Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24187 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1104 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Looking to add 42 CDs to your collection in one fell swoop? Possessed of 54 hours of free time that desperately need to be filled? Look no further than this audiobook of Pynchon's latest literary behemoth, a product so ridiculously outsized it deserves a Pynchon book of its own to celebrate it. Hill is to be commended for making his way through the 1,100 pages of Pynchon's novel, traipsing all the way from the union-busting American West of the 1880s to the WWI-era Balkans, shifting accents and deliveries with aplomb along the way. While it is hard to imagine anyone mustering the energy to listen to all of Pynchon's admittedly brilliant late career masterpiece, Hill admirably meets the challenge, although he occasionally makes the mistake of emphasizing the book's comedy over its deep moral and intellectual seriousness. At 54.5 hours long, though, a little extra comedy is probably a necessary accoutrement.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
The Seattle Times sums up critical reaction to Against the Day best: "Like Bruegel's painting 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,' this is a portrait of mankind's attempt to transcend our mortality—or at least push up against its very edge." Thomas Pynchon's previous novels, including V., The Crying of Lot 49,and Gravity's Rainbow, tested boundaries as well—not only of our own human understanding but of the fiction craft itself. This newest offering contains familiar elements—a whimsical humor, an erudite intellect, leftist ideals, and a sense of historical logic. Despite its magnificence, however, Against the Day tested most reviewers' patience (especially Michiko Kakutani's). The novel's length, digressions, and intellectual complexity will not please everyone, but those who stick with it are, well, probably smarter than the rest of us.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From AudioFile
Listeners navigating Pynchon's latest magnum opus could easily be thrown off by the multitude of characters, themes, and events in this novel that spans several decades around the cusp of the twentieth century. From bomb-throwing anarchists to greedy capitalists, from miners to "pavement nymphs," from adventurers to mystics, reader Dick Hill works wonders as he portrays this cast of hundreds who wend their way through a dense yet always intriguing story. With a palette of voices that not only capture the unique traits of each character but make them all stand out, and with narration that keeps the story flowing, listeners who persevere through this long novel will find both the story and the performance immensely rewarding. K.M. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

Best Sentences Ever
I have no idea what Thomas Pynchon was trying to convey with 'Against the Day' but the descriptions of place and time are above outstanding. The sentences of 'Against the Day' are the best sentences ever. The book is hilarious frequently, nearly every page. Various underground paranoid attempts to find the linchpins of the world are described with the goal of moving the world but these attempts are shown not to amount to much. The counter culture currents of the day were more or less completely irrelevant to warding off the disaster of World War I that was fast approaching. Pynchon provides no positive lesson as far as I can tell. I see 'Against the Day' as providing a negative lesson rather than a positive lesson with the negative lesson being that the esoteric as an explanation best be foregone. The exoteric rather than the esoteric provides the only key to history that is of any use but I am saying that rather than 'Against the Day'.

literary free jazz
Having at long, long last reached the end of this monster--with, on my own part, quite as many diversions, side-trips, digressions and submissions to entropy as the Traverse clan and their cohorts experienced--I feel fully entitled to say at the end of the very long day (and "Day"): mmmmyehh.

Other reviewers have sufficiently rehearsed the plot, such as it is (and the whole point of the book is: "it isn't"). Open the book at random--and you may as well, for there's little to be gained from reading it sequentially--and you're almost guaranteed to find, on any given page, a startling turn of phrase, a striking metaphor, an inspired simile, or a rapturous, descriptive prose-poem. Which is to say, all these years on, Pynchon's gift for the English language is undiminished. Joyce, Nabokov and Gaddis are really his only peers in the last hundred years.

Alas, all these years on, his vices are also undiminished. I come to Against the Day having read V. the year before (and having read all Pynchon's other novels at various times prior to that) and what strikes me is that here is an artist who has completely failed to develop over the years. Everything he does well, he did equally well in 1963; everything he does poorly (plotting, characterization, pacing, editing) he still does very poorly. Indeed, the similarities between V.and AtD are so striking--both concerned with the Great Game, woo-woo metaphysics and pseudoscience, and an imminent apocalypse--that they often read as if the one were a rewrite of the other.

Is it so unreasonable to expect a little artistic development in 45 years? I, for one, don't see it. In AtD, Pynchon gives us exactly what we've come to expect...and this, to me, is not the hallmark of a great artist, it's the hallmark of a one-trick pony. It's a hell of a trick--one that kept me entertained for several years--but at this point it's time to learn a new one.

Too, except for Pynchon cultists, I defy anyone not to be bored for long stretches of this bloated opus. The Virginia Quarterly reviewer hit the nail squarely on the head when he called Pynchon a "pub bore": someone who has half-digested mountains of random facts at his disposal and is determined to blow your mind with his erudition. Think: Cliff Clavin on steroids and crystal meth. For every genuinely interesting bit of period (1893-WWI) arcana that he's unearthed there must be a dozen of interest only to historians and steampunk obsessives.

Still, just when I'd get fed up, I'd get drawn back in. Parts of the book are certainly as splendid as anything he's ever written...and if there's a lot of the twee, the tedious, and the inane to wade through in between flashes of inspiration and insight, no adventure worth its salt--as the Chums of Chance might have it--is free of its dangers and doldrums. Pynchon fans will read it as a matter of course. Pynchon newbies, however, would be well-advised to get their feet wet with V., Gravity's Rainbow, or Mason & Dixon.

pelicans for hire
Reading 'Against the Day' felt like a possibly well-deserved act of intellectual self-flagellation. It hurt real bad...but maybe in a constructive manner. I'm too confused to tell. Researching many of the concepts in the book, my brain...my humorously feeble brain...imploded and is now a tender wedge of unsightly flesh (roughly the size and texture of a goldfish).

Though I can now tell you what a quaternion is...I cannot tell you WHY a quaternion is. Because of The Jesus? A non-tangential supposition: "god is dead", and the vacuum of his leaving exploded Tunguska. It exploded Tunguska real good. Trees fell. Shambhala had its privacy fence knocked down. Sad for all. Wait, I should have added "Spoiler Alert!" before saying that. Anyway.

I do get sick of complaints regarding the novel's length. The phone book is not only long, but tedious...and they reprint that one constantly. I've never heard anyone say, "Christ, this phone book is loooong". This criticism: invalid. Besides, excessive page numbers provide great examples of strong technical writing. Kids today...they need examples.

In closing: do read Against the Day. Do not understand Against the Day.

Pynchon Tip #427: once the spine of Against the Day is sufficiently crinkled, leave it at a conspicuous location on your bookshelf. The ladies go crazy for this sort of thing. Throw in an obscure quaternion reference and the wooing can't be stopped. (Mix with booze as needed).