Pay no attention to the many sources that claim this as Pynchon's "Most Accessible Novel." It is among his most difficult, though for different reasons than his immortal Gravity's Rainbow. Almost all of the ingredients that make Pynchon's work so difficult to grasp are present, including an impossibly large cast of characters and no resemblance of a coherent plot; timelines are all jumbled, sometimes even on the same page. The language is simpler, but Against the Day is quite possibly Pynchon's most overwhelming and overstimulating work. Compound this with a daunting 1,085-page length, and you have a very demanding novel in your hands.

My experience with Against the Day was as frustrating as it was enlightening. Aside from very small pockets in the narrative, almost every single chapter was frustrating to make it through. Given the nature of the book, I believe this is by intention. Pynchon wants the reader to feel entirely uncertain and overstimulated, and pushed through a threshold of frustration. Inherent in this book is the idea of a rapidly developing world culture and the impossible nature of grasping all of that culture's developments or ideas. With the technological advances of the early 20th century and beyond, nearly every person is thrust into having to worry about so much more than their individual existence and what they contribute to their direct community; now they must worry about how they fit into a larger picture, one of unfathomable scale. This is made most clear with the narrative insignificance of World War I, an impossible, society-morphing colossus event, despite the allusions in the text and the warnings of its importance. The truth is that World War is a mere footnote in the mundane dramas of our superficial and silly characters. It gives shape to the idea that we are simply too preoccupied to deal with something as unimportant as World War. It translates to our modern existence as well, where global tensions are a disturbance to our ability to live mundane lives; the importance is only made clear when it is chronicled into the past.

Against the Day, like Mason & Dixon, displays how much progress begins as a mythical superstition, and only through experimentation does that mysticism translate into science. All novel ideas are absurd because they don't have precedent in the present. It isn't until it is an agreed upon truth, until it is chronicled into an agreed upon past or history, that it has any merit. The novel takes on the idea of "home" or of nomadism or migration. It contends that man will always answer to a corrupt master and that he possesses no true liberty, no matter where he lives. It shows some of our characters seeking to solve this by uncovering secrets of space-time. Our characters attempt to secede through lateral time and space (as symbolized through their airship), but even this solution will always be anchored in an agreed upon and dominating past. This temporal independence, physically manifested through civilizing the sky, is the only path to liberty from the frenetic onrush of progress and advancement which are to be weaponized by those in power; this is established with a revisionist understanding of how we've seen life-changing implications of quantum understanding turned toward evil devices (nuclear weapons), how light and electricity are utilized to create more capital overnight, and now again how mass media and the internet, tools that exist to bring us closer together, are being utilizing to misinform, to brainwash, and to drive us apart. All of our advancements that exist to move our society forward are used to further subjugate us. Against the Day seems to assert that true liberty is an equation to remain unsolved.

The concepts of Against the Day are incredible, but the execution is frustrating. Though it is by design, I can't ignore how frequently I had the idea of shelving it. It isn't until now, now that the book has been chronicled into my past, that I can appreciate its staggering concepts and innovative structure. The novel is a kaleidoscopic all-at-once snapshot of existence in a satirical lens; the details of its plot are similarly provided all-at-once and yet sequentially over the course of its 1,085 pages. It is a book rife with impossibly boring mundanities and revenge plots, but it all exists for a greater purpose as difficult as that can be to comprehend while reading. I think that the passage of time will only further sweeten my appreciation of Against the Day, but for now I wish I had read it in a lateral space-time.

Für einen Beobachter zeigt sich die Zukunft als Menge mehr oder weniger plausibler Möglichkeiten. Von seinem Standpunkt aus kann er nicht entscheiden, welche dieser Möglichkeiten Wirklichkeit werden und welche imaginär bleiben werden. Pynchon setzt seinen Beobachter in die Zeit um die vorletzte Jahrhundertwende, genauer in die Jahre zwischen der Weltausstellung 1893 in Chicago und dem Ende des ersten Weltkriegs. So wie Komplexe Zahlen aus einem Realteil und einem Imaginärteil bestehen oder ein Kristall aus Kalkspat einen Lichtstrahl durch Doppelbrechung in einen ordentlichen und einen außerordentlichen Strahl bricht, erzählt die Handlung sowohl von den Wirklichkeit gewordenen, aus heutiger Sicht als historische Fakten bezeichneten, als auch von den nicht verwirklichten, imaginär gebliebenen Möglichkeiten.

