposite. Ultimately, it will be the readers who decide, though it is easy enough to look back in time to see exactly what literary fiction does in terms of sending a message about the world's state of affairs.

Overall, this book exceeded my expectations and has proved to be pleasant reading, rather than the constant challenge (though yes it is challenging from time to time) that I had expected. I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in literary fiction.

I had no idea there was a new Pynchon until I wandered into the bookstore 2 weeks ago. It's like a getting a 1000-page letter from my eccentric uncle I'd almost forgotten was still alive and torqued up about The Way Things Are.

Pychon is like a Rorshach Test in book form -- what you take out of it can be very telling about who you are. No -- better: Pynchon's stories are the work of a many-voiced choir -- dozens of "main" characters, etc. If you can't find a character to identify with in some way, then you're pretty much missing out on the entire human experience. Keep a dictionary by your side (if you find the vocab intimidating). Take your time with it. Like life, reading Pynchon is not a sprint.

I'm only 200 pages into AtD, and enjoying myself. (FWIW, my fave TP work oscillates between Vineland and M&D...) Stop looking for Deep Truth, and start appreciating an author that illuminates so many layers and facets of humanity -- with humor, with horror, with sorrow and sex. The Deep Truths will rise in time -- different for each of us, as always must be -- or not (did you really think Life is about Deep Truths?).

I'm fascinated to see where AtD goes with the anarchism/terrorism thread, for just as surely as TP had things to say about Reagan & Co. in the 90s (Vineland), I have no doubt he's got wheelbarrowsful vis-a-vis 9.11/The War on Terror and suchlike.

In 1,085 pages, a lot can happen. There is room for diatribes on various isms, for an adventure story involving rich white men, for vocabulary tutorials, for a case or two in time travel -- and, most of all, there is room for another Thomas Pynchon parable laced with physics, insight and intriguing characters.

In this latest book from the reclusive author of Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon, everybody wants something, yet no one knows what it is. A family of anarchist cowboys seek revenge for their father's death, and their vendetta takes them overseas, where Europe is poised on the brink of World War I.

There, a circle of mathematicians, balloonists and spies break into rousing choruses, and animals tend to know a lot more about what's going on than their human counterparts in the story. It seems no one goes untouched by the electricity in the air.

Filling his novel with intrigue, magic, sex, war, espionage, birth, death and math, Pynchon populates Against the Day with names like Ewball Oust, Lube Carnal and Cyprian Latewood. Acting out tarot cards and religious allusions, his characters search for a definition of space and time; the patterns and events in their lives propel them deeper into the calamity surrounding them.

A duality runs through the book, suggesting other worlds atop our own, hovering just beyond our periphery. Pynchon manages to transpose the early-20th-century setting with our own chaotic age, which phantasmically resides over his saga.

With deft Joycean encryption, the plot unfolds gauzily, telling a story in the booming narrative of Western historical fictions like the epic Oregon Trail! series. Yet lurking under Pynchon's comic-book tone is an entire world of symbols and references for the reader to discover.
Against the Day traces the lives of extraordinary people and examines the motivations of humans in a time of crisis, when they search for the light inside themselves. They begin to wonder if they choose the path before them, or if some other force guides their fate, and the beauty of Pynchon's plot resides in the way his characters respond to the hardships they face.

"We are light, you see, all of light," the author writes at one point. The line perfectly sums up his the spirit of his adventure novel, a celebration of the human spirit that mixes the highbrow and lowbrow as only Thomas Pynchon can.

If both The Bible and The Koran are suggesting of apocalypse with reference to that loaded phrase, 'against the day' - and great title, Mr Pynchon - then for me the novel itself certainly lives up to the promise.

I believe Thomas Pynchon is The Greatest Living Novelist. Fine. But I can't think of any other writer that stays with me in the way Pynchon does. Whenever I read a novel by Thomas Pynchon I become obsessed with it. If I'm not reading it, I'm thinking about it and when I finish the thing it still stays with me. And 'Against The Day' has absolutely haunted me.

The time span of the novel begins in the late ninetenth century as Europe appears to be hurtling towards an unavoidable destiny. "You have no idea what you're heading into. The world you take to be 'the' world will die, and descend into Hell, and all history after that will belong properly to the history of Hell" where "Flanders will be the mass grave of History".

This is serious stuff but The Great War is both the background idea of the novel and yet not quite of it. It's the daily lives of the characters which are the thing with 'history' felt but maybe not necessarily seen in the background. History waiting to happen. Is the Tunguska Event "the general war which Europe this summer and autumn would stand at the threshold of, collapsed into a single event?"

The plot itself is almost ludicrously simple for such a long novel - anarchist father is murdered at the whim of a magnate of big business and we'll see what happens to the children - but as you might expect there are a multitude of sub-plots including the adventures of The Chums Of Chance, a gang of adolescent boys who fly aboard their airship 'The Inconvenience' righting wrongs.

Or do they?

Most of the 9/11 suggestions in the book centre on The Chums and the ending left me with a feeling of general disquiet. This is obviously a good thing.

As I said the novel takes in the amount of sub-plots you would expect from a Thomas Pynchon novel and yes, there are the songs and yes, the puns continue apace and yes, it is long and no, you can't skim read it...

But why would you want to? When we talk about the pleasures of serious literature what we are talking about beyond the import and the cumulative effect are the incidental pleasures of reading. I can think of no other living writer who provides more of those moments than Pynchon.

Thomas Pynchon takes history and turns it into questions. The Campanile in Venice did mysteriously collapse in 1902; there is still a million dollar reward outstanding for anyone that solves the Reimann Principle; the air-burst of a comet in 1908 was the probable cause of the Tunguska Event...

As I said this is a novel that I couldn't shake off while I was reading it and even now it still continues to work its magic on me. I can't say for certain what it all adds up to but this is a good thing, surely? What I do know is the cliche that Pynchon's characters are mere cyphers for his bigger picture has once again, as in 'Mason & Dixon', been exploded; that the novel is simultaneously a summation of the past and a warning for now ("It's a peculiar game we all play. Against what looms in the twilight of the European future, it doesn't make much sense, this pretending to carry on with the day, you know, just waiting. Everyone waiting."); and that really no one else has ever written like this but the man himself.

Yeah, I thought this was a sublime read. And like I said, a warning for now...

"Illusion. When peace and plenty are once again taken for granted, at your most languorous moment of maximum surrender, the true state of affairs will be borne in upon you. Swiftly and without mercy".

A sublime read. A masterpiece.