Against the Day

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).

Gravity's Rainbow is my favorite American novel of the last century (closely followed by The Recognitions.) I loved V and The Crying of Lot 49, and admired Mason & Dixon -- mostly because I felt that it was an evolution in Pychon's writing that could only lead to better things.

Now this. I ignored the early reviews of Against the Day, recalling that GR was poorly reviewed as well. I pressed forward, past the introductory Chums of Chance segments, thinking things would get better. And they did. Several of the segments that followed -- because that is what AtD is, a collection of sometimes-related-segments -- were extremely well written, reminding me of the talent that Mr. Pynchon possesses. So much so that I had to put the book down and pause after some of these, letting the words seep in, opening my mind, and racing to the OED.

Then the problems began. First, I discovered that these moments of reflection were repeating themselves, and they were saying the same thing. It seemed like every fifty pages or so one character was departing another character's life, and we were left with the broken feelings of that person, gazing at the empty sea, the barren plain, the broken cityscape, whatever. Never to see her/his loved one again. Of course this means that even more characters are introduced, none of them as appealing as those in the first hundred pages or so.

The second problem is why I ultimately refused to continue reading the book, after some 600 pages. Pynchon gives us a segment where Kit is nearly done in at a mayonnaise factory in Ostend. This is just a brief, goofy segment, reminiscent of Gravity's Rainbow, but it contributes absolutely nothing to the book, and it is just dropped, like a rock, after a few pages. A-and it isn't the first one. Earlier, the Chums take a sabbatical in a College specializing in time travel, then abruptly pick right up on the story line -- such as it is.

For a while I travelled extensively in Europe. It was business travel, so I was not overly concerned with expenses. I had always loved London -- even dreamed of living there some day. Then I began to notice how, to my view, tourists were getting gouged for meals, hotels, etc. This happens at every travel destination, I know, but somehow the extent of it at a city I treasured was just too much for me. It soured the taste, and I can no longer look forward to going there.

Against the Day has done the same to me for Pynchon. I mean, you can use me, but don't abuse me. Last night I replaced my bookmark, closed the covers, and opened a space on the shelves where it will remain, gathering dust, hurting no one.

I think there might have been a really good 300 page novel here, or maybe Pynchon has one up his sleeve. More likely, he is paying the price for his reclusion. What was satire in the `Seventies is now pretty lame, and great literature requires more than a segment here and there.

Updated 1/1/07. At the kind urging of several who read this review, I returned to Against the Day a week or so ago and got in another hundred pages. Sadly, they did nothing to change my mind, or to convince me to press further onward. If you only knew how much I wanted to love this book! This is the first time I have quit on an author I admire. And somehow, it is more with anger than with disappointment...

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.

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.

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.

In1963, I picked up a novel called "V" by a then unknown writer named Thomas Pynchon and was overwhelmed. I had never read anything like it. It contained everything from raucous humor to melodrama to fantasy and presented a kind of magically distorted picture of the modern world that was somehow more "real" than any of the so-called realistic novels I had read. Since then I have ready all of Pynchon's works as they were published from "Crying Of Lot 49" to "Mason And Dixon". They were all brilliant and exciting novels, but I feel this latest addition to the canon outdoes them all.

But how to describe it? I could say a lot of things, all of them true. But everything I'd say would be contradicted by something else equally true. The plot takes place from 1895 to around 1920, yet it is completely relevant to today. It is filled with earthy humor (some might even say high-school humor), the characters--and there are a slew of characters--and often blessed with funny names like Scarsdale Vibe and Lindsay Noseworthy--yet at the same time the book demands a detailed knowledge of history, science, higher mathematics's, philosophy and even magic. For example, there is a secret British metaphysical society, the True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys--or as it is consistently referred to--the T.W.I.T. Well a twit is a silly fool, but ineffable means indescribably and tetractys is a triangle made of ten dots in four rows (four dots forming the base, three above that, then two, then one). It has significance in the ancient Pythagorean system, it Tarot card reading, and in the Hebrew Kabbalah. So what did Pynchon have in mind? Perhaps that someting can be silly and profound at the same time.

The books is stuffed with stories. Pynchon is a natural story teller and he will often stop the action to fit in another tale. But I'd say that there were two main plots. One, a fantasy about a group of boy balloonists so sail all over the world having adventures in their invisible, mysteriously powered balloon and the attempt by the anarchistic Travers family to revenge themselves on the murderers of they family patriarch, a miner and a dynamiter. The style varies from boy's adventure (think Tom Swift) to fairly dry scientific exposition. I found that even the minor characters to be compelling and human and I think the major ones will continue to haunt me for some time.