Die Verbindung aus Historischem Roman und Science Fiction aus der damaligen Perspektive läßt einen monumentalen Gesellschaftsroman entstehen, der Befindlichkeit und Lebensgefühl der Zeitenwende auf unglaublich lebendige Weise einfängt. Wissenschaftliche und technische Euphorie, die Faszination für fernöstliche Mystik, bahnbrechende mathematische Erkenntnisse, radikale Experimente in Kunst und Kultur, der Bruch gesellschaftlicher Konventionen, Industrialisierung, Klassenkampf und soziale Unruhen sind nur die augenscheinlichsten Eigenheiten dieser Epoche, die wie im Fieberrausch in das Inferno des Weltkriegs taumelt und dabei die kommende Moderne schon in sich trägt.

Wer auf gerade Handlung und überschaubares Personal steht, sei gewarnt! Zahlreiche Fäden bilden ein dichtes Handlungsgewebe - wenn nicht einen Handlungsfilz - bevölkert von unzähligen Haupt- und Nebenfiguren. Das Sammelsurium an einzelnen Partikeln verschmilzt jedoch immer mehr zu einem überwältigenden Gesamteindruck und versetzt die Leserin, den Leser in ein Riesenrundgemälde der Epoche mit all ihren Moden, Erkenntnissen, Erwartungen und Illusionen.

Kieselgur, eine feine fossile Substanz, die nicht nur Geflügelzüchtern zur Bekämpfung von Milben bekannt ist, wurde dem Nitroglycerin beigemischt, um das wesentlich stabilere Dynamit zu erzeugen, und so trägt der berüchtigte Kieselgur-Kid Dynamitstangen in seinen Patronengurten und zündet diese schneller, als seine Gegner ihre Colts ziehen können. Die angeblich jedem jugendlichen Leser von Abenteuerserien wohl bekannten Freunde der Fährnis durchqueren mit ihrem Luftschiff das Innere der Erde vom Südpol zum Nordpol, mit an Bord der bücherlesende und höchst verständige Hund Pugnax. Was die Jungs, bzw ihr Zeppelin mit dem Einsturz des Campanile in Venedig zu tun haben, bleibt offen. In Nebenrollen der Physiker Dr. Tesla, der österreichische Kronprinz Franz-Ferdinand, der in einer obskuren Südstaatenkneipe in Schwierigkeiten gerät und die amerikanischen Gewerkschaften samt ihren Gegenspielern, den berühmt-berüchtigten Agenten von Pinkerton, von denen einer ganz plötzlich in London bei der W.A.U.T. landet, den Wahren Anbietern des Unaussprechlichen Tetraktys. Die in der chinesischen Taklamakan-Wüste versunkene Stadt Shambala wird per Untersandboot besucht und weiter nördlich in Sibirien werden wir Zeuge des bis heute nicht wirklich geklärten Tunguska-Events, das womöglich durch Dr. Teslas Experimente ausgelöst wurde.

Alle paar Seiten lernt man neue Leute kennen, Abenteurer, Adepten, Agenten, Auftragskiller, Bastler, Bombenwerfer, Burschenschafter, Cricketspieler, Detektive, Desperados, Erfinder, Exzentriker, Futuristen, verrückte Künstler, chinesische Mafiosi, Metaphysiker, Milliardäre, Pseudo-Heavisiderianer, Quasi-Gibbsianer, Quaternionisten, mexikanische Schamanen, venezianische Spiegelschleifer, Tatzelwürmer, Vektoristen, Voll- und Teilzeitanarchisten, Waffenschieber, Zahlenmystiker, italienische Zauberer oder Zeitreisende … und begleitet sie ein Stück des Weges bis sie plötzlich verschwinden und 900 Seiten später wieder auftauchen; oder eine vermeintlich unwesentliche Figur kreuzt ihren Weg, die Geschichte schlägt einen Haken, folgt der neuen Figur und man erfährt alles Mögliche über deren Bruder, Großvater, Onkel und Tanten. Zwischendurch gibt es zur Abwechslung und allgemeinen Belustigung Slapstick- oder Gesangseinlagen.

