'''Against the Day''', a
novel by
Thomas Pynchon, first appeared in the
United States on
November 21 2006. The
narrative takes place between the
1893 Chicago World's Fair and the time immediately following
World War I and features more than a hundred characters spread across
United States,
Europe,
Mexico,
Central Asia, and "one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all," according to the book jacket blurb written by Pynchon. At 1,085 pages it is the longest of Pynchon's novels, and like its predecessors an example of
historiographic metafiction or
metahistorical romance.
Title
The novel's title apparently references a verse in the
Bible (
2 Peter 3:7) reading "the heavens and the earth (... are ...) reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men."
[LeClair, Tom, Lead Zeppelin: Encounters with the unseen in Pynchon's new novel, a review of ''Against the Day'' in the Dec/Jan 2007 ''Book Forum''. The first reviewer who identified the title with the Biblical quote was Alexander Theroux in the November 24 ''The Wall Street Journal'' review Fantastic Journey (full text for subscribers only).]
Non-biblical sources for the title may also exist: ''
Contre-jour'', a term in
photography, literally means "against (the) day"; there are also two uses of the phrase "against the day" in Pynchon's ''
Mason & Dixon''.
[1]
A 1998 children's novel by
Michael Cronin uses the same title: it tells an
alternate history of a Britain occupied by Nazis.
Speculation prior to publication
As Pynchon researched and wrote the book, a variety of rumors about it circulated over the years. One of the most salient reports came from the former German minister of culture, and before that, the publisher of Henry Holt and Company,
Michael Naumann, who said he assisted Pynchon in researching "a Russian mathematician [who] studied for
David Hilbert in
Göttingen", and that the new novel would trace the life and loves of mathematician and academic
Sofia Kovalevskaya. Kovalevskaya briefly appears in the book, but Pynchon may have partly modeled the major character Yashmeen Halfcourt on her.
Author's synopsis/book jacket copy
In mid-July 2006, a plot-synopsis signed by Pynchon himself appeared on
Amazon.com's page for the novel, only to vanish a few days later. Readers who had noticed the synopsis re-posted it.
[2]
This disappearance provoked speculation on
blogs and the PYNCHON-L
mailing list about publicity stunts and
viral marketing schemes. Shortly thereafter, ''
Slate'' published a brief article revealing that the blurb's early appearance was a mistake on the part of the publisher,
Penguin Press.
[3] Associated Press indicated the title of the previously anonymous novel
[4]
1893 Chicago World's Fair
Pynchon's synopsis states that the novel's action takes place "between the
1893 Chicago World's Fair and the years just after
World War I". "With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred." Pynchon promises "cameo appearances by
Nikola Tesla,
Bela Lugosi and
Groucho Marx", as well as "stupid songs" and "strange sexual practices".
The novel's setting
: "moves from the labor troubles in
Colorado to turn-of-the-century
New York City, to
London and
Göttingen,
Venice and
Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia,
Siberia at the time of the mysterious
Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all."
Like several of Pynchon's earlier works, ''Against the Day'' includes both
mathematicians and
drug users. "As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them."
The synopsis concludes:
:If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction.
:Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck.
The published jacket-flap of the book featured an edited-down version of this text, omitting the last three sentences, references to specific authorship (as well as misspelling
Nikola Tesla's first name as "Nikolai"; Pynchon had previously spelled it correctly).
[5]
Plot
Nearly all reviewers of the book mention the
Byzantine nature of the plot.
Louis Menand in ''
The New Yorker'' gives a simple description:
''The New Yorker'' Menand, Louis, "Do the Math: Thomas Pynchon's latest novel", ''The New Yorker'', November 27, 2006 edition, posted November 20, accessed November 28, 2006
: "[T]his is the plot: An anarchist named Webb Traverse, who employs dynamite as a weapon against the mining and railroad interests out West, is killed by two gunmen, [...] who were hired by the wicked arch-plutocrat Scarsdale Vibe. Traverse's sons [...] set out to avenge their father’s murder. [...] Of course, there are a zillion other things going on in ''Against the Day'', but the Traverse-family revenge drama is the only one that resembles a plot [...] that is, in Aristotle’s helpful definition, an action that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The rest of the novel is shapeless [...]"
