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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
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
hopeful
medium-paced
What a wild ride, and a beautiful landing.
adventurous
emotional
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
27th book of 2023.
3.5/4/who even knows. So. There's a lot of chaos in this book from Mr Entropy himself T.R.P. And a lot of light. Compared to the darkness of Gravity's Rainbow, Against the Day feels far more fun. In a way bouncier, whatever I mean by that. And of course the book is about... What? Light? Grace? Technology? Coincidence? Randomness? Innocence? For one the book is extremely easy to understand compared to GR. There are a lot of characters but it isn't hard to follow, there are multiple narratives but I never got overly muddled. I'd say the hard thing about the book is simply the length of it, but it is not 'hard' to read. The Chums of Chance are a load of boys (who can age!) flying around on an airship. They drop in and out of the narrative. Perhaps they can travel in time. Lew is a detective, with some sort of special power. The Traverse family are at the heart of the story, a revenge plot embedded deeply, with all sorts of family stuff reminiscent of the sweet bits of Vineland. Kit was my favourite, with the Chums. He has a wild time throughout the book, nearly drowning in mayonnaise and has some trippy times in Siberia. His brother Reef was stranger. At one point in the book he tries to coax a dog into giving him oral... that can put you off a character. I never got massively into Cyprian and his business, but he was clearly a Sebastian Flyte character, particularly with his time in Venice, à la Flyte. Dally, Yashmeen, and numerous other characters doing all sorts of things, etc., etc., Pynchon likes his characters. Big events. WW1 looming as WW2 looms in GR. And how many countries in this single book, certainly most of Europe, or so it felt. A real globe-trotting book.
I'll be honest though. As fun as some bits were, the novel is wildly uneven. Some bits are fantastic, some bits feel completely disjointed and pointless to the narrative (but then I'm not as smart as T.R.P., and everything is probably beautifully connected). The last 200 pages felt like 400, not because they were any worse, but simply because I was starting to feel burnt-out, and wanted it to end. I've said it before, I respect Pynchon and his work but his humour doesn't align with mine. I can identify his playfulness, but don't find it overly entertaining myself. That said, this was fun at times. Certain events in the novel, which I won't say, had me wondering, But why Tom? What's the plan here? What's the arc? And that's what partly makes him so enjoyable, trying to figure these things out. What is the book about? What happens to the characters? Why is there so much light? Time travel? Alternate selves and universes? Why are there talking dogs? Sentient hurricanes? Glowing beetles? What's it all saying?
But then he is also saying things like this:
Because Tom can write. He chooses to write about some surprising things, but he can write.
Now everybody—
Science-fiction, alternate reality, pastiche... A lot to process. Maybe more to come.
3.5/4/who even knows. So. There's a lot of chaos in this book from Mr Entropy himself T.R.P. And a lot of light. Compared to the darkness of Gravity's Rainbow, Against the Day feels far more fun. In a way bouncier, whatever I mean by that. And of course the book is about... What? Light? Grace? Technology? Coincidence? Randomness? Innocence? For one the book is extremely easy to understand compared to GR. There are a lot of characters but it isn't hard to follow, there are multiple narratives but I never got overly muddled. I'd say the hard thing about the book is simply the length of it, but it is not 'hard' to read. The Chums of Chance are a load of boys (who can age!) flying around on an airship. They drop in and out of the narrative. Perhaps they can travel in time. Lew is a detective, with some sort of special power. The Traverse family are at the heart of the story, a revenge plot embedded deeply, with all sorts of family stuff reminiscent of the sweet bits of Vineland. Kit was my favourite, with the Chums. He has a wild time throughout the book, nearly drowning in mayonnaise and has some trippy times in Siberia. His brother Reef was stranger. At one point in the book he tries to coax a dog into giving him oral... that can put you off a character. I never got massively into Cyprian and his business, but he was clearly a Sebastian Flyte character, particularly with his time in Venice, à la Flyte. Dally, Yashmeen, and numerous other characters doing all sorts of things, etc., etc., Pynchon likes his characters. Big events. WW1 looming as WW2 looms in GR. And how many countries in this single book, certainly most of Europe, or so it felt. A real globe-trotting book.
