Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Against the Day
Book Review: Ultimate Pynchon
Summary: 5 Stars
Against the Day is both culmination and transcendence of all
of Pynchon's work to date. Stylistically it his most ecstatically
written, a soaring in its riffs as "Gravity's Rainbow" or "Mason
and Dixon," close to story telling like the former, as lilting as the latter without ever shifting into the anti-narrative stillness of strretches of "M&D." Structurally it seems much looser than "Rainbow" because of its greater range of characters, tones and stories, yet its integration is similar in kind as well as degree. If "Rainbow" is suspended between the world of the "Rocket" and "mindless
pleasures," the structural statics of "Day" suspend it along two dimensions: the first, that of capitalist-anarchist agon on the one hand and and that Pynchon's richest tapestry of mindless yet of earthly mindless pleasure (or earthly delights - such as the loves of Kit Traverse and Dally)on the other; and secondly, wide-ranging social realism (evoking the Dos Passos of "U.S.A," though largely Western and Midwestern) and wild fantasy (the two often intertwined, as when the pulp -e.g., science fiction-- fantasy worlds of characters and their cultures become manifest in their everyday lives).Dynamically, the book is focused RE character on the near and seemingly impending romantic self-realization maturity of Traverse and Dally in a manner resembling (as mirror image) "Gravity Rainbow"'s focus on the disintegration of "Slothrop," and RE fantasy on the triumph of buoyant life in the dirigible of the Chums of Chance in a manner inverting the final destruction by the Rocket in "Rainbow." The political-private dimension of capitalist-anarchist and pleasurable polls, can be remapped as a reading of the Gnostic Pynchon in which the capitalist system is demiurge and the youthful anarchist protagonists are, though oppressed by that early power, luminous in their access to the divine spark or pneumena. It's at once a political-economically pessimistic and personally joyous trip.
Book Review: Undone by the ending
Summary: 3 Stars
This is a perfect age for a Pynchonian conspiracy to reach a sinister climax resonating with 9/11 and reminding us, Pynchon's loyal readers, of how Gravity's Rainbow left us standing on an elevated outcrop of some sort, looking out over the plain of the Cold War that we knew, though the characters did not, was before us. You could just about see it coming in Against the Day: somebody would hire the Chums of Chance to crash their airship into the Vibe Building. Every throbbing thread of subplot in the book pointed in that direction, and had they all converged on that outcome, we would have been rewarded for the 1000+ preceding pages which, let's face it, do ramble a bit. Yes, we can see it, Tom, we seem to have been this way before and it was pointless then, too, wasn't it? But (SPOILER ALERT!) it doesn't happen, and the ending winds up as a stupefying betrayal of all that precedes it. I can't remember the last time I was as frustrated by a book, and not just because of its bulk. Really, it's more because of its promise, and its non-delivery of same.Book Review: Well Worth the Time
Summary: 5 Stars
I dedicated three hours a night to Against the Day, and it took weeks to finish, but it was a journey well spent. Although the math/science subplots can be somewhat tedious, the overall effect is dazzling. Mr. Pynchon pulls tricks out of his magician's hat that left me laughing at what he can get away with. This is a tremendous novel!Book Review: What I learned from Thomas Pynchon
Summary: 5 Stars
Five Things that I learned from Thomas Pynchon.
1) There is no holy grail or philosopher's stone or ur-text of any kind; in the place of these illusory dreams of wholeness what we have is the secular epiphany or the illumination. Scientists, corporate executives, politicians, artists, the insane, and cognitive pilgrims of every kind have them. In other times shaman and prophets were able to gather the tribe together under one unifying fiction; in our time politicians attempt the same. But the tribe has grown skeptical, and has fragmented. The result is a psychic dissonance between the one and the many. Many strange fictions now proliferate where formerly there was one.
2) The American sensibility lives on. We love independence and despise institutionalized or standardized anything. Our heroes are and have always been oddballs and misfits: Ben Franklin, E.A. Poe, H.D. Thoreau, Ambrose Bierce, Groucho Marx, Bob Dylan, R. Crumb. Its not surprising then that Americans love movies, because nowhere is American independence (or at least the fantasy of independence: important qualifier there!) more on display than in the B-film. We all love a good cowboy movie (where the one is always stronger than the many), a good scifi extravaganza (where the individual, despite momentary setbacks, is always able to harness science and technology to his own ends), a good screwball comedy (where the individual is always able to knock down with laughter everything that everyone else holds sacred), and a good cold war thriller (where one good spy can foil the best laid world domination plans). Lucky for us, in the age of channel surfing, web browsing, and Thomas Pynchon novels (where all of these classic genres are appropriated for all manner of paranoid nonsense) we can enjoy these favorite things all in one sitting.
3) Politicians are the true progenitors of cornball fiction. Conservatives want to return to an originary cultural unity (but instead of wearing fig leaves they want us all to wear bowties); liberals find variety to be the spice of life (problem is too much spice tends only to lead to further fragmentation and a concomitant alienation).
4) Satire of the human condition and parody of its sense-making devices, as Jonathan Swift and Laurence Sterne knew, are timeless. Laughter might not help us make sense of things, but it helps us see the nonsense that too often passes for sense. Because satirists and parodists make fun of everything, its often hard to tell what they really believe and I think the satirists and parodists like it that way. But laughter is political because it is (usually) against hierarchies and against power (which are against the day). Laughter is the great leveler.
5) To treat all forms, from the sacred scripture to the matinee, with equal reverence/irreverence is the ultimate democratic act.
Book Review: a year of reading
Summary: 5 Stars
a year of reading "against the day" and i'm still flabbergasted. never having read pynchon before, i am beside myself with awe...with happiness.
no, it is not easy. yes, it is long...but so what?
covering the years of tesla, edison, north and south pole adventures, the great war, anarchy and the early 20's, "against the day" teems with made up names (the humor behind which i mostly did not understand...but comprehended) known and mysterious cities and places and incidents that may or may not have occured.
i loved the feel of the book..in my hands i mean. i loved the heft of the book, on an intectual meaning, i mean. i got think.