As to the multitude of plot dead-ends, pauses and confusing episodes that return to continue much later in the narrative, Menand writes:
: "[T]he text exceeds our ability to keep everything in our heads, to take it all in at once. There is too much going on among too many characters in too many places. [...] This [including tone shifts in which Pynchon spoofs various styles of popular literature] was all surely part of the intention, a simulation of the disorienting overload of modern culture."
Extract
The following extract from ''Against the Day'' appeared in the
Penguin Press Winter 2007 catalog:
:Back in
1899, not long after the terrible
cyclone that year which devastated the town, Young Willis Turnstone, freshly credentialed from the American School of
Osteopathy, had set out westward from
Kirksville, Missouri, with a small grip holding a change of personal linen, an extra shirt, a note of encouragement from Dr.
A. T. Still, and an antiquated
Colt in whose use he was far from practiced, arriving at length in Colorado, where one day riding across the
Uncompahgre plateau he was set upon by a small band of ''
pistoleros''. "Hold it right there, Miss, let's have a look at what's in that attractive valise o'yours."
:"Not much," Willis said.
:"Hey, what's this? Packing some iron here! Well, well, never let it be said Jimmy Drop and his gang denied a tender soul a fair shake now, little lady, you just grab ahold of your great big pistol and we'll get to it, shall we." The others had cleared a space which Willis and Jimmy now found themselves alone at either end of, in classic
throwdown posture. "Go on ahead, don't be shy, I'll give you ten seconds gratis, 'fore I draw. Promise." Too dazed to share entirely the gang's spirit of innocent fun, Willis slowly and inexpertly raised his revolver, trying to aim it as straight as a shaking pair of hands would allow. After a fair count of ten, true to his word and fast as a snake, Jimmy went for his own weapon, had it halfway up to working level before abruptly coming to a dead stop, frozen into an ungainly crouch. "Oh, pshaw!" the
badman screamed, or words to that effect.
:''"¡Ay! Jefe, jefe,"'' cried his lieutenant Alfonsito, "tell us it ain' your back again."
:"Damned idiot, o' course it's my back. Oh mother of all misfortune—and worst than last time too."
:"I can fix that," offered Willis.
:"Beg your pardon, what in hell business of any got-damn punkinroller'd this be, again?"
:"I know how to loosen that up for you. Trust me, I'm an osteopath."
:"It's O.K., we're open-minded, couple boys in the outfit are
evangelicals, just watch where you're putting them lilywhites now—yaaagghh—I mean, huh?"
:"Feel better?"
:"Holy Toledo," straightening up, carefully but pain-free.
:"Why, it's a miracle."
:''"¡Gracias a Dios!"'' screamed the dutiful Alfonsito.
:"Obliged," Jimmy guessed, sliding his pistol back in its holster.
The reference to the "cyclone" dates this scene to shortly after
April 27, 1899, when a
tornado passing through
Adair County, Missouri cut a path of destruction three blocks wide, killed thirty-two people and destroyed hundreds of buildings.
[6]
The popular song "Just as the Storm Passed O'er" reflects the event, and the
Kimball Piano Company exploited the incident for its advertising, when one of their instruments was carried a long distance by the tornado but still found in working condition.
Writing styles
Many reviewers have commented on the various writing styles in the book that hark back to popular fiction of the period.
John Clute identifies four "story clusters", each with one or more prose-styles mimicking a popular fiction genre in the style used before the end of World War I:
[John Clute, "Excessive Candour: Aubade, Poor Dad", ''Sci-Fi Weekly'', November 27, 2006]
1. "'The Airship Boys cluster', which is told in a boys' adventure idiom."