Dabei ist der ganze überbordende Wahnsinn in einen minutiös recherchierten, historischen und geographischen Rahmen eingebettet und mit einer Unzahl enzyklopädischer Details aus allen nur vorstellbaren Bereichen wie Mathematik, Physik und Chemie, Politik, Soziologie, Medizin oder Musikgeschichte angereichert. Fängt man da zu recherchieren an, beginnt erst der große Spaß. Die skurrilsten Dinge erweisen sich als Tatsachen, Plausibles als rein erfunden. Fakt und Fiktion, Realismus und Märchen bilden organisch und ganz natürlich ein nahtloses, überzeugendes Ganzes.

Der Ton ist unterhaltsam und humorvoll, mit subtilem Sprachwitz und einem ganz leicht altmodisch-gespreizten Einschlag, sodass zwar der Sprachcharakter der Zeit mitschwingt, aber nicht anstrengend wird. Die Übersetzung von Nikolaus Stingl und Dirk van Gunsteren ist in diesem Sinne auch ganz hervorragend.

Das Schöne an Büchern wie diesem ist, dass sie keinen Anfang und kein Ende haben, dass die vielen Handlungsfäden von nirgendwoher kommen und kein Ziel kennen. Man betritt eine eigene Welt, in der die Zeit angehalten ist, man hat kein Bedürfnis, voran zu kommen, es interessiert nicht, was auf der nächsten Seite passiert. Das gegenwärtige Geschehen ist sich selbst genug, man ist wahrlich hier und jetzt. Und so liest man entspannt, ohne sich groß aufzuregen, ohne auf irgendeine Auflösung zu fiebern, staunt und freut sich über jedes Detail, jede Idee und Merkwürdigkeit. Natürlich sind dazu jede Menge Zeit und Muße erforderlich. Das Buch hat mich immerhin zwei Monate lang beschäftigt und nicht nur bestens unterhalten, es hat auch ein Stück Zeitgeschichte zum Leben erweckt und mir nahe gebracht.

«[…] Diese indischen Mystiker und tibetischen Lamas und so hatten doch recht: Die Welt, wie wir sie zu kennen glauben, kann in Teile zerlegt und zu beliebig vielen Welten zusammengesetzt werden, von denen jede so ›wirklich‹ ist wie diese.»

… sagt Prof. Heino Vanderjuice auf Seite 1586, ein passendes Motto für das Buch.

Against the Day, for me, is pure reading bliss. Pynchon effortlessly conjures up magic and grace, stretching them through a full spectrum of absurdly strange situations. His characters often lack depth, but he more than makes up for that in many other ways, not least of all with the shear beauty of his prose.

Of the thousand-and-one topics within this book, my favorite themes dwell on light, time, parallel universes, and dimensional transcendence. Anarchy may be the most prevalent thread found throughout, but an equally prominent theme, if only slightly less obvious, is the search for Shambhala—both the mythological kingdom said to be hidden somewhere in Inner Asia, as well as the invisible spiritual equivalent located within the Self.

There are stories, like maps that agree...too consistent among too many languages and histories to be only wishful thinking…. It is always a hidden place, the way into it is not obvious, the geography is as much spiritual as physical. If you should happen upon it, your strongest certainty is not that you have discovered it but returned to it. In a single great episode of light, you remember everything.

Regarding light, one character sums up Pynchon’s curiosity with it when he says: I want to reach inside light and find its heart, touch its soul, take some in my hands whatever it turns out to be, and bring it back. One distinctly memorable scene involves an encounter with a tree in Mexico full of giant luminous beetles all flashing on and off together in unison. While watching these magnificent creatures, the observer somehow realizes (I won’t pretend I can convey the same magic Pynchon does, so you will just have to take this at face value) one of the illuminated beetles is his soul, and that the other beetles of light on the tree are the souls of everyone he has ever known. All together these synchronized strobing souls make up one complete radiant soul in the same way that light is indivisible.

Light is living tissue. As the brain is the outward and visible expression of the Mind.

Pynchon has even more fun exploring the nature of time. For what mission have I here, in this perilous segment of space-time, if not somehow to transcend it? Most of the book takes place in the years leading up to WWI. Using the knowledge of the day, Pynchon bombards the reader in mathematical theories on vectors and quaternions in an attempt to push the boundaries of three-dimensional space. All this leads up to his attacks on the so-called ‘forth dimension.’ Even wondering if we can look at the ‘forth dimension’ as if it were time, when it is really something of its own, and ‘Time’ is only our best imperfect approximation.

