Against the Day
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| Author | Thomas Pynchon |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Penguin Press |
| Released | 2006 |
Against the Day is a novel by Thomas Pynchon released in the United States on November 21, 2006. At 1,085 pages it is the longest of Pynchon's novels. The narrative takes place between the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the time immediately following World War I and features over a hundred characters spread across America, 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 himself.
The apparent source of the tome's title is the verse in the Second Epistle of Peter (2 Peter 3:7), which states the heavens and earth are now "reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men."<ref name=leclair>BookForumLeClair, 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 LeClair may be the first reviewer to have identified the Biblical origin of the title, although Alexander Theroux also identified it in the November 24 Wall Street Journal (see next note)</ref> <ref>[1]Theroux, Alexander, "Fantastic Journey", review of Against the Day in The Wall Street Journal, November 24, 2006, accessed November 29, 2006</ref>
The Bible may not be the source or the only source for the title, however: Contra jour, a term in photography, literally means "against the day", and the Against the Day Wiki has found two uses of the three-word phrase in Pynchon's Mason & Dixon (on pages 125 and 683).<ref> [2] Against the Day Wiki Web site, Web page titled "Against the Day Title", accessed December 3, 2004</ref>
Contents |
[edit] 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, 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 mathmetician and academic Sofia Kovalevskaya. Kovalevskaya briefly appears in the book but the major character Yashmeen Halfcourt may have been partly modeled on her.
In mid-July 2006, a plot synopsis signed by Pynchon himself appeared on Amazon.com,<ref>Pynchon, Thomas (2006-07-14). Book description. Untitled Thomas Pynchon page. Amazon.com. Retrieved on 2006-07-24.</ref> only to vanish a few days later. 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.<ref name="patterson2006">Patterson, Troy. "Mystery solved", Slate, 2006-07-20. Retrieved on 2006-07-24.</ref> Associated Press indicated the title of the previously anonymous novel<ref>Italie, Hillel. "New Thomas Pynchon novel is on the way", Associated Press, 2006-07-20. Retrieved on 2006-07-24. </ref> (a book by Michael Cronin of the same title also exists, dealing with an alternate history of World War II).
[edit] Plot
Nearly all reviewers of the book mention the Byzantine nature of the plot. Louis Menand, in a review in The New Yorker gives a simple description: "[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 [...]"<ref name=menand>The New YorkerMenand, Louis, "Do the Math: Thomas Pynchon's latest novel", The New Yorker, November 27, 2006 edition, posted November 20, accessed November 28, 2006</ref>
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."<ref name=menand/>
[edit] Author's synopsis/book jacket copy
Pynchon's synopsis states that the novel's action takes place between the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the time immediately following World War I. "With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead," Pynchon writes, "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." He promises cameos by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi and Groucho Marx, as well as "stupid songs" and "strange sexual practices".
Settings for the novel include Colorado, fin-de-siècle New York, London, Göttingen, Venice and Vienna, as well as Siberia at the time of the Tunguska Event. Pynchon also indicates that Against the Day visits "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," Pynchon writes, "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 as follows:
- 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.
For the finished jacket flap copy, this text was edited down, omitting all references to any specific authorship.
[edit] Extract
The following extract from Against the Day appeared in the Penguin Press Winter 2007 catalog:<ref name="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 cut a path of destruction three blocks wide, killed thirty-two people and destroyed hundreds of buildings.<ref>"The Kirksville Cyclone in 1899". Truman State University (2006-01-31). Retrieved on 2006-08-04.</ref> The popular song "Just as the Storm Passed O'er" was based on 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.
[edit] 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 it was written before the end of World War I:<ref name=clute>[3] Clute, John, "Excessive Candour: Aubade, Poor Dad", Sci-Fi Weekly, November 27, 2006, accessed November 29, 2006</ref>
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; sometimes I heard echoes of Larry McMurtry ..." Period examles: Edward S. Ellis to Bret Harte to 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 Llama 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.