''Examples'': "boys' adventure fiction, from the [contemporary] Airship Boys tale by
Michael Moorcock to
Horatio Alger; the Dime Novel in general; the British school story in general ... the future war novel"
2. "'Western Revenge cluster', which is told through an array of western narrative voices…"
''Examples'':
Edward S. Ellis,
Bret Harte,
Jack London
3. "'The Geek Eccentric Scientist cluster', which is told in an amalgam of styles."
''Examples'': "the Lost Race novel; the
Symmesian Hollow Earth tale; the Tibetan Lama or
Shangri-La thriller; the
Vernean Extraordinary Journey; the
Wellsian scientific romance; the Invention tale and its close cousin the
Edisonade ..."
4. "'The Flaneur Spy Adventuress cluster', told in any style that comes to hand, from the shilling shocker to
Huysmans." Clute writes that this cluster gradually comes to dominate the second half of the book, just as the Western cluster dominates the first half.
''Examples'': "the European spy romance thriller a la
E. Phillips Oppenheim; the World Island spy thriller a la
John Buchan; the mildly sadomasochistic soft porn tale as published by the likes of
Charles Carrington in Paris around the turn of the century." [Clute may mean to include "the ''
Zuleika Dobson'' subgenre of the ''
femme fatale'' tale in particular" in this cluster.]
Clute sees (but does not specifically categorize) another style mimicked in the book: "the large number of utopias influenced by
Edward Bellamy and
William Morris". Pynchon also certainly has an eye to the
steam punk sub-genre in ''Against the Day''.
Characterization
Some reviewers complain that Pynchon's characters have little emotional depth and therefore don't excite the sympathy of the reader. For example, Laura Miller in ''
Salon.com'':
Time doesn't exist, but it crushes us anyway; everyone could see World War I coming, but no one could stop it — those are two weighty paradoxes that hover over the action in "Against the Day" without truly engaging with it. This is the stuff of tragedy, but since the people it sort of happens to are flimsy constructions, we don't experience it as tragic. We just watch Pynchon point to it like bystanders watching the Chums of Chance's airship float by overhead.[7]
''
New York Times'' reviewer Michiko Kakutani writes of the characterizations: "[B]ecause these people are so flimsily delineated, their efforts to connect feel merely sentimental and contrived."
As a complement to Miller's criticism about tragedy, Adam Kirsch sees comedy as undercut as well, although parody remains:
The gaudy names Mr. Pynchon gives his characters are like pink slips, announcing their dismissal from the realm of human sympathy and concern. This contraction of the novel's scope makes impossible any genuine comedy, which depends on the observation of real human beings and their insurmountable, forgivable weaknesses. What replaces it is parody, whose target is language itself, and which operates by short-circuiting the discourses we usually take for granted. And it is as parody — in fact, a whole album of parodies — that ''Against the Day'' is most enjoyable.
Principal characters
In alphabetical order by last name
★ 'Lew Basnight', a "Psychical Detective"
★ 'The Chums of Chance' (the crew of the skyship ''Inconvenience''):
★
★ 'Miles Blundell', the jocular cook
★
★ 'Chick Counterfly', scientific officer
★
★ 'Lindsay Noseworth', second-in-command, "Master-At-Arms, in charge of discipline aboard the ship" (ATD, p. 4)
★
★ 'Pugnax', a dog rescued from a fight in Washington, D.C. by the Chums of Chance, he reads and can communicate with humans via "Rff-rff" sounds
★
★ 'Randolph St. Cosmo', ship commander (ATD, p. 3)
★
★ 'Darby Suckling', "baby" of the crew, (ATD, p. 3) and later legal-officer of the ship.
