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174 reviews for:
Thomas pynchon's Against the day: A Deleuzian reading of pynchon's language.
Thomas Pynchon
4.19 AVERAGE
174 reviews for:
Thomas pynchon's Against the day: A Deleuzian reading of pynchon's language.
Thomas Pynchon
4.19 AVERAGE
Not for me- maybe try a shorter one of his books because I am intrigued by his style. Bought this at Heathrow on a flight back to the US, but ended up just starting at my seat back because I was so bored.
"What I worry about is that the Æther will turn out to be something like God. Is we can explain everything we want to explain without it, then why keep it?"
Felt very much a companion or twin (yet another instance of duality?) to Gravity's Rainbow, although this time exploring science and mathematics and all that it CAN'T do, no matter how hard you try. All the talk of vectors, boundary lines, and incomplete sets showing that science approaches a truth, never quite grasps it. Like a map and a territory. So much more of this novel explores themes of bilocation, duality, the Æther, anarchism, explosives, and the Balkans, it'd be far too much to detail my thoughts here, it would eventually reach the length of the novel itself. But like every Pynchon book I've read, Against the Day is full of incredible passages, my copy now degraded with dogears pointing to my favorites. I guess I'll leave the passage with the title drop after the Tunguska Event echoes across the world, impacting every character.
It went on for a month. Those who had taken it for a cosmic sign cringed beneath the sky each nightfall, imagining ever more extravagant disasters. Others, for whom the orange did not seem an appropriately apocalyptic shade, sat outdoors on public benches, reading calmly, growing used to the curious pallor. 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.
Felt very much a companion or twin (yet another instance of duality?) to Gravity's Rainbow, although this time exploring science and mathematics and all that it CAN'T do, no matter how hard you try. All the talk of vectors, boundary lines, and incomplete sets showing that science approaches a truth, never quite grasps it. Like a map and a territory. So much more of this novel explores themes of bilocation, duality, the Æther, anarchism, explosives, and the Balkans, it'd be far too much to detail my thoughts here, it would eventually reach the length of the novel itself. But like every Pynchon book I've read, Against the Day is full of incredible passages, my copy now degraded with dogears pointing to my favorites. I guess I'll leave the passage with the title drop after the Tunguska Event echoes across the world, impacting every character.
It went on for a month. Those who had taken it for a cosmic sign cringed beneath the sky each nightfall, imagining ever more extravagant disasters. Others, for whom the orange did not seem an appropriately apocalyptic shade, sat outdoors on public benches, reading calmly, growing used to the curious pallor. 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.
While I liked the overall conceit, I feel like I understood the point Pynchon was making within the first hundred pages, which made the subsequent 900 somewhat redundant for me. But then, I've never been the biggest fan of post-modernism in literature.
Against the Day is a completely unique novel - both in its ambition and its ability to frustrate the reader. If you don't like Pynchon's tics (jokey character names, bantering inauthentic dialogue, narrative dead ends), then abandon hope all ye who enter. If you are willing to devote a slice of your remaining life to 1085 pages of this, you need to just buckle up and enjoy the ride.
I haven't read any other criticism of this novel yet. Personally, I don't have a clear sense of what Pynchon is on about here. At first I thought he was playing with genre - ATD includes steampunk, historical fiction, Western, adventure, noir, detective, etc. The large swath of the story that takes place in Europe during the lead up to World War 1 seems too baggy and incoherent, with whole sections (in Venice and Bulgaria, for example) that read like travelogue more than narrative fiction. My peak frustration came in the Bulgarian section, wherein Cyprian Latewood joins a nunnery. What is the relevance of Cyprian to the story? He is a secondary character that becomes central and then reverts to the background. There are many many characters like this, who pop out of the woodwork. I was tempted at some points to create a spreadsheet of characters, just to keep them straight.
ATD exemplifies the problem I have with a lot of postmodern fiction. In the end, the idea of a fragmented narrative that reflects the way life really unfolds, seems to make sense. In practice, it feels self indulgent. Pynchon's attitude seems to be that "life is long and confusing, so I will therefore write a long and confusing novel." It doesn't work as satire, because its narrative threads are so diffuse and meandering that any insight on human nature or society is lost.
I haven't read any other criticism of this novel yet. Personally, I don't have a clear sense of what Pynchon is on about here. At first I thought he was playing with genre - ATD includes steampunk, historical fiction, Western, adventure, noir, detective, etc. The large swath of the story that takes place in Europe during the lead up to World War 1 seems too baggy and incoherent, with whole sections (in Venice and Bulgaria, for example) that read like travelogue more than narrative fiction. My peak frustration came in the Bulgarian section, wherein Cyprian Latewood joins a nunnery. What is the relevance of Cyprian to the story? He is a secondary character that becomes central and then reverts to the background. There are many many characters like this, who pop out of the woodwork. I was tempted at some points to create a spreadsheet of characters, just to keep them straight.
ATD exemplifies the problem I have with a lot of postmodern fiction. In the end, the idea of a fragmented narrative that reflects the way life really unfolds, seems to make sense. In practice, it feels self indulgent. Pynchon's attitude seems to be that "life is long and confusing, so I will therefore write a long and confusing novel." It doesn't work as satire, because its narrative threads are so diffuse and meandering that any insight on human nature or society is lost.
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
2 stars, for this lengthy work of fiction:
+ the author shows great imagination
+ he shows great eye for detail, from weaponry, local slang, dress, architecture to entertainment
- there are over 30 characters, an absolute overkill, even for a book this long, we don't get to know any of them really well. Even worse once every now and then I saw a name and wondered: who is this again?
- the author constructs really, and I mean really long sentences, full of details that are not essential (and sometimes even interesting) to further the characters development. This makes it tiresome to reread a sentence when you have the feeling you've missed something. And I found myself not bothering to do so after a while. And it proved that didn't matter, only adding to the feeling that this book could have been 500 pages shorter.
- I could be due to my lack of technical knowledge but I didn't grasp a lot of the mathematical stuff.
- All the characters seem so incredibly well educated, everybody seems to occupy themselves with thoughts about other dimensions, traveling the world and speaking 10 languages. Where are the regular Joes?
+ the author shows great imagination
+ he shows great eye for detail, from weaponry, local slang, dress, architecture to entertainment
- there are over 30 characters, an absolute overkill, even for a book this long, we don't get to know any of them really well. Even worse once every now and then I saw a name and wondered: who is this again?
- the author constructs really, and I mean really long sentences, full of details that are not essential (and sometimes even interesting) to further the characters development. This makes it tiresome to reread a sentence when you have the feeling you've missed something. And I found myself not bothering to do so after a while. And it proved that didn't matter, only adding to the feeling that this book could have been 500 pages shorter.
- I could be due to my lack of technical knowledge but I didn't grasp a lot of the mathematical stuff.
- All the characters seem so incredibly well educated, everybody seems to occupy themselves with thoughts about other dimensions, traveling the world and speaking 10 languages. Where are the regular Joes?
adventurous
challenging
funny
Gonna write a 2nd review of this later on but yeah GOAT
[first review still here: https://hungydory95.tumblr.com/post/693773087468109824/against-the-day]
[first review still here: https://hungydory95.tumblr.com/post/693773087468109824/against-the-day]
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No