TheChilly
07-06-2011, 09:19 PM
"Now single up all lines!"
The first sentence of Against the Day serves to challenge the reader that he will be in for an adventure of maximalist and high-roller caliber (and it shows, thanks to the 1085-page count), this caliber coming in the form of the many characters that plague the narrative and Pynchon's knack of detailing his alternate version of the time period between 1893 to post-World War I, along with a dash of using a series of writing styles that serve as a pastiche of a respective writing style popular during that time period. What was really fun about reading the novel is being able to match a group of characters present in one story arc with a writing style (which will be called "cluster")... and it took a lot of reading to do for me.
Two clusters that should be easy to decode as you drill deeper into the narrative are the "Western" clusters (judging by the location and feel of this cluster, I placed Frank Traverse here) and the "Spy Adventuress" clusters (i.e. Cyprian Latewood), the first cluster dominating the first half of the narrative and the SA cluster dominating the second half (beginning with Part 4). There are two other clusters, such as the "Scientist" cluster (which I didn't pay too much attention to) and the "Airship Boys" cluster (which weaves in and out of the narrative through the pilots of the Inconvenience appearing in crucial points to observe the changing world into a new and darker era.
I fell in love with the crew known as the "Chums of Chance" because of not only their love for adventure, but the pacing of their scenes to give the reader that feeling of flying above this alternate history and traveling through time and space (there is a point before Part 2 in which they drop at an unidentified location to fight off creatures, which seemingly is a nod to science-fiction and fantasy: "They descended over a battlefield swarming with diminutive combatants wearing pointed hats and carrying what proved to be electric crossbows, from which they periodically discharged bolts of intense greenish light, intermittently revealing the scene with a morbidity like that of a guttering star." -- pg. 117)
Now, I'm not going to reveal the plot structure of the piece so that it will be a surprise to a new reader, but what I will say is that this is not beach reading. It will take you a while to get through some areas due to the author's intense detail that he inserts in both his prose and environments (be grateful that this isn't Gravity's Rainbow, despite some instances of paranoia towards Part 4. Though if there is a small sub-plot in the piece, we're looking at an offspring of Traverses seeking to avenge the death of anarchist Webb Traverse. If there was a clear antagonist in the narrative, there probably isn't, other than Deuce Kindred and Scarsdale Vibe (I'm guessing they're psuedoantagonists because their story isn't as important as Pynchon's objective as a worldsmith in "Against the Day".
Note that the work will acquire a lot of patience and will not be as accessible as a lot of his earlier works. However, I found the work to be really rewarding because to quote Barbara Hoffert, "Pick up another book for a break, and it will seem relentlessly ordinary." This is also how I felt with this work, and there were several points where I felt increasingly exhausted with the narrative (or, series of narratives). This is where I learned to basically slow down when reading this work and enjoy the ride (Remember not to read this work at breakneck speed. You will get lost if you try, especially when you get to the last portions of the narrative, where things seem to be revealing themselves).
During the work, I came across several different passages that speak truth about our current condition (for example, on page 372: "We look at the world, our governments, across the spectrum, some with more freedom, some with less. And we observe that the more repressive the State is, the closer life under it resembles Death..."). Read further into the narrative, and you shall find them.
My only concern is that I was hoping that these different clusters could have intersected or intertwined at a couple of points in the work, but don't seem to, which is understandable because of the author's objective.
All in all, this is a work that I highly recommend studying if you're a big fan of Pynchon's work. Some call this work a culmination of his past ideas that he acquired in his career, and others call it a giant mess that doesn't know which story it wants to be. To those criticisms, I say yes, but again, Pynchon is an acquired taste and one worth getting used to. Your mind will be assaulted with immense intelligence, but it's worth it once you get to the novel's rewarding final passage (quite possibly the only passage I've ever read in my lifetime that gave me chills and felt cinematic to me in response to the 3+ years I've spent and struggled with the work).
You can tackle this work of "Gravity's Rainbow" first (I think both works relate because of how their narratives began as detailed views of their respective histories before dissolving into something darker. "Rainbow" takes it to an extreme, though).
