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SPOILER ALERT? (It's Pynchon. So, like, whatever....)

Against the Day had a few interesting distinctions for me when it was first published in November of last year. Most basically, it's by Pynchon, whose 1973 book Gravity's Rainbow is only, like, my favorite thing ever. Pynchon also has the distinction of not being dead, so Against the Day was a work of literature I could anticipate. I've never, ever anticipated the publication of a book before. It was such a bizarre feeling, especially when I realized I was more excited for this novel's release than I ever had been for any album. It's also 1085 pages long. Pynchon was known for his lengthy works before Against the Day but this is still his longest by 300 pages. Few do length like Pynchon, so I was completely ecstatic to find out what he would do with that much more space. I wanted to read this book SO hard.

I was a little disappointed when I started to see that critical opinion on the book was tepid. They complained it was too long and had no shape and one-dimensional characters. Complaining of no shape is a clear indicator of never having read Pynchon before while the others are signs of not having the guts to finish the book. All the central characters go through several different stages in the book; are torn by different loyalties. The characters here are just as human as Pynchon's Mason and Dixon and there are more of them in Against the Day. Reader response, however, seemed to be really positive and of the general opinion that critics hadn't seemed to have read all the way through the book; considering the Pulitzer Prize committee's attempts at Gravity's Rainbow, it's nothing new.

I have no pretentions as to being about to lay out some analysis of this book, more just trying to air out my ideas. For me, this was by far the densest and most difficult of Pynchon's books. It took me quite a while to become truly interested and engaged by the book; essentially it took until the Western revenge story-arch faded from centrality. Well-written as it was, I personally am just not a Western fan and generally think of Pynchon as primarily concerned with Europe or at the very least New England. He's never ventured this far west before. While fin-de-siècle Colorado is not your average Western's setting, it still seemed a bit out of place in a Pynchon book. The central characters to this section however, Reef and Frank Traverse, took on new life as they moved on to Europe and Mexico respectively.

Also initially troublesome was the sheer number of storylines in the beginning of the book. We have the Chums of Chance airship crew, the tragic Traverse family, Kit Traverse's New England education at the hands of Scarsdale Vibe, Lew Basnight's English dealings with the True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys (T.W.I.T.), and the coming of age of one Dahila Rideout. Each is handled with utmost care and written beautifully but it could literally be a couple hundred pages between chapters devoted to any one storyline. And, of course, each of these archs has a few subarchs going on within itself. The archs begin to shapeshift and meld, trading characters and generally becoming entirely new archs, with the exception of the Chums of Chance storyline which seems to keep mostly to itself.

When asked what it was about by friends or family while I was reading it and it being, you know, impossible to recount any sort of plot, I'd have to simply list themes: Anarchism, duality, and light. And four-dimensional mathematics, I guess. Eventually I got fed up the looks I got and just told everyone "I don't know." The three central themes, while all extremely abstract as subjects of a novel, are relentless interesting even if the four-dimensional stuff probably requires some sort of graduate degree.

Inside the dust jacket, Pynchon promises "strange sexual practices" and it really looked like he wasn't going to deliver until the closing act of the novel. First, we witness Reef's complete misunderstanding of the term "lap dog" and then he forms one corner of the bisexual love triangle also including Cyprian Latewood (a chubby mathematician/debauchee) and Yashmeen Halfcourt (a universally desired T.W.I.T. charge). The relationship that forms around these three includes plenty of the promised practices which are certainly unorthodox if not quite Gravity's Rainbow-caliber depravity. More importantly, though, the relationship is easily the most complex and beautiful Pynchon has ever written.

Word for word, Against the Day was obviously written by a literary genius. The level at which Pynchon operates, over the many different tones and styles he presents in the book, starts high and only builds through out the novel. Guys, it's fucking stunning. For me, each Pynchon book has a scene or sequence that transcends the rest of the book, no matter how great the whole may be. In V., it was scene with the priest and the children on Malta; in Gravity's Rainbow, it was the section on Pokler's summer visits with the girl who may or may not be his daughter; for Mason & Dixon, it was their return to England. In Against the Day, it's the last 300 pages. I knew they were important!

This novel is gorgeous. When I finished it, I laid in my bed kissing the book for a while. It could not have ended more perfectly. In the back of my mind the entire length of the book was the fact that Against the Day may very well mark the end of a literary career. If it does, no book would be better suited. However, I dearly hope it's just another massive achievement in the oeuvre of one the greatest novelists we've ever known.

Thomas Pynchon at Amazon & Insound