Against the Day
The inimitable Thomas Pynchon has done it again. Hailed as "a major work of art" by The Wall Street Journal, his first novel in almost ten years spans the era between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I and moves among locations across the globe (and to a few...
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The inimitable Thomas Pynchon has done it again. Hailed as "a major work of art" by The Wall Street Journal, his first novel in almost ten years spans the era between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I and moves among locations across the globe (and to a few places not strictly speaking on the map at all). With a phantasmagoria of characters and a kaleidoscopic plot, Against the Day confronts a world of impending disaster, unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places and still manages to be hilarious, moving, profound, and so much more.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780143112563 (0143112562)
Publish date: October 30th 2007
Publisher: Penguin
Pages no: 85
Edition language: English
(original review, 2006) Art is a social medium, a material medium, an intellectual medium, an economic medium: it consists of a great deal more than surfaces. Art that consisted only of surfaces - if such a thing were possible - would be of no larger significance than a crossword puzzle. This is tru...
In the end I don't know what I think of this mess. There is one good complete novel and the guts of probably one more good one here. But there are about four more incomplete skeins that aren't very good. The whole thing seems bolted together by the Webb Traverse thread, or maybe the Chums of Chan...
Is it ok if I get a lil’ pretentious on your asses?(What am I talking about, this is a Pynchon review, it’s almost compulsory! In fact, the above could be P’s tagline- I’ll call his agent and set up an… oh yeah, I forgot.)Reading this book is a lot like travelling along the Riemann zeta function tha...
The early reviews I read of Against the Day were all a little bewildered, and gave me the distinct impression that a lot of reviewers had tried to skim-read this huge novel so they could get their articles written in time. It's not an easy one to write up at all. It's very long, very busy, and you c...
Just over 800 pages in and I'm calling it read. I am done with Against the Day, done with Pynchon. I really enjoyed the first two thirds of the book, there is never a dull moment, if it's not the plot (yes, there is plenty of plot) it's the characters and references to hundreds of historical and lit...
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