Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon
Against the Day
by Thomas Pynchon
This first edition published in 2006 by Viking/Penguin
Follow the Chums of Chance as they travel via airship (sometimes through the interior of the earth) to the Chicago world’s fair, Iceland, Italy, Austria, and basically everywhere on various missions of observation/reconnaissance.
Along with the Chums, the novel more-or-less centers around three families (Traverse, Webb, and Vibe) as their lives become intertwined in commerce and worker’s rights, and eventually, what becomes the leading motivation for most characters, layer-upon-layer of revenge. The anarchist movements of the day (set from 1893 until just after WWI), including those in Colorado, drive the action as dynamite and bombs are set to gain attention and basic human rights from corrupt owners. As it develops and things escalate, Pynchon shows the natural end of capitalism and its inherent need to consume absolutely everything (the destruction of all available resources and our world).
So much of the book is about control (and the paranoia of it) and how people get and maintain power, always scheming new ways to slice up the earth and one another. It’s also about light waves and all forms of energy as vehicles for transmitting information or even the body and soul through dimensions. It’s about how who controls these forms of communication/waves (light, sound, natural resources) controls earthly power, the robber barons of the day knowing this and taking advantage.
As events spiral towards WWI, power grabs become more overt with megalomaniacs controlling railroads that penetrate the landscape that “took away everything indiscriminately, to be sold, to be slaughtered, to be led beyond the reach of love (1044).” The war happening in part to quell the anarchist movements (gaining traction all over the world) by creating new patriotism and sending the revolutionaries to die on battle fields, allowing those in power to continue their reign, setting up unshakable positions that remain in place to this day.
There’s also constant discussions of mathematics and the intersection of science and religion/spirituality as both try to push beyond three dimensions into the fourth, fifth, sixth, etc…to search for immortality, something greater than as everything moves towards ever-bigger means of destruction (leading of course to implications of colonizing both the sky and time), when, all the while, the secret places/knowledge (overlaid multiverses) that the Chums are looking for manifest as real-life lessons like leaving behind places and people with no future.
Pynchon continuously introduces new characters and places and names and descriptions, always layering new threads. It can be incredibly frustrating, and your ability to roll with or embrace this is going to dictate how much you get along with his books. In doing so, though, he captures so much of the sounds, sights, and smells of life it almost seems impossible. It forces you to consider all these various details and threads while the narrative is moving along and makes you live in the present moment as background details start to fall away or become internalized.
In the end, only Kit and Dally really make it out, to Shambhala and beyond, into the life after, a life “where music which cannot be marched to goes on uninterrupted all night…(1217).” It feels me with joy (like remembering old friends) to think of the Chums of Chance (“Red blood. Pure mind.”) somewhere above/inside/around the earth, traveling through light, existing as a destination where all concerns and wishes are addressed, traveling ever on, towards grace.
This is a huge, lumbering work. I’ve had some time to mull it over, to think about this book in the context of Pynchon’s work as a whole, and, for me, this is the best Pynchon. That is to say, it suits my tastes best (part Western, part sci-fi, part historical-fiction-romance). Almost every reading session, I would stop to really take in or appreciate some piece of incredible writing, so rare for something this long. I think that Gravity’s Rainbow is objectively better. The writing in GR is unbelievable, and I think it’s a bit more interesting than the style here, which is maybe sloppier (by Pynchon standards) and more far reaching. I need to reread GR to say with certainty that Against the Day is my favorite, but both are incredible and very different. I think about the world of this book a lot, and I am excited to reread it one day and return to its sprawling, beautiful lands and characters.
Heave Lit Rating: Masterpiece
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