When dissecting and reassembling time, Pynchon seems to place a keen interest in manipulating it for the reader’s benefit and joy. Pynchon is something of a mystic and trickster. Whatever the number of n dimensions it inhabited, an observer would need one extra, n + 1, to see and connect the end points to make a single resultant. Pynchon must somehow reside in, or frequently visit an extra dimension from the norm. How else is he able to bring back to consensus reality seemingly endless accounts from other realms, parallel universes, and multiple dimensions, all while transporting the reader along with him into those very same worlds?

One day I’ll get around to writing a review for this, my favorite book I’ve read, I’m part of small group of people, a group of readers that have read all off Thomas Pynchon’s novels, I should be happy that I reached this accomplishment, and I am, but also depressed about the whole thing, “Against The Day” and all of Thomas Pynchon’s work were the ultimate escape from the soul sucking, bleak, horribly lost, greed filled , over sensationalized media era of time we call now, it’s why I read so much I hate the modern world so much and the only reason I don’t cut my wrist or jump towards a speeding bus is because I know you only have one life. I feel like a MLB pitcher that won Game Seven of the World Series, he knows that no other game he plays from now on will feel as good as pitching in that game, reading that book…

Pynchon is a maniac. A brilliant, hyper-intelligent, maniac. The most redemptive and touching of his books if you’d ask me.

I can not name any other authors that switch from jerking off to tear-jerking all within the same breath, and if they could, they shouldn’t: leave it to Pynchon. He turns it into twisted, elegant, esoteric poetry.

As for the scope of this book, well...it reaches—jumps—to heights to which I have never been in literature. Gravity’s Rainbow is an on-rails action/adventure novel compared to this.

The feelings that arise from this scope are sensational; a psychedelic trip in novel form. He makes you feel what Hunter S. Thompson can only try his best to describe.

At the end of the day, however, this novel is NOT for everyone. I was two pages from the end and this fucking guy was STILL INTRODUCING NEW CHARACTERS. While not necessarily a bad thing, it was incredibly distracting and I had to let them just roll off of me without thinking too much about some of them.

All said and done, what I took away from this novel far outweighs what it took away from me, and for that I am incredibly grateful and can not recommend it to serious readers enough.

the stars are stupid and meaningless to "rate" it. i guess, now, to fully and really understand it, i'll have to translate it

IthinkIcanIthinkIcanIthinkIcan... Nope. Throwing in the towel at page 600. Without question the most frustrating book I've ever read (or not, since I didn't finish it). I've set this thing down at least a dozen times. And the stretches are growing longer between the returns. Even got it as an e-book so it wouldn't dislocate my wrist while commuting to work. On top of that I hate math, so whenever TP would embark on one of his lengthy math discussions (and there are quite a few), my eyes would start to glaze over as I waited for something interesting to happen again (and it would...which is why it is painful to set this aside). As to the math, I see what he's doing, what with history and humanity and the 20th Century (wars & revolution, etc.). But a little bit of that goes a long way. The problem there is that Pynchon never does little. He does BIG. In this case (as many have remarked), there's something like six or more novels packed in this monster. Some are more interesting than others (it reminds me, a bit, of John Dos Passos' U.S.A., but under the influence). And I do get a sense that Pynchon is following an overarching principle. No question in my mind, he's brilliant. A number of these characters are memorable, others are simply mouthpieces for Pynchon to wax on about...math. There are also several passages where the writing is both beautiful and profound, possessing a genuine ache for something lost around 1914. I'm not suggesting Pynchon would engage in something so pedestrian as a linear telling, as many of these characters (time travel, communications with the dead?) are experiencing this sense of loss a decade or more before the guns of August.

I understand that this is considered a classic. I don't understand why so many wax poetic about how amazing it was. Yes, the author hit on all the favorites of the late Victorian period, and threw in some obscure facts, people, and occurrences. That doesn't make it amazing. I didn't enjoy any of the side stories, and the writing felt disjointed and uninspired. I normally enjoy more bizarre, experimental fiction, but this one fell really, really flat for me.