★ 'Ruperta Chirpingden-Groin', aristocratic English traveler
★ 'Yashmeen Halfcourt', "the stunningly beautiful ward of a British diplomat in Central Asia"
[[1] Dubail, Jean, review of ''Against the Day'' in the ''Cleveland Plain-Dealer'', November 19, 2006, accessed November 26, 2006], and "polymorphous mathematical prodigy"
[[2]Lasdun, James, "The carnival goes on (and on)" review of ''Against the Day'' in ''The Guardian'' of London, November 25, 2006, accessed November 26, 2006], ward of the T.W.I.T., entrusted to the group by her adopted father, Colonel Halfcourt
★ 'Sloat Fresno', one of the murderers of Webb Traverse, along with Deuce Kindred
★ 'Rao V. Ganeshi', academic from India
★ 'Kieselguhr Kid', terrorist (the original recipe for dynamite involved mixing nitroglycerin with ''kieselguhr'' — porous dirt containing silica)
★ 'Deuce Kindred', one of the murderers of Webb Traverse, along with Sloat Fresno
★ 'Cyprian Latewood', "a homosexual twit possibly modeled on
Evelyn Waugh's Sebastian Flyte"
★ 'Al Mar-Faud', a minor character who mispronounces his Rs as Ws
★ 'The Rideouts:'
★
★ 'Dahlia (or "Dally") Rideout', Merle Rideout's (adoptive) daughter
★
★ 'Erlys Rideout', Merle Rideout's ex-wife, who has run off with Zombini, a magician
★
★ 'Merle Rideout', an itinerant photographer and scientific inventor
★ 'Mouffette', the name of a papillon lap-dog (''mouffette'' in French = "skunk")
★ 'Professor Renfrew', British professor with a bitter personal rivalry with one Professor Werfner ("Renfrew" spelled backwards)
★ 'Captain Sands', inspector in London
★ 'Lionel Swome', T.W.I.T. (see below)
★ 'The (traversing) Traverses:'
★
★ 'Frank Traverse', an engineer; son of Webb and brother of Reef, Kit and Lake
★
★ 'Kit Traverse', youngest son of Webb and brother of Frank, Reef and Lake; he studies mathematics at Yale (and studies with the physicist Willard Gibbs, whose work is preparing the way for twentieth-century thermodynamics) and at Gottingen
★
★ 'Lake Traverse', daughter of Webb and sister of Frank, Reef, and Kit
★
★ 'Mayva Traverse', wife of Webb and mother of his children
★
★ 'Reef Traverse', a cardsharp; son of Webb and brother of Frank, Kit and Lake
★
★ 'Webb Traverse', "a turn-of-the-century ... miner"[ and "an anarchist familiar with dynamite, and he might or might not be the elusive mad bomber who destroys railroad bridges and other mine property"][; father of Frank, Reef, Kit and Lake; killed by Sloat Fresno and Deuce Kindred]
★ 'Trespassers', "who appear to be dead people from the future"
★ 'Professor Heino Vanderjuice' of Yale University, associate of the Chums of Chance,
★ 'The (bad) Vibes:'
★
★ 'Colfax Vibe'
★
★ 'Cragmont Vibe'
★
★ 'Dittany Vibe'
★
★ 'Edwarda Vibe', née Beef,
★
★ 'Fleetwood Vibe'
★
★ 'Scarsdale Vibe', "the most ruthless of the mine owners"[ and "a caricature of capitalist evil"]
★
★ 'Wilshire Vibe', Scarsdale's brother
★ 'Foley Walker', Scarsdale Vibe's special assistant
★ 'Professor Werfner', German professor with a bitter personal rivalry with one Professor Renfrew ("Werfner" spelled backwards)
★ 'Luca Zombini', magician;
:Erlys (his wife)
:Cici, Dominic, Nunzison (his sons)
:Concetta, Lucia (his daughters)
:Niccolo, Elijah (his ancestors)
Notable organisations
★ 'Chums of Chance', Five "cheerful young balloonists who drop into the story at critical moments and who seem capable of time travel"[, all aboard the skyship ''Inconvenience'']
★ 'T.W.I.T.', True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys (T.W.I.T.), "a covert London group fighting the powers of darkness".[[3]Keouge, Peter, "Light Reading: Thomas Pynchon's up Against the Day", ''Boston Phoenix'', November 14, 2006, accessed November 26, 2006]
Themes
Critic Louis Menand sees an organizing theme of the book as
something like this: An enormous technological leap occurred in the decades around 1900. This advance was fired by some mixed-up combination of abstract mathematical speculation, capitalist greed, global geopolitical power struggle, and sheer mysticism. We know (roughly) how it all turned out, but if we had been living in those years it would have been impossible to sort out the fantastical possibilities from the plausible ones. Maybe we could split time and be in two places at once, or travel backward and forward at will, or maintain parallel lives in parallel universes. It turns out (so far) that we can’t. But we did split the atom — an achievement that must once have seemed equally far-fetched. ''Against the Day'' is a kind of inventory of the possibilities inherent in a particular moment in the history of the imagination. It is like a work of science fiction written in 1900.