To sum up, despite its difficulties this is a book I can happily recommend. Like life itself, it seems to contain everything. And like life should be, it is actually fun.

I haven't gotten all the way through Against the Day, but so far, it's been enormous fun. No, I don't understand every last reference to Victorian science treatises, but who cares? There's so much more to this book than obscuro references. I also don't understand why so many critics accuse the characters of being one-dimensional. Even if that's true, is it a bad thing? So what if the characters are not a bunch of navel-gazers stuttering their way through an meaningless interior monologue? Pynchon portrays many of his secondary characters (and there's quite a few of them) as grotesques, much as Dickens used to do. Anyway, don't let the reputation of difficulty put you off. This prose adventure is a lot of fun, and worth your time.

I/m a big TP fan, especially of Lot 49 and Mason & Dixon. This new novel most closely resembles Gravity's Rainbow, the TP novel I least admire. Yes, it is long, and long is okay as long as it holds together. This novel is torpedoed by scores of irrelevant characters and long narrative passages that fail to convince, e.g. the whole hypops, under-sand travel bit, to name only one. TP's trademark humor, formerly his greatest asset as a writer, also seems on the wane in this novel; much of it is just plain hackneyed and tired, and the satire just doesn't sizzle like it used to. To be fair however, the humor is still quite good in places, as in all the passages featuring the "Chums of Chance". Subtract one star.

This biggest disappointment, however, is the missed opportunity in the female character of Lake. Good female characters are a rarity in Pynchon, which is a shame because when he tries he really creates great ones, like Oedipa, Prairie, or Frenesi. Lake promises to be the most compelling of all, but she takes a hiatus of some 600 pages just when we are starting to care about her. Pynchon drops her, though, to pursue the character of Yashmeen. Yashmeen, it must be said, is very vividly drawn, but I really wanted to know more about Lake. Subtract another star.

And, on a wholly positive note: TP's prose. It has become an instrument of mindblowing originality, flexibility, and beauty. Indeed, the most joyful thing about reading Against the Day is the masterful way TP uses the words themselves. You cannot get this from any other writer, so do read TP, just be warned.

Thomas Pynchon's latest work, Against the Day, was always going to be a monster of a novel. Prior to being published, there were rumours that Pynchon was researching mathematician David Hilbert and Sofia Kovalevskaya. A book on mathematics, went the theory. Russian and German mathematics, anyway. Nothing more was known, but Pynchon fans being what they are, grand theories of 'what if' and 'could be' floated about the internet. In July 2006, nine years after Pynchon's previous novel, Mason & Dixon, was published, a brief message/plot synopsis was posted on the Amazon.com webpage for his novel, adding a title - Against the Day. The message was written by Pynchon himself, and was pulled a few days later. Thrilled fans posted the synopsis over and over. A Pynchon novel set before the Great War! Anarchists, scientists, different countries, bizarre characters, odd sexual practises! Chums of Chance, T.W.I.T., Quarternionists, Vectorists! But what does all this mean for the actual novel?

Against the Day is a mess. It is 1085 pages long, split into five enigmatically titled sections, each dealing with its own group of characters, situations, time period, geographic location and philosophical and scientific problems and situations. The Traverse family are the arguable link for the novel as a whole, but to try and pinpoint a grand, overarching plot is perhaps beside the point. A mess, the novel was called - and yes, it is. It seems at times as though Pynchon knows this could be his last book (He was born in 1937), and thus he shoved every last thought and wander of the mind he could muster. If the last, put it all in. If the last, make it count. So here it is, and does it count?

The answer is yes. Pynchon's novel is difficult to follow - but they all are, from the 00000 Rocket in Gravity's Rainbow to Mason and Dixon's magickal travails throughout pre-American Revolutionary War United States. There are so many characters and so many situations that it is difficult - impossible - to hold it all in on the first read. Added to that is the 'obscurity' of the time period, for how many of us are familiar with events throughout the world between the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 and World War I? Throw in killer mayonnaise, the Chums of Chance zipping about on an airship, Scarsdale Vibe and his evil capitalistic intentions, and we have a lot to hold on to as we read.