This is Pynchon's zenith as a prose stylist and his best and most mature work. To lovers of Those Other Pynchon Books (of which I rank among) this would seem like blasphemy but I really do think that time will treat this book fondly, early critics obviously had to rush out their reviews on a deadline and were thus unable to fully wrestle with a narrative that demands this much out of the reader and is this sprawling. It's not a perfect book, no Pynchon novel is but this is most likely his most beautifully connected and well-considered work bar none, which is especially impressive when it appears to be so disjointed at first. But Pynchon puts in so many through lines in which one can approach this leviathan if they just meet it on its own terms and consistently put in the time and attention it craves from the reader. And it does demand a lot, it's understandable why someone who didn't crack this the first time would not feel all too compelled in returning... obviously it's long as hell for one, and it's pretty much entirely dependent on the reader just trusting that Pynchon take them for the ride of their lives with the book's own Internal Logic and Rules which are not exactly congruent with established narrative fundamentals... I know Lynch comparisons are cliche but for once I really do think that Twin Peaks: The Return might be the most cogent comparison for this kind of storytelling, in the sense that as in that series there is very clearly an authorial grand design here composed of very potently established components that build up to something stunningly complex, specifically in how those motifs can be reassembled and restructured in the reader's Brain Space with every single reread while Pynchon's own "objective" motives for the story remain just tantalizingly out of reach; the motifs and story beats are all there, but Pynchon just writes in such a way where you can really just experience something completely new out of the same fundamentals every single time, because the entire thing is steeped in such a consistent dreamlike logic that presumably only Pynchon fully understands, and allows the generous freedom of letting the reader piece that design together in the ways they prefer.

In slightly less prolix terms, he is not some Smart Guy Who Hates You like some accuse him of being but is instead someone who trusts the reader to interpret as they see fit with the parts they've already been given. This book is, at its core, about the holy pilgrimage that is the shared consciousness of its characters (and thus all of humanity), so you don't have to understand everything to the tiniest detail, because that isn't how life works either. As basic as it is to say, the journey is literally the destination here, and the journey here is about Our journey as a species, which is why the sprawl is completely justified. This is a book about everything We are, as told in the distinct lens of Pynchon's that is so valuable to the sprawling universe of fiction and the eternal solace we can seek in art.

"... was the signal going around the planet, or through it, or was linear progression not at all the point, with everything instead happening simultaneously at every part of the circuit?"

This style of narrative creates a book that actually, as best as anything can, feels infinite... something that sort of flew over my head (har-har) the first couple times was how these aforementioned narrative components are all meshing together to inform what is very much a mythic tale, in service of that central pilgrimage. The Odyssean quest is implicit here, but Pynchon is pulling from so many avenues of history, spirituality/philosophy, and fictional lineage, so that the allusions he makes can be mined from ad infinitum; so this actually ends up being Actual Myth in its very composition, given the way everything here can be played with and restructured like a narrative Rubix cube, forever reinterpretable and elastic. What this leads to is a sense of worldbuilding and nearly Infinitely Expansive awe and intrigue that would put most fantasy novelists out of commission, despite (and because of) the fact this just ostensibly takes place in Our World. A lot of the motifs here are primal and pretty much timeless; water and darkness, light and earth, civilization and its clash with the primal human need to be "out in the wind" as it were, the co-conscious and collective conscious and of course night and day, sleep and dreams... these motifs are what Pynchon uses to paint his extraordinarily ambitious fictional canvas, Literally Everything is working to build a mind-bogglingly vast fictional universe that you can just dive in and out of at any point as you see fit and take something new from. The book itself is long enough by page count, but the effect its actual narrative and structure creates is as though it's its own unending Library of Babel. This is a novel to be admired for just how intricately and convincingly its author creates a pulsing, breathing world [and it is indeed, everything in reality is conscious, that is one of the main themes of the book] that feels as though it has always existed and will exist forever, just like the universe we live in outside of the pages of books.

Is there some fluff? Probably, sure, the book is eleven-hundred pages long so not everything is going to click, there's certainly some moments which come to mind I can pick out and critique, but the thing is that everything is working so holistically on a chapter-by-chapter level that even in the bits I don't like quite as much, I would be hard pressed to think of what specifically I'd have left on the cutting room floor. Every damn page progresses the plot, even if it's using oblique methods to do so. Every character is important to the grand cosmos of the book, even those who may seem like one-off or joke characters are essential to what Pynchon is crafting here.