Menand states that this theme also appeared in Pynchon's ''Mason & Dixon'' and that it ties in with a concern present in nearly all of Pynchon's books:
:[Pynchon] was apparently thinking what he usually thinks, which is that modern history is a war between utopianism and totalitarianism, counterculture and hegemony, anarchism and corporatism, nature and techne, Eros and the death drive, slaves and masters, entropy and order, and that the only reasonably good place to be in such a world, given that you cannot be outside of it, is between the extremes. "Those whose enduring object is power in this world are only too happy to use without remorse the others, whose aim is of course to transcend all questions of power. Each regards the other as a pack of deluded fools," as one of the book’s innumerable walk-ons, a Professor Svegli of the University of Pisa, puts it. Authorial sympathy in Pynchon’s novels always lies on the "transcend all questions of power," countercultural side of the struggle; that’s where the good guys — the oddballs, dropouts, and hapless dreamers — tend to gather. But his books also dramatize the perception that resistance to domination can develop into its own regime of domination. The tendency of extremes is to meet, and perfection in life is a false Grail, a foreclosure of possibility, a kind of death. Of binaries beware.
:[...] Science is either a method of disenchantment and control or it is a window onto possible worlds: it all depends on the application. [...] [T]he relevant science [in this book] [...] is mathematics, specifically, the mathematics associated with electromagnetism, mechanics, and optics — with electric light, the movies, and, eventually, weapons of mass destruction.
Steven Moore, in a ''Washington Post'' book review, writes:
Pynchon is mostly concerned with how decent people of any era cope under repressive regimes, be they political, economic or religious. [...] 'Capitalist Christer Republicans' are a recurring target of contempt, and bourgeois values are portrayed as essentially totalitarian."
[4] Moore, Steven, "The Marxist Brothers: A long-awaited work from the elusive cult novelist", review of ''Against the Day'' in ''Washington Post Book World'', November 19, 2006, page BW10, accessed November 28, 2006
Jazz (or, as Pynchon refers to it in one variant spelling of the novel's time period, "Jass") provides a non-hierarchical model of organization that the author relates to politics about a third of the way through the novel, according to Leith, who quotes from the passage, in which ‘Dope’ Breedlove, an Irish revolutionist at a Jazz-bar makes the point. Breedlove characterises the Irish Land League as "the closest the world has ever come to a perfect Anarchist organization".
Leith, Sam, "And all that jass - The Spectator on Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon"
''The Spectator'', November 24, 2006, accessed November 28, 2006
:"Were the phrase not self-contradictory," commented ‘Dope’ Breedlove.
:"Yet I’ve noticed the same thing when your band plays — the most amazing social coherence, as if you all shared the same brain."
:"Sure," agreed ‘Dope’, "but you can’t call that organization."
:"What do you call it?"
:"Jass."
In a Bloomberg News review, Craig Seligman identifies three overarching themes in the novel: doubling, light and war.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=ab6WLEn2ciGU&refer=muse Seligman, Craig, "Pynchon's First Novel in 10 Years Has Sex, Math, Explosives", review of ''Against the Day'' at web-site of Bloomberg News, article dated November 20, 2006, accessed November 26, 2006
Doubling
"Pynchon makes much of a variety of calcite called Iceland spar, valued for its optical quality of double refraction; in Pynchonland, a magician can use it to split one person into two, who then wander off to lead their own lives", Seligman writes.
The doubling effect of Iceland spar. Compare with the book's cover image above.