But to worry about plot and pacing is hardly keeping in the spirit of what a Pynchon novel is all about. Against the Day is set in a time of the world when technology was increasing at an astounding pace. New inventions, new concepts by which people ran their ordinary lives were appearing all of the time - electricity being a major one. The ease of transport was increasing. Governments were restless, countries were antagonising one another in brief economic and military jousts. The times, as they say, were active. Discontent was rife as people perceived themselves becoming marginalised against the day of companies and the Corporation, which had recently gained 'personhood' status in America. Pynchon's novel revels in all of this, it wallows, wandering from here to there and place to place to observe Tesla's experiments with electricity, to visit mathematically vibrant Göttingen, to watch the Wild West of American become less cowboy and unknown.

The link, if it exists, is twofold - which itself echoes a major theme of Pynchon's work. The Traverse children are scattered around the globe, nominally focused on discovering the whereabouts - and later particulars - of their father. The second link is that everyone is aware that World War I - or something massive, anyway - is on its way. The world is rumbling towards an event unlike anything seen before. And the characters can't, or won't, do anything about it. As the times become more involved, more convoluted, difficult to define and impossible to control, characters begin to engage in increasingly bizarre sexual practises, a common thread in Pynchon's literature. Perhaps he is suggesting that as the world turns mad, so do we, through our relationships, our romances, our ideas, beliefs, desires, dreams.

As mentioned, doubling is a significant presence within the novel - and even outside the novel. The cover looks as though it has been 'doubled' by Iceland spar, or crystallised calcium carbonate. 'Iceland Spar' is the name of a section of the book, and the doubling effects it creates visually is extended to double characters and situations, from Renfrew and Werfner, to events and activities that happen simultaneously or nearly so, each affecting the other.

Compared to Pynchon's other great work, Gravity's Rainbow, Against the Day is much less paranoid, and the humour is markedly different. Characters, no matter the difficulty, seem to be able to retain a casual, laconic perspective on their lives, which at first is disconcerting, but which settles into a sort of rhythm. The primary nature of people, it seems, shines through no matter what the situation or outcome. Characters joke even whilst in the middle of a tunnel fighting strange mythical monsters, they laugh and jibe at one another in serious and silly situations.

The characters in Against the Day are, almost uniformly, named with tongue firmly placed in cheek. The Traverse family do just that - they wander, they journey, they travel. Added to that is Pugnax the dog, the Kieselguhr Kid, Deuce Kindred, Merle Rideout, Luca Zombini. It is something of a shame that Pynchon chose to continue his attraction for bizarre naming schemes, because Against the Day is filled with numerous little sadnesses, the sort that afflict our own lives and times, but which become something in the way of foolish when applied to oddly named characters and situations. There are fallings out with parents, broken relationships, missing fathers, dead mothers, stolen babies, lost friendships, all told with surprising emotion and skill. Yet they often fall flat due to the names of the characters.

The novel is written with no main style. It changes as the situation demands. The Chums of Chance, whose antics open the novel and who appear with charming randomness, are written with an eye to old pulp boy's adventure novels, the sort where the adults are always wrong, and an adventure is just around the corner for every boy under eighteen. Later, deep within the Wild West, the style mimics the great Western authors, and later still the style breaks down completely, changing from page to page as situations and characters move about. Pynchon is unafraid to turn his hand to any particular genre or style, if it will properly convey the mood and atmosphere of the piece.

When reading Against the Day, caution should be observed. It is a novel that may frustrate due to the massive loose ends. Plots are added and added and added, new characters are introduced all the time, leaving the reader to think - what am I to do with this? The answer is - let it slide. Keep what is interesting, keep what tickles your own particular fancy, and do not worry about the rest. The world is so massive, and even events which seem clear and explainable - such as the Great War - are really a culmination of instances built from frenzied, inarticulate madness. The threads of the world are never pulled tight to create a masterpiece, and nor should the plots of Pynchon's work similarly cohere. The major themes abound amongst themselves, the characters love, laugh, die, kill, murder, hide, invent, create, destroy, plot, wonder, become confused and confuse others. The parallels to our own time should not be ignored - we too are living in a time of rapid change, fast-paced diplomacy and information, and the discontented grumblings from various parts of the world. Cohesion is not always possible, and should not always be sought. From Pynchon's novel, we can take chaos, madness, ripe exuberant craziness, and, ultimately, snippets of human life and love. And isn't that what counts?