And oh voluminous vectors, the prose (I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself). This may receive the most contention on these parts of Goodreads, but imo this is Pynchon's finest hour as a stylist; the sort of gritty coarseness to the prose in Gravity's Rainbow has its own abrasive charm, but the prose in Against the Day is clearly an established master at the peak of his craft. It's the enviable control over tone and atmosphere Pynchon has in this book that especially elevates it to Olympian heights imo... there's an abiding spiritual tenderness toward the characters and story that Pynchon employs in this work that exists but is sort of at the margins in many of his other works (Vineland and Mason and Dixon come closest), and also suffusing that with a roiling feeling of apocalyptic dread and foreboding that is so befitting to the themes of a world teetering on collapse. There is such a melancholy and empathy toward the time period and characters in this book and by extension to the human race as a whole, even when Pynchon holds his cast accountable for their decisions. The sentences are winding and complex, but you could never accuse this of being purple prose imo because it just communicates the tone it wants to portray to such all-abiding perfection not to mention how well it continually establishes the book's cosmos, and this approach is sustained from page one to the last. Take this scene featuring the character Stray:

"She got sometimes to feeling too close to an edge, a due date, the fear of living on borrowed time. Because for all her winters got through and returns to valley and creekside in the spring, for all the day-and-night hard riding through the artemisia setting off sage grouse like thunderclaps to right and left, with the once-perfect rhythms of the horse beneath her gone faltering and mortal, yet she couldn't see her luck as other than purchased in the worn unlucky coins of all those girls who hadn't kept coming back, who'd gone down before their time, Dixies and Fans and Mignonettes, too fair to be alone, too crazy for town, ending their days too soon in barrelhouses, in shelters dug not quite deep enough into the unyielding freeze of the hillside, for the sake of boys too stupefied with their own love of exploding into the dark, with girl-size hands clasped, too tight to pry loose, around a locket, holding a picture of a mother, of a child, left back the other side of a watershed, birth names lost as well as behind aliases taken for reasons of commerce or plain safety, out in some blighted corner too far from God's notice to matter much what she had done or would have to do to outride those onto whose list of whose chores the right to judge had found its way it seemed. . . Stray was here, and they were gone, and Reef was God knew where - Frank's wishful family look-alike, Jesse's father and Webb's uncertain avenger and her own sad story, her dream, recurring, bad, broken, never come true."

So many motifs there, all in service of a central emotional wavelength he wants to get the reader on with the imagery, phrasing, themes... the prose just rides on its own tracks and soars across the pages, Pynchon has no need for traditional syntax because the mood he creates is rich and strange and moving for its digressions and interjections and what at first seem like strange asides that are really getting at core themes of the novel, propulsive throughout every sentence of this 1,085 page universe. The writing feels constantly expansive and tickling to nearly every side of my imaginative faculties and just constantly gets me considering and reanalyzing everything as I come across it, it's the closest a book has ever come to me where unraveling its deeper mysteries actually felt addictive, and especially exciting still knowing I haven't and never will get everything there is to be gotten out of this book. In earlier days I would have considered that a constraint, of not having all the answers, but I realize now that this is the point of life and art, for me at least.

There's so much more to the myth elements and what I love about it is that it actually centers the characters themselves. Postmodern characters are often accused of being ciphers, as merely drivers for the themes and structure surrounding them, and while this may technically be the case here, the book is overall about the characters, and the world itself which is alive. There are times where I am tempted to call this book "Lovecraftian" because of how the characters appear to lack agency in the face of a tempestuous universe conceived and maintained by oblique cosmological forces... the stuff going on here in the background in terms of the co-conscious, dreaming, accelerationism and the political forces of history is seriously weird, and something I'm still parsing out; there is a lot of mind bending stuff occurring here where Pynchon's worldbuilding is sort of built off an oblique but still clearly intentional Tarot / Kabbalah mythology which is something I didn't really get until I read it the third time, but it is possibly THE key to what's going on here and way more prominent than I initially realized. Spiritually this is maybe the richest novel Pynchon has ever penned. There's a lot going on here with the mathematic structure of the novel, the mobius strip and concept of eternal return and ascent / descent, and math is not really my brain language no matter how interesting I find it conceptually, but the motifs Pynchon uses to highlight its importance are enticing and vivid enough that I understand what he's getting at when combined with all of the other stuff I already feel like I'm more attuned to.