Sam Leith identifies the same theme:
:"The book is shot through with doubling, or surrogacy. There are the palindromic rival scientists Renfrew and Werfner. [...] Events on one side of the world have an occult influence on those on the other. 'Double refraction' through a particular sort of crystal allows you to turn silver into gold. Mirrors are to be regarded with, at least, suspicion. It gets more complicated, and sillier. We’re introduced to the notion of ‘bilocation’ — where characters appear in two places at once — and, later, to that of 'co-consciousness', where someone’s own mind somehow bifurcates. 'He wondered if he could be his own ghost,' Pynchon writes of one character."[ ]
War
Although the novel directly portrays the First Balkan War (1912 - 1913), it dispatches World War I after a few pages. But during most of the book the Great War "looms as an approaching catastrophe", according to Seligman.[ This theme might form part of what Menand describes above as the struggle between power-pursuers and power-transcenders.]
Reviewer Adam Kirsch criticizes Pynchon's overall treatment of political violence:[[5] Kirsch, Adam, "Pynchon: He Who Lives By the List, Dies by It", review of ''Against the Day'', ''The New York Sun'', November 15, 2006, accessed November 28, 2006]
:This is a novel, after all, in which most of the heroes are proud terrorists [...] [H]is attitude towards violence is childishly sentimental, and ruthless in a way only possible to a writer whose imagination has never dwelt among actual human beings. Mr. Pynchon's heroes (the poor, the workers, Anarchists) assassinate and blow up his villains (mine owners, Pinkerton thugs, the bourgeoisie) with no more qualms than the Road Runner has about dropping an anvil on the Coyote. In the novel as in the cartoon, good and evil are unproblematic, death is unreal, and sheer activity takes the place of human motive.
Light
Light becomes a "preoccupation [...] to which everything, finally, returns", according to reviewer Sam Leith.[ ]
Light appears as a religious symbol or element and as a scientific phenomenon, as Peter Keouge, in his ''Boston Phoenix'' review[ points out:]
:Here is where some familiarity with pre-Einsteinian theories of light (the discredited concept of Æther is vindicated) and mathematical controversies around the turn of the last century pays off. Kit, for example is a Vectorist. He will later get cozy with Yashmeen, herself an exotic orphan. She’s a Quarternionist (cf. William Rowan Hamilton’s formula i² = j² = k² = ijk = -1, which somehow, I suspect, relates to the structure of the book, each term in the equation applicable to each of the novel’s five sections) obsessed with the Zeta function of G.F.B. Riemann. In addition, she has ties to the True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys (T.W.I.T.), a covert London group fighting the powers of darkness through Pythagorean beliefs and the tarot.
In his ''Bloomberg News'' review, Craig Seligman portrays the book as "overstuffed with wonders" often related to light, including a luminous Mexican beetle and the Tunguska Event of 1908 that leaves the native reindeer soaring and "stimulated by the accompanying radiation into an epidermal luminescence at the red end of the spectrum, particularly around the nasal area" (reminiscent of the luminescence of a certain fictional reindeer). "[T]he novel is full of images of light, like those beetles and those noses (and the title)", Seligman reports.
Reviewer Tom Leclair notes light in various flashy appearances:
God said, 'Let there be light'; ''Against the Day'' collects ways our ancestors attempted to track light back to its source and replaced religion with alternative lights. There is the light of relativity, the odd light of electromagnetic storms, the light of the mysterious Tunguska event of 1908, when a meteorite struck Siberia or God announced a coming apocalypse. [...] the dynamite flash, the diffracted light of Iceland spar, the reflected light of magicians' mirrors, the 'light writing' of photography and movies, the cities' new electric lighting that makes the heavens invisible at night.
Scott McLemee sees connections between light, space-time and politics:[McLemee, Scott, "It's a sprawled world, after all: Thomas Pynchon's complex 'Against the Day' features bomb-throwing anarchists, pre-Einsteinian physics, Balkan politics and bisexual romance", review in ''Newsday'', November 19, 2006]
:The "mythology" governing Pynchon's novel (enriching it, complicating it, and giving the untutored reader a headache) involves the relationship between the nature of light and the structure of space-time. It's an effort, perhaps, to imagine something beyond our familiar world, in which "progress" has meant a growing capacity to dominate and to kill.