Other styles Clute sees mimicked in the book but which he doesn't categorize: "the large number of utopias influenced by Edward Bellamy and William Morris"
[edit] Characterization
Pynchon's characters have little emotional depth and therefore don't excite the sympathy of the reader, some reviewers complain, including Laura Miller in Salon: "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."<ref>Salon Miller, Laura, Salon November 21, 2006, accessed November 28, 2006</ref>
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 says comedy is also undercut, 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."<ref name=kirsch/>
[edit] Principal characters
[edit] In alphabetical order by last name
- Lew Basnight, a "Psychical Detective"
- Miles Blundell, the jocular cook aboard the skyship Inconvenience; one of the five "Chums of Chance"<ref name=romano>[4] Carlin Romano, "Pynchon weighs in: Jokey, dense, 1,085 pages, The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 19, 2006, accessed November 27, 2006</ref>
- Chick Counterfly, one of the five "Chums of Chance"<ref name=romano/>
- Yashmeen Halfcourt, "the stunningly beautiful ward of a British diplomat in Central Asia"<ref name=dubail>, [5] Dubail, Jean, review of Against the Day in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, November 19, 2006, accessed November 26, 2006</ref>, and "polymorphous mathematical prodigy"<ref name=lasdun>[6]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</ref>
- Sloat Fresno, one of the murderers of Webb Traverse, along with Deuce Kindred
- Rao V. Ganeshi, academic from India
- Kieselguhr Kid, terrorist (dynamite was originally made by 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"<ref name=craig/>
- Lindsay Noseworth, one of the five "Chums of Chance"<ref name=romano/>
- The Rideouts:
- Dahlia (or "Dally") Rideout — Merle Rideout's daughter
- Erlys Rideout — Merle Rideout's ex-wife, who has run off with Zombini, a magician
- Merle Rideout an itinerant photographer
- Mouffette the name of a sexy poodle (mouffette is French for "skunk")
- Professor Renfrew, British professor with a bitter personal rivalry with one Professor Werfner, whose name just happens to be "Renfrew" spelled backwards
- Randolph St. Cosmo, one of the five "Chums of Chance" <ref name=romano/>
- Captain Sands, inspector in London
- Darby Suckling, one of the five "Chums of Chance"<ref name=romano/>
- 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
- Reef Traverse, a cardsharp; son of Webb and brother of Frank, Kit and Lake
- Webb Traverse, "a turn-of-the-century ... miner"<ref name=craig/> 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"<ref name=dubail/>; father of Frank, Reef, Kit and Lake
- Trespassers, "who appear to be dead people from the future"<ref name=dubail/>
- 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"<ref name=dubail/> and "a caricature of capitalist evil"<ref name=craig/>
- 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, whose name just happens to be "Werfner" spelled backwards
- Luca Zombini, magician; other Zombinis: WIFE: Erlys; SONS: Cici, Dominic, Nunzison; DAUGHTERS, Concetta, Lucia; ANCESTORS, Niccolo, Elijah
[edit] Recurring characters organized by group
(for Rideout, Traverse, Vibe and Zombini families, see alphabetical listing)
[edit] Chums of Chance
Five "cheerful young balloonists who drop into the story at critical moments and who seem capable of time travel"<ref name=dubail/>, all aboard the skyship Inconvenience:
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[edit] T.W.I.T.
True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tertactys (T.W.I.T.), "a covert London group fighting the powers of darkness".<ref name=keouge>[7]Keouge, Peter, "Light Reading: Thomas Pynchon's up Against the Day", Boston Pheonix, November 14, 2006, accessed November 26, 2006</ref>
- Yashmeen Halfcourt is somehow connected to the group
- Cyprian Latewood
- Lionel Swome
[edit] Themes
Critic Louis Menand believes an organizing theme of the book is "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."<ref name=menand/>
Menand states that this theme was also present 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 that "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."<ref name=moore>[8] 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</ref>
Jazz (or, as Pynchon refers to it in one variant spelling of the novel's time period, "Jass") is a nonhierarchical 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 says the Irish Land League was "the closest the world has ever come to a perfect Anarchist organization".<ref name=leith>Leith, Sam, "And all that jass - The Spectator on Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon" The Spectator, November 24, 2006, accessed November 28, 2006</ref>
- "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.<ref name=craig>[9] 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</ref>
[edit] 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. <ref name=craig/>
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."<ref name=leith/>
[edit] War
Although the novel dispatches World War I after a few pages, during most of the book the Great War "looms as an approaching catastrophe", according to Seligman.<ref name=craig/> This theme might be 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:<ref name=kirsch>[10] 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</ref>
- 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.
[edit] Light
Light is a "preoccupation [...] to which everything, finally, returns", according to reviewer Sam Leith.<ref name=leith/>
Light is considered as a religious symbol or element and as a scientific phenomenon, as Peter Keouge, in his Boston Phoenix review<ref name=keouge/> 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 Tertactys (T.W.I.T.), a covert London group fighting the powers of darkness through Pythagorean beliefs and the tarot.
In his Bloomberg News review, Craign Seligman writes, that the book is "overstuffed with wonders" often related to light, including a 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.<ref name=craig/>
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".<ref name=leclair/>
Scott McLemee sees connections between light, space-time and politics:<ref name=mclemee>[11] 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, accessed November 28, 2006</ref>
- 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 is not at all clear whether Pynchon himself thinks such escape or transcendence is really possible.
For more comment on Pynchon's themes and scientific theories, see Stuart Kelly's comments in the "Abstruse topics" section, below.