I think this is a far too humanity focused novel to term it as "cosmic horror" or anything of the sort [there is one "At the Mountains of Madness"-esque stretch of the book, mixed with its own mindbending "sci-fi" mechanics, that executes an excellent homage to the style, though]. Each character is a separate entity but they are all also One, they are all part of the greater cosmos, equal in how the entire universe of the book is structured, they are the world, they are a reflection of our world and people reflected on a world "set to the side of this one". These are very unconventional takes Pynchon is spinning on fictional and mythic archetypes throughout history [Lake and Webb's Genesis-inspired story is a good example, as well as Cyprian and Yashmeen's Orphic journey out of the underworld] but even with all the immense concepts they represent, he still gives all the best of them time to shine on their own terms, to make an impact as individual people who really feel like they could exist somewhere on the endless wheel of life the book, and perhaps our world, exists in. The genre homage elements don't do anything to deter from this, they are part of the point, these characters' transformations and strange, emotionally tender metaphysical apotheoses throughout the story works perfectly for a work that is absurd and surreal and not entirely in line with "Realism" as we understand it, it needs to have these genre elements and spins on tradition, the story is partially about how everything can be viewed as the same stories we tell ourselves repeating throughout the history of our race, and how they all really get down to the same fundamental things at the end of the day, and how arguably everything is ultimately about how humans want one thing, to be free and wild and "out in the wind" and how the forces of history and authority are forever in conflict with that Natural desire. Every character contributes to this theme beautifully in their own ways, they are their own world even while they fight for a better world, and even if they fail.

Overall this is just like how my brain works, contrary to people who may feel this is too disjointed the digressions just felt like second nature to me, and continue to be more and more understandable with every read, I think I'm inclined to love it and most of his books for that reason. There's so much here that is stimulating to my autist brain and I feel like the book's narrative and worldbuilding really works to that same wavelength. I don't know if Pynchon is autistic obviously but at the very least his work is interpretable as such, it's neurodivergent af, it is a work about imagination and the transformation through imagination, which I as a disabled person am very attached to, especially being given such grace to be trusted by the author to enjoy it at my own interpretation and pace. There's plenty to criticize about Pynchon's treatment of gender in the book, which I have in my notes that I'm planning to eventually all piece together into a chapter-by-chapter breakdown, but there are some very smart ways he reconstructs the concept of Gender here and I felt myself really pulled to how I myself understand my own identity. Basically, it's a very Me book, on nearly every level, and can be read on all of those levels at once or separately and come out with more joy every single time. The excitement just never ends with this book for me, contributing even more in my headspace to the themes of infinity here. I am quite sick to say the least for fear of getting too personal here, but I've come to terms with knowing that I need to believe in some kind of infinity at this point in my life, when I don't know what awaits even just tomorrow for me. Books can't be direct mirror images of the world waiting outside, but that I can create and maintain a world within my brain just from reading letters arranged in a certain way, it gets much easier to believe that there's so much more to this no matter what happens in my body and brain.

Like I've said there's a lot going on here, so it really does take commitment, but the beauty of it is that it's really not that hard either, it may be dense in how much Pynchon is working with here in structuring the cosmos of the book, but like I said not everything is graspable and linearity isn't the point, this just on its own terms works so potently in just taking the reader to the very ends of the universe and back in terms of imagination. It is the ultimate adventure, encompassing everything in fiction history you can conceive of and doing it in its own unique, eternally inventive logic, it is perfectly palatable as a narrative despite not having conventional build up or resolution, if you only accept the terms of the author's skyship odyssey. I think early critics and detractors ought to return to this if they have the time because it really does fully reveal itself with the rereads like all the best books. That being said it's gained a much wider readership and appreciation in recent years and that's exciting. But yeah, this is his best imo, if the page count is too much, I promise it's worth it if your brain is on the same track as this kind of storytelling, if this appeals to you, absolutely check this out, this does benefit a lot from its structure as a sort of sibling to Gravity's Rainbow I do think regardless of your previous Pynchon knowledge this is great on its own terms enough that it can be enjoyed for what it is no matter what, given that what it is can be so well-controlled by the reader and their engagement. I am so glad to be able to experience something like this and know it exists.

