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wordmaster 's review for:
Against the Day
by Thomas Pynchon
Y'ever been at a party and the conversation turns to books and one comes up that you've read but when someone asks what it's about you freeze and blurt something that sort of makes sense but doesn't do it justice and then small talk passes on while you spend the rest of the night kicking yourself over a missed opportunity?
Well anyway, this book is about America.
But seriously, folks, if we want to get specific, this book is like what happens when you sew a Spaghetti Western to a Steampunk Sci-Fi, graft on a bit of Spy Thriller, tie the whole shebang to a Tesla coil and let 'er rip.
3.25 stars out of 5. I have heard it said that the really great writers can only be compared with themselves. Nobody out-Shakespeares Shakespeare, and nobody out-Pynchons Pynchon. So yes it's great writing but it's all over the map (har!) and in my opinion is well overshadowed by his other work. Something about all these far-flung pieces refused to cohere for me and I often felt like I was being yanked about with little reward. And maybe that's the point, but if so—blech.
All told this one seemed to me like maybe a halfway point, work-to-enjoyability-wise, between Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon. The big payoff wasn't there for me at the end.
And now, as has become my Pynchon tradition, a series of dynamite (har again!) quotes:
History has flowed in to surround us all, and I am left adrift without certainty, only conjectures. (748)
"...no one ever speaks plainly. Whether it's Cockney rhyming codes or the crosswords in the newspapers—all English, spoken or written, is looked down on as no more than strings of text cleverly encrypted. Nothing beyond." (224)
"[T]he American West—it is a spiritual territory! in which we seek to study the secrets of your—national soul!"
"Ha! Ha!" Merle slapped his knee. "You fellows, I swear. What 'national soul'? We don't have any 'national soul'! 'F you think any different, why you're just packing out pyrites, brother." (293)
Had they gone, themselves, through some mutation into imperfect replicas of who they once were? meant to revisit the scenes of unresolved conflicts, the way ghosts are said to revisit places where destinies took a wrong turn, or revisit in dreams the dreaming body of one loved more than either might have known, as if whatever happened between them could in that way be put right again? Were they now but torn and trailing after-images of clandestine identities needed on some mission long ended, forgotten, but unwilling or unable to be released from it? (423)
"We were always at the mercy of Time, as much as any civilian 'groundhog.' We went from two dimensions, infant's floor-space, out into town- and map-space, ever toddling our way into the third dimension, till as Chums recruits we could take the fateful leap skyward . . . and now, after these years of sky-roving, maybe some of us are ready to step 'sidewise' once more, into the next dimension—into Time—our fate, our lord, our destroyer." (427)
"We have had no choice," fiercely... "No more than ghosts may choose what places they must haunt . . . you children drift in a dream, all is smooth, no interruptions, no discontinuities, but imagine the fabric of Time torn open, and yourselves swept through, with no way back, orphans and exiles who find you will do what you must, however shameful, to get from end to end of each corroded day." (555)
"But look here, it's wartime, ain't it. Not like Antietam maybe, big armies all out in the light of day that you can see, but the bullets are still flyin, brave men go down, treacherous ones do their work in the night, take their earthly rewards, and then the shitheads live forever." (727)
Well anyway, this book is about America.
But seriously, folks, if we want to get specific, this book is like what happens when you sew a Spaghetti Western to a Steampunk Sci-Fi, graft on a bit of Spy Thriller, tie the whole shebang to a Tesla coil and let 'er rip.
3.25 stars out of 5. I have heard it said that the really great writers can only be compared with themselves. Nobody out-Shakespeares Shakespeare, and nobody out-Pynchons Pynchon. So yes it's great writing but it's all over the map (har!) and in my opinion is well overshadowed by his other work. Something about all these far-flung pieces refused to cohere for me and I often felt like I was being yanked about with little reward. And maybe that's the point, but if so—blech.
All told this one seemed to me like maybe a halfway point, work-to-enjoyability-wise, between Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon. The big payoff wasn't there for me at the end.
And now, as has become my Pynchon tradition, a series of dynamite (har again!) quotes:
Spoiler
"Oh, it's the usual. They think he'll lead them to some greater apparatus, he's content to let them go on dreaming. Bit like marriage, I suppose." (866)History has flowed in to surround us all, and I am left adrift without certainty, only conjectures. (748)
"...no one ever speaks plainly. Whether it's Cockney rhyming codes or the crosswords in the newspapers—all English, spoken or written, is looked down on as no more than strings of text cleverly encrypted. Nothing beyond." (224)
"[T]he American West—it is a spiritual territory! in which we seek to study the secrets of your—national soul!"
"Ha! Ha!" Merle slapped his knee. "You fellows, I swear. What 'national soul'? We don't have any 'national soul'! 'F you think any different, why you're just packing out pyrites, brother." (293)
Had they gone, themselves, through some mutation into imperfect replicas of who they once were? meant to revisit the scenes of unresolved conflicts, the way ghosts are said to revisit places where destinies took a wrong turn, or revisit in dreams the dreaming body of one loved more than either might have known, as if whatever happened between them could in that way be put right again? Were they now but torn and trailing after-images of clandestine identities needed on some mission long ended, forgotten, but unwilling or unable to be released from it? (423)
"We were always at the mercy of Time, as much as any civilian 'groundhog.' We went from two dimensions, infant's floor-space, out into town- and map-space, ever toddling our way into the third dimension, till as Chums recruits we could take the fateful leap skyward . . . and now, after these years of sky-roving, maybe some of us are ready to step 'sidewise' once more, into the next dimension—into Time—our fate, our lord, our destroyer." (427)
"We have had no choice," fiercely... "No more than ghosts may choose what places they must haunt . . . you children drift in a dream, all is smooth, no interruptions, no discontinuities, but imagine the fabric of Time torn open, and yourselves swept through, with no way back, orphans and exiles who find you will do what you must, however shameful, to get from end to end of each corroded day." (555)
"But look here, it's wartime, ain't it. Not like Antietam maybe, big armies all out in the light of day that you can see, but the bullets are still flyin, brave men go down, treacherous ones do their work in the night, take their earthly rewards, and then the shitheads live forever." (727)