Good luck.
-- Chilly
The first sentence of Against the Day serves to challenge the reader that he will be in for an adventure of maximalist and high-roller caliber (and it shows, thanks to the 1085-page count), this caliber coming in the form of the many characters that plague the narrative and Pynchon's knack of detailing his alternate version of the time period between 1893 to post-World War I, along with a dash of using a series of writing styles that serve as a pastiche of a respective writing style popular during that time period. What was really fun about reading the novel is being able to match a group of characters present in one story arc with a writing style (which will be called "cluster")... and it took a lot of reading to do for me.
Two clusters that should be easy to decode as you drill deeper into the narrative are the "Western" clusters (judging by the location and feel of this cluster, I placed Frank Traverse here) and the "Spy Adventuress" clusters (i.e. Cyprian Latewood), the first cluster dominating the first half of the narrative and the SA cluster dominating the second half (beginning with Part 4). There are two other clusters, such as the "Scientist" cluster (which I didn't pay too much attention to) and the "Airship Boys" cluster (which weaves in and out of the narrative through the pilots of the Inconvenience appearing in crucial points to observe the changing world into a new and darker era.
I fell in love with the crew known as the "Chums of Chance" because of not only their love for adventure, but the pacing of their scenes to give the reader that feeling of flying above this alternate history and traveling through time and space (there is a point before Part 2 in which they drop at an unidentified location to fight off creatures, which seemingly is a nod to science-fiction and fantasy: "They descended over a battlefield swarming with diminutive combatants wearing pointed hats and carrying what proved to be electric crossbows, from which they periodically discharged bolts of intense greenish light, intermittently revealing the scene with a morbidity like that of a guttering star." -- pg. 117)
Now, I'm not going to reveal the plot structure of the piece so that it will be a surprise to a new reader, but what I will say is that this is not beach reading. It will take you a while to get through some areas due to the author's intense detail that he inserts in both his prose and environments (be grateful that this isn't Gravity's Rainbow, despite some instances of paranoia towards Part 4. Though if there is a small sub-plot in the piece, we're looking at an offspring of Traverses seeking to avenge the death of anarchist Webb Traverse. If there was a clear antagonist in the narrative, there probably isn't, other than Deuce Kindred and Scarsdale Vibe (I'm guessing they're psuedoantagonists because their story isn't as important as Pynchon's objective as a worldsmith in "Against the Day".
Note that the work will acquire a lot of patience and will not be as accessible as a lot of his earlier works. However, I found the work to be really rewarding because to quote Barbara Hoffert, "Pick up another book for a break, and it will seem relentlessly ordinary." This is also how I felt with this work, and there were several points where I felt increasingly exhausted with the narrative (or, series of narratives). This is where I learned to basically slow down when reading this work and enjoy the ride (Remember not to read this work at breakneck speed. You will get lost if you try, especially when you get to the last portions of the narrative, where things seem to be revealing themselves).
During the work, I came across several different passages that speak truth about our current condition (for example, on page 372: "We look at the world, our governments, across the spectrum, some with more freedom, some with less. And we observe that the more repressive the State is, the closer life under it resembles Death..."). Read further into the narrative, and you shall find them.
My only concern is that I was hoping that these different clusters could have intersected or intertwined at a couple of points in the work, but don't seem to, which is understandable because of the author's objective.
All in all, this is a work that I highly recommend studying if you're a big fan of Pynchon's work. Some call this work a culmination of his past ideas that he acquired in his career, and others call it a giant mess that doesn't know which story it wants to be. To those criticisms, I say yes, but again, Pynchon is an acquired taste and one worth getting used to. Your mind will be assaulted with immense intelligence, but it's worth it once you get to the novel's rewarding final passage (quite possibly the only passage I've ever read in my lifetime that gave me chills and felt cinematic to me in response to the 3+ years I've spent and struggled with the work).
You can tackle this work of "Gravity's Rainbow" first (I think both works relate because of how their narratives began as detailed views of their respective histories before dissolving into something darker. "Rainbow" takes it to an extreme, though).
Good luck.
-- Chilly