I'll be honest though. As fun as some bits were, the novel is wildly uneven. Some bits are fantastic, some bits feel completely disjointed and pointless to the narrative (but then I'm not as smart as T.R.P., and everything is probably beautifully connected). The last 200 pages felt like 400, not because they were any worse, but simply because I was starting to feel burnt-out, and wanted it to end. I've said it before, I respect Pynchon and his work but his humour doesn't align with mine. I can identify his playfulness, but don't find it overly entertaining myself. That said, this was fun at times. Certain events in the novel, which I won't say, had me wondering, But why Tom? What's the plan here? What's the arc? And that's what partly makes him so enjoyable, trying to figure these things out. What is the book about? What happens to the characters? Why is there so much light? Time travel? Alternate selves and universes? Why are there talking dogs? Sentient hurricanes? Glowing beetles? What's it all saying?
But then he is also saying things like this:
The skies were interrupted by dark gray storm clouds with a flow like molten stone, swept and liquid, and light that found its way through them was lost in the dark fields but gathered shining along the pale road, so that sometimes all you could see was the road, and the horizon it ran to. Sometimes she was overwhelmed by the green life passing in such high turbulence, too much to see, all clamoring to have its way. Leaves sawtooth, spade-shaped, long and thin, blunt-fingered, downy and veined, oiled and dusty with the day—flowers in bells and clusters, purple and white or yellow as butter, star-shaped ferns in the wet and dark places, millions of green veilings before the bridal secrets in the moss and under the deadfalls, went on by the wheels creaking and struck by rocks in the ruts, sparks visible only in what shadow it might pass over, a busy development of small trailside shapes tumbling in what had to be deliberately arranged precision, herbs the wildcrafters knew the names and market prices of and which the silent women up in the foothills, counterparts whom they most often never got even to meet, knew the magic uses for. They lived for different futures, but they were each other’s unrecognized halves, and what fascination between them did come to pass was lit up, beyond question, with grace.
Because Tom can write. He chooses to write about some surprising things, but he can write.
Now everybody—
It went on for a month. Those who had taken it for a cosmic sign cringed beneath the sky each nightfall, imagining even more extravagant disasters. Others, for whom 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 early 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.
Science-fiction, alternate reality, pastiche... A lot to process. Maybe more to come.
I just finished this great book, and it's one of the funniest tomes I've ever crashed and dynamited my way through. Most enjoyable!
Pynchon no longer seems like he's trying to prove to the world what a great writer he is - he's too busy having fun creating truly ecstatic prose. The ending was a trascendental experience, it seemed most appropriate to resolve his enormous fugue with the transcendence of time and space via the potential in light. Vectorists indeed...
And in another sense - the book never ends...which is totally appropriate. Things in life never fully "resolve"...and this works for me in ways that the circular (read terminal) form of say, Finnegans Wake wanted to work, but was ultimately an act of self-consciousness.
On a more sober note, I would tell my women friends that this is rather boisterous masculine narrative, and while you might criticize Pynchon for residing too often on the darker side of the sacred/profane construct, it makes the longed-for resolutions all the more satisfying when they come. The assemblage of human conflict in this novel is great, as is the collection of folly. While the gender scale may be tipped in favor of the masculine, there are more than a few dynamic women characters that will take the reader by surprise.
Pynchon is able to explore complex gender themes through the lens of dozens of core characters, all fussing the balancing act of existential ideals and moral conflict while the world collapes into the first world war. The book is an enormous catalogue of landscapes, stunning outfits, overflowing feasts, erotically-charged hats, enviable sex acts (in most cases), scientific theories, mind-altering drugs and libations, natural disasters, military and guerilla attacks, dialects, silly songs, local and regional histories, and a handful of families whose lives intersect in fascinating ways.
The basic story line starts with labor issues in Colorado in the late 1800's. Webb Traverse is an anarchist who uses dynamite to foul the flow of capitalism as it seeks to extend into the west. Turns out folks like Scarsdale Vibe, of the Vibe Corporation (set on dominating the world through globalization) don't like it. They send killers. Bad Things happen. Lives are changed and families are scattered around the globe as revolution breaks out in Mexico, the decaying Hapsburg Dynasty plunges Europe and the Balkans into WW1, and spies and adventurists scan the globe in search of Shambhala, altered states of consciousness, and keys to bending the laws of science. All the while the reader is aware that Pynchon is pushing this often fantastic history lesson to tell us about the world we live in today.