"Throughout the journey, then, Kit had dreamed of the moment he had stepped through the Gate. Often the dream came just before dawn, after a lucid flight, high, aethereal, blue, arriving at a set of ropes or steel cables suspended, bridgelike, above a deep chasm. The only way to cross is face-skyward beneath the cables, hand over hand using legs and feet as well, with the sheer and unmeasurable drop at his back. The sunset is red, violent, complex, the sun itself the permanent core of an explosion as yet unimagined. Somehow in this dream the Arch has been replaced by Kit himself, a struggle he feels on waking in muscles and joints to become the bridge, the arch, the crossing over. The last time he had the dream was just before rolling in to Irkutsk on the Trans-Siberian. A voice he knew he should recognize whispered, "You are released". He began to fall into the great chasm, and woke into the wine-colored light of the railroad carriage, lamps swaying, samovers at either end gasping and puffing like miniature steam engines. The train was just pulling into the station."

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:
n  

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.

n
Because Tom can write. He chooses to write about some surprising things, but he can write.

Now everybody—
n  

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.

n
Science-fiction, alternate reality, pastiche... A lot to process. Maybe more to come.

This book was with me for more than six months- roughly Christmas to the Fourth of July. I read a few other things along the way and maybe could have gone faster but it felt good to go at non-breakneck speed.

This book is so huge in scope and depth that it really became a part of my life. This is my seventh Pynchon book over the last 3 years and it's like they're all part of one giant quilt I've had the pleasure of draping over my consciousness. His voice is so distinct that Against the Day feels continuous with everything else he's written, going all the way back to V. But where the early books are deeply paranoid and maybe a little bit cold/clinical, the later stuff, like AtD and Mason & Dixon, gives off a warm glow of wisdom and tenderness.

Looking at the world through Pynchon's lens, anything you see or can think of has a deeper story to be explored and told. He's seemingly curious about everything, and no object or school of thought is beneath or beyond his scrutiny. It's a kind of obsessive curiosity about the world that borders on the mystical. One of many threads that runs through the book is the different ways humans look for transcendence and grace. In a small but real way, Against the Day feels like a kind of gift designed to open the reader up to some of these possibilities.

If you're already familiar with Pynchon, reading this book will be like sitting down with an insane old friend with many bizarre stories to tell. At one point a character almost drowns in mayonnaise. In another part, there's a talking ball of lightning. There's beautiful poetry, romance, and also the most graphic sex scenes I've ever read. History and politics are turned on their heads and explored in depth. On top of it all, Pynchon seems to have arrived at a kind of wisdom and peace with himself. There's so much crammed into the 1085 pages that you could probably spend several years studying and unpacking its secrets. Who is this guy??

Whatever I write in this little review will fail to do justice to this gigantic chunk of wild imagination distilled into ink on a page. If you like Pynchon, here he is in peak form. Some parts I enjoyed less than others, but that's too be expected in such a vast and varied wordscape. There is so much here that I'll carry with me, both consciously and subconsciously, for many years to come.

Mr. Pynchon, if you're reading this, thank you!

Late in the text, we are informed that "the world came to an end in 1914" (1077)--for some, an apocalypse. The commencement of WWI, which the narrative glosses over as though it were merely a footnote (important it seems only because euphemized fascism is its implicit fruit), is simultaneously the end of a specific 19th century operativity--likely incarnated in liberal industrialism as well as its leftwing antagonist--that nevertheless shares an imaginary with hollow earth inhabitants, antichthonic counter-earths, personal simulacra, teleportative travel, underground cities, and all sorts of other weirdnesses. Definitely something faustean here: two souls war in its breast.

The world however continues, with summary reference to the Spanish Flu, Prohibition, and other post-war items--and with it the Weird accelerates--as Gene Wolfe might say, 'this is the place of parting,' the heraclitean polemos that marks out the death of the real from the agambenian survival of a speculative remnant. After the War, for which the narrative is a lengthy self-aware prelude, nothing remains but crazy--"maquina loca," as one character notes regarding the replacement of human labor power by capital equipment.

The text otherwise revels in its excess and resists easy assimilation. Perhaps, for some of us, its complex architecture and diverse polymathy might be a "temporary refuge from the murderous fields of capitalist endeavor" (724).