[edit] Historical events
Steven Moore, in a Washington Post book review, suggests, "A good warm-up exercise for reading this is the 'Robber Barons and Rebels' chapter in Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States; Pynchon shares Zinn's populist viewpoint."<ref name=moore/>
- mysterious collapse of St Mark's Campanile in the Piazza San Marco, Venice, in 1902
- Tunguska Event, in 1908
- Macedonian Question
- Mexican Revolution
- World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893
- World War I
[edit] Years of the narrative
As a work of historical fiction, the book often refers to events no longer widely known. These Wikipedia pages mention and link to events the narrative may mention (the book is unclear as to when the narrative actually ends; most reviewers say it ends not long after World War I):
| 1893 | 1894 | 1895 | 1896 | 1897 | 1898 | 1899 | 1900 | 1901 | 1902 | |
| 1903 | 1904 | 1905 | 1906 | 1907 | 1908 | 1909 | 1910 | 1911 | 1912 | |
| 1913 | 1914 | 1915 | 1916 | 1917 | 1918 | 1919 | 1920 | 1921 | 1922 |
[edit] Geographical locations
Pynchon "conveys sense of place with such astonishing intensity that his Chicago and New York and London and Venice and places east seem too dense for one world to hold them, for his descriptions of cities read like descriptions of their absolute 'eternal' substance," reviewer John Clute wrote in Sci-Fi Weeklymagazine. <ref name=clute/>
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North America Europe |
Africa Asia
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[edit] Abstruse topics
Stuart Kelly, in Scotland on Sunday writes that Pynchon's use of false scientific ideas of the 1893-1920 period have a thematic purpose:<ref name=kelly>[12]Kelly, Stuart, "Mystery man's last hurrah", review in Scotland on Sunday, the Sunday newspaper of The Scotsman November 26, 2006, accessed November 28, 2006</ref>
- Pynchon has a lot of mordant fun with the scientific theories of the day. [...] [T]he red herrings and hopeless optimism of a bygone era are used to throw the coming darkness into stark relief.
- Pynchon ransacks popular literature [...] not to parody it, but to contrast the happy endings and averted catastrophes with the historical reality.
Roger Gathman, in the Austin American-Statesman warns, "Be prepared for talk of eigenvalues and Hermittian operators, which you won't understand and aren't expected to."<ref name=gathman>[13] Gathman, Roger, Austin American-Statesman, November 19, 2006accessed November 28, 2006</ref>
[edit] Science and mathematics
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[edit] U.S. labor history
See also: Labor unions in the United States, for a history of U.S. labor relations in the period
[edit] Mexican Revolution
[edit] The mystical and the mythical
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[edit] Other
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[edit] Abstruse words
In this book and others, Pynchon often uses words that would send nearly every reader to a dictionary, although many of these words are not in typical dictionaries:
- absquatulate — v: run away; usually includes taking something or somebody along
- cataplexy — n : sudden loss of muscle power following a strong emotional stimulus
- embonpoint — n: plumpness (page 25)
- fulgurescence — n : an emission in flashes or sparks, like lightning
- gamomania — n: extreme desire to be married (page 432)
- gynecophobia — n: fear of women (page 501)
- mephitically — adv: resembling a mephitis — an offensive smell or stench; poisonous or foul-smelling gas emitted from the earth (page 129)
- mouchard — n: police spy (page 560)
- mousmée — a type of hydrangea flower (page 560)
- xanthochroid — adj: blonde, blonde hair - a Greek neologism
[edit] References
<references/>
[edit] External links
[edit] Reviews
- Austin American-Statesman - Roger Gathman, 11/19/2006
- Bloomberg News - Craig Seligman, 11/20/2006
- BookForum - Tom LeClair, Dec/Jan 2007
- Boston Globe - Mark Feeney, 11/19/2006
- Boston Phoenix - Peter Keough, 11/14/2006
- Chicago Reader - Jonathan Rosenbaum, 12/1/2006
- Cleveland Plain-Dealer - Jean Dubail, 11/19/2006
- The Complete Review
- Dissident Voice - Ron Jacobs, 11/20/2006
- Entertainment Weekly - Ken Tucker, 11/28/2006
- Financial Times - Lodovic Hunter-Tilney, 12/1/2006
- 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
- The Independent (UK) - Tim Martin, 11/26/2006
- Library Journal - Barbara Hoffert, 11/21/2006
- Los Angeles Times - Christopher Sorrentino, 11/19/2006
- 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 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")
- Newsweek - Malcom Jones, 11/21/2006 (part 2 of a "serial review")
- Newsweek - Malcom Jones, 12/1/2006 (part 3 of a "serial review")
- The Observer (UK) - David Gale, 11/26/2006
- The Oregonian - Richard Melo, 11/26/2006
- Philadelphia Inquirer - Carlin Romano, 11/19/2006
- Providence Journal - Sam Coale, 11/26/2006
- Publishers Weekly - 10/24/2006
- Salon - Laura Miller, 11/21/2006
- 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
- 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 Literary Supplement (UK) - Sophie Ratcliffe, 11/29/2006
- USA Today - Bob Minzesheimer, 11/20/2006
- Washington Post - Steven Moore, 11/19/2006
