Against the Day


Against the Day is an epic historical novel by Thomas Pynchon, published on November21, 2006. The narrative takes place between the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the time immediately following World War I and features more than a hundred characters spread across the United States, Europe, Mexico, Central Asia, Africa and "one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all," according to the book jacket blurb written by Pynchon. Like its predecessors, Against the Day is an example of historiographic metafiction or metahistorical romance. At 1,085 pages, it is the longest of Pynchon's novels to date.

Title

Besides appearing within the book itself, the novel's title apparently refers to a verse in the Bible reading "the heavens and the earth... reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men." Another possibility is from Job: "Hast thou entered into the treasure of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail, which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against the day of battle and war?".
William Faulkner, whose diction frequently echoes the King James Bible, liked the phrase, and many reviewers have traced it to a speech of Faulkner's against racism. Perhaps as relevant is a passage in Absalom, Absalom! in which Sutpen, a Faustus character of the sort that Pynchon deploys everywhere, seeks "a wife who not only would consolidate the hiding but could would and did breed him two children to fend and shield both in themselves and in their progeny the brittle bones and tired flesh of an old man against the day when the Creditor would run him to earth for the last time and he couldn't get away." The Creditor there is Mephistopheles, to whom Faustus/Sutpen would owe his soul.
Nonliterary sources for the title may also exist: Contre-jour, a term in photography referring to backlighting. There are also two uses of the phrase "against the day" in Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, and four appearances in William Gaddis's J R.

Speculation before 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, and before that, the publisher of Henry Holt and Company, Michael Naumann, who said he assisted Pynchon in researching "a Russian mathematician studied for David Hilbert in Göttingen", and that the new novel would trace the life and loves of mathematician and academic Sofia Kovalevskaya. Kovalevskaya briefly appears in the book, but Pynchon may have partly modeled the major character Yashmeen Halfcourt after her.

Author's synopsis/book jacket copy

In mid-July 2006, a plot-synopsis signed by Pynchon himself appeared on Amazon.com's page for the novel, only to vanish a few days later. Readers who had noticed the synopsis re-posted it.
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. Associated Press indicated the title of the previously anonymous novel.
Image:Court of Honor and Grand Basin.jpg|thumb|right|1893 Chicago World's Fair
Pynchon's synopsis states that the novel's action takes place "between the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the years just after World War I". "With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, 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." Pynchon promises "cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi and Groucho Marx", as well as "stupid songs" and "strange sexual practices".
The novel's setting
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 unpredictable future commences, 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:
The published jacket-flap of the book featured an edited-down version of this text, omitting the last three sentences, references to specific authorship.

Plot summary

Nearly all reviewers of the book mention the byzantine nature of the plot. Louis Menand in The New Yorker gives a simple description:
As to the multitude of plot dead-ends, pauses and confusing episodes that return to continue much later in the narrative, Menand writes:

Principal characters