:"Political space has its neutral ground," says another character in what may be the definitive passage of the novel. "But does Time? is there such a thing as the neutral hour? one that goes neither forward nor back? is that too much to hope?" (Or as Joyce has Stephen Dedalus say in "Ulysses": "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.")
It remains unclear whether Pynchon himself regards such escape or transcendence as really possible.
Abstruse topics
Main articles: List of references in Against the Day
Pynchon uses a large number of abstruse topics, geographical locations and abstruse words in his book that many readers might find difficult.
References
1. Chapter 12 (p. 125) and 70 (p. 683). Against the Day Title at ''Against the Day Wiki''. Pynchon's single use of the phrase in ''Against the Day'' ends a chapter at the page 805.
2. Amazon.com's Customer Discussions > Against the Day forum > Found It, Reid Burkland Jul 16, 2006 12:48 PM PDT
3. Mystery solved Troy Patterson
4. New Thomas Pynchon novel is on the way Hillel Italie
5. Both versions of the synopsis at ''Thomas Pynchon Wiki''
6.
"The Kirksville Cyclone in 1899"
7.
''Salon'' Miller, Laura, ''Salon'' November 21, 2006, accessed November 28, 2006
External links
★ Against the Day Wiki
★ Official UK publisher's site
★ Against the Day Weblog
★ Chumps of Choice Weblog
★ Emanating Against the Day Blog
Reviews
★ ''About.com'' - Gregory Schneider
★ ''A Gathering of the Tribes'' - Jon Rachmani, 1/18/2007
★ ''The American Prospect'' - Eric Rauchway, 1/5/2007
★ ''ArtVoice'' - Todd Natti, 1/18/2007
★ ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' - Donna Seaman, 12/10/2006
★ ''Austin American-Statesman'' - Roger Gathman, 11/19/2006
★ ''Austin Chronicle'' - James Renovitch, 12/15/2006
★ ''The Australian (AU)'' - Don Anderson, 12/23/2006
★ ''Bloomberg News'' - Craig Seligman, 11/20/2006
★ ''BookForum'' - Tom LeClair, Dec/Jan 2007
★ ''BookPage'' - Robert Weibezahl
★ ''Boston Globe'' - Mark Feeney, 11/19/2006
★ ''Boston Phoenix'' - Peter Keough, 11/14/2006
★ ''Buffalo News'' - Joseph Conte, 12/3/2006
★ ''Chicago Reader'' - Jonathan Rosenbaum, 12/1/2006
★ ''The Christian Science Monitor'' - Yvonne Zipp, 1/16/2007
★ ''Cleveland Plain-Dealer'' - Jean Dubail, 11/19/2006
★ ''The Complete Review''
★ ''Denver Post'' - Dorman T. Shindler, 12/9/2006
★ ''Desicritics'' - Richard Marcus, 2/6/2007
★ ''Dissident Voice'' - Ron Jacobs, 11/20/2006
★ ''The Economist'' - 11/30/2006
★ ''Entertainment Weekly'' - Ken Tucker, 11/28/2006
★ '' Ficciones (Greek Review) - Dr. Basileios Drolias, 2/3/2007
★ ''Financial Times (UK)'' - Lodovic Hunter-Tilney, 12/1/2006
★ ''Glanz @ Elend (DE)'' - Goedart Palm, 12/2006
★ ''The Globe and Mail (CA)'' - Greg Hollingshead, 12/2/2006
★ ''The Guardian (UK)'' - James Lasdun, 11/25/2006
★ ''The Guardian/Comment Is Free (UK)'' - John Crace, 11/21/2006
★ ''Houston Chronicle'' - Terrence Doody, 12/1/2006
