Tue 1 Dec 2009
THOMAS PYNCHON – Against the Day. The Penguin Press, hardcover; First Edition, 21 November 2006. Trade paperback: Penguin, October 2007.
I spent most of August re-reading The Brothers Karamazov, which I won’t review here because Dostoyevsky don’t need me to pimp for him.
I just mention it by way of saying that after I finished its 800-plus densely-packed pages, I swore to read a few lighter, shorter things for the next couple months — then got sucked into picking up Thomas Pynchon’s 2006 mega-novel Against the Day.
I loved it, laughed out loud as I read it (a thing I seldom did with Karamazov) got involved with the characters and absorbed in the stories. But the damthing’s nearly 1100 pages long!
This is a book of biblical proportions, with myriad plots, sub-plots, sub-subplots, long discursions into physics, metaphysics, boys’-adventure-dime-novels and kinky sex, with references to everything cultural, pop-cultural and subcultural. And then even more references, from obscure pagan deities to 50s rock&roll.
There’s even a website to explain all the references. (See also the Wikipedia page.) Minor characters long-forgotten resurface hundreds of pages later and take over the narrative for chapters on end, and stories veer from hard-rock realism to ethereal unreality.
But ultimately, if it’s about anything at all, Against the Day is probably about the line between surrealism and fantasy and how it defines our dreams. As such, I recommend it to anyone with time on their hands and an unabridged dictionary by their side.
Others be Warned: this is a book that could defeat the reader.
December 1st, 2009 at 8:05 pm
Loved this dense and dazzling display of Pynchon at his most Pynchonesque, and what isn’t to love about a book that manages to be all that Dan says about it and also send up Tom Swift, Nick Carter, Frank Reade, Frank Merriwell, and introduce a major character loosely based on Wyatt Earp? And as Dan mentions it is also a delightlfully dirty book too.
A very funny book, something of a tour de force, and as Dan warns, not at all an easy read. Still, if you loved V or Gravity’s Rainbow this a return to the grand style and then some.
And when you finish it you can have it bronzed and use it as a doorstop.
December 2nd, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Let me brag: I made an addition to the Pynchon page, pointing out that a character referred to as a “gangster boyfriend Dhmitros” mentioned on pg 800-something while the narrative is set in Smyrna, may refer to Ambler’s Dimitrios, who first surfaces in that town.
December 2nd, 2009 at 6:23 pm
I owned a copy of V. when it came out in paperback in the mid-1960s, and I think so did every grad student at the University of Michigan that I knew at the time, no matter what their major was.
But I never read it, and while I can remember the shelf it was on when Judy and I first moved where we live now, I no longer have any idea where it is. Of course, that’s some 40 years later.
I think I intimidate easily, but perhaps I erred in not giving it a try, as Pynchon’s books if anything have only gotten longer and more complex. My only excuse is that I had all of those SF and mystery novels to read.
I don’t know if that’s a satisfactory reason or not.
I suppose that anyone reading this far into the comments will already know that Pynchon’s latest book, Inherent Vice, just came out. I browsed through it at Border’s, and do you know what? I’m still intimidated.
Either that, or I’ll tell you that I’m waiting for the paperback. You can believe either one.
PS to Dan: You can brag like that here anytime!
December 2nd, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Steve
Pynchon’s saving grace re intimidation is that he is funny and joyously dirty. Takes the edge off of the problem of reading such long dense books.
That said, I think you might enjoy Against the Day and Inherent Vice since both have a great many ties to popular literature. Both these are ultimately fun books.
December 3rd, 2009 at 3:05 pm
True, Dave!