Keep in mind that Against the Day clocks in at over 1,000 pages, and it's well worth the walk if you're up for longer narratives. It's one of those books where you're being introduced to countless people, some who tread water and keep up with the flow of the novel, others who fall behind and disappear without a trace. If you're comfortable not knowing how all the pieces fit for say, at least 600 pages, but see more and more clearly as time goes on, then invest some hours in this one. You'll be glad you did.
Pynchon no longer seems like he's trying to prove to the world what a great writer he is - he's too busy having fun creating truly ecstatic prose. The ending was a trascendental experience, it seemed most appropriate to resolve his enormous fugue with the transcendence of time and space via the potential in light. Vectorists indeed...
And in another sense - the book never ends...which is totally appropriate. Things in life never fully "resolve"...and this works for me in ways that the circular (read terminal) form of say, Finnegans Wake wanted to work, but was ultimately an act of self-consciousness.
On a more sober note, I would tell my women friends that this is rather boisterous masculine narrative, and while you might criticize Pynchon for residing too often on the darker side of the sacred/profane construct, it makes the longed-for resolutions all the more satisfying when they come. The assemblage of human conflict in this novel is great, as is the collection of folly. While the gender scale may be tipped in favor of the masculine, there are more than a few dynamic women characters that will take the reader by surprise.
Pynchon is able to explore complex gender themes through the lens of dozens of core characters, all fussing the balancing act of existential ideals and moral conflict while the world collapes into the first world war. The book is an enormous catalogue of landscapes, stunning outfits, overflowing feasts, erotically-charged hats, enviable sex acts (in most cases), scientific theories, mind-altering drugs and libations, natural disasters, military and guerilla attacks, dialects, silly songs, local and regional histories, and a handful of families whose lives intersect in fascinating ways.
The basic story line starts with labor issues in Colorado in the late 1800's. Webb Traverse is an anarchist who uses dynamite to foul the flow of capitalism as it seeks to extend into the west. Turns out folks like Scarsdale Vibe, of the Vibe Corporation (set on dominating the world through globalization) don't like it. They send killers. Bad Things happen. Lives are changed and families are scattered around the globe as revolution breaks out in Mexico, the decaying Hapsburg Dynasty plunges Europe and the Balkans into WW1, and spies and adventurists scan the globe in search of Shambhala, altered states of consciousness, and keys to bending the laws of science. All the while the reader is aware that Pynchon is pushing this often fantastic history lesson to tell us about the world we live in today.
Keep in mind that Against the Day clocks in at over 1,000 pages, and it's well worth the walk if you're up for longer narratives. It's one of those books where you're being introduced to countless people, some who tread water and keep up with the flow of the novel, others who fall behind and disappear without a trace. If you're comfortable not knowing how all the pieces fit for say, at least 600 pages, but see more and more clearly as time goes on, then invest some hours in this one. You'll be glad you did.
A buffet. Very happy that Pynchon’s editor/s took the day off. Of course by design pretty shambolic and unwieldy but therein lies the appeal (something something entropy). I guess for me this feels too sprawling to be probing; Pynchon’s fiction - at least when I like it best - feels bottomless, and this doesn’t have that same quality. But who am I? Nobody! And I can see this is a major work: wildly imaginative, funny, playful, erudite, paranoid, conspiratorial… you know, Pynchon-esque.
My review in the Boston Phoenix.
https://thephoenix.com/Boston/Arts/27434-AGAINST-THE-DAY/
https://thephoenix.com/Boston/Arts/27434-AGAINST-THE-DAY/
A huge book with beautiful prose and ridiculous songs and old-time characters who may be real, that is among other things a Western and a science-fiction adventure that is also a page-turner.(!)
Second "reading" - listened to audiobook (Dick Hill is fantastic!) and read at the same time (well, not at the same time, but stayed within 10 - 20 pages).
Second "reading" - listened to audiobook (Dick Hill is fantastic!) and read at the same time (well, not at the same time, but stayed within 10 - 20 pages).
"And Alexander* wept, seeing as he had no more worlds** to conquer***."
* Goodreads user Tyler McGaughey
** Thomas Pynchon books
**** read for the first time
* Goodreads user Tyler McGaughey
** Thomas Pynchon books
**** read for the first time
No Mason & Dixon. Could have been chopped in half and lost nothing. Just 'cos he's Pynchon, doesn't mean he doesn't need an editor.
This book is Pynchon meets Everything He Can Possibly Think Of. Which is a lot.