★ ''The Independent (UK)'' - Tim Martin, 11/26/2006
★ ''The Independent (UK), II'' - David Goldblatt, 12/15/2006
★ ''Kansas City Star'' - Chris Packham, 12/3/2006
★ ''LA CityBeat'' - Anthony Miller, 12/14/2006
★ ''Library Journal'' - Barbara Hoffert, 11/21/2006
★ ''The London Paper (UK)'' - Stuart McGurk, 12/13/2006
★ ''London Review of Books (UK)'' - Michael Wood, 1/4/2007
★ ''Los Angeles Times'' - Christopher Sorrentino, 11/19/2006
★ ''Metro (UK) - Robert Murphy, 11/23/2006
★ ''Miami Herald'' - Ariel Gonzalez, 12/3/2006
★ ''Milwaukee Journal Sentinel'' - Mike Fischer, 11/24/2006
★ ''The Modern Word'' - Allen Ruch, 11/20/2006
★ ''The Nation'' - John Leonard, 11/22/2006
★ ''New Statesman (UK)'' - Rachel Aspden, 12/4/2006
★ ''New York Magazine'' - Keith Gessen, 12/11/2006
★ ''New York Newsday'' - Scott McLemee, 11/19/2006
★ ''New York Post'' - Quentin Rowan, 12/3/2006
★ ''New York Review of Books'' - Luc Sante, 1/11/2007
★ ''New York Sun'' - Adam Kirsch, 11/15/2006
★ ''New York Times'' - Michiko Kakutani, 11/20/2006
★ ''New York Times Sunday Book Review'' - Liesl Schillinger, 11/26/2006
★ ''The New Yorker'' - Louis Menand, 11/20/2006
★ ''Newsweek'' - Malcom Jones, 11/17/2006 (part 1 of a "serial review"); 11/21/2006 part 2, 12/1/2006 part 3
★ ''The Observer (UK)'' - David Gale, 11/26/2006
★ ''The Oregonian'' - Richard Melo, 11/26/2006
★ ''Philadelphia Inquirer'' - Carlin Romano, 11/19/2006
★ ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'' - Kristofer Collins, 12/31/2006
★ ''Providence Journal'' - Sam Coale, 11/26/2006
★ ''Publishers Weekly'' - 10/24/2006
★ ''St. Petersberg Times'' - Colette Bancroft, 12/10/2006
★ ''Salon'' - Laura Miller, 11/21/2006
★ ''The San Diego Union-Tribune'' - James Leigh, 11/26/2006
★ ''San Francisco Chronicle'' - David Hellman, 12/10/2006
★ ''Santa Cruz Sentinel'' - Matt King, 1/28/2007
★ ''Sci Fi Weekly'' - John Clute, 11/27/2006
★ ''The Scotsman (UK)'' - Tom Adair, 11/25/2006
★ ''The Scotsman (UK), Scotland On Sunday'' - Stuart Kelly, 11/26/2006
★ ''Seattle Times'' - John Freeman, 11/17/2006
★ ''The Spectator (UK)'' - Sam Leith, 11/24/2006
★ ''The Sydney Morning Herald (AU)'' - Anthony Macris, 12/15/2006
★ ''Tampa Tribune'' - Kevin Walker, 11/19/2006
★ ''The Telegraph (UK)'' - Alex Massie, 11/20/2006
★ ''Time Magazine'' - Richard Lacayo, 11/12/2006
★ ''Time Out New York'' - Joshua Rothkopf, 11/16/2006
★ ''The Times (UK)'' - Douglas Kennedy, 12/2/2006
★ ''The Times, Sunday Times (UK)'' - John Dugdale, 12/10/2006
★ ''The Times Literary Supplement (UK)'' - Sophie Ratcliffe, 11/29/2006
★ ''USA Today'' - Bob Minzesheimer, 11/20/2006
★ ''The Utah Statesman'' - Ben Clarke, 1/19/2007
★ ''Vail Daily News'' - Matt Zalaznick, 1/1/2007
★ ''Village Voice'' - John Haskell, 12/7/2006
★ ''Washington Post'' - Steven Moore, 11/19/2006
★ ''Washington Times'' - Bruce Allen, 12/10/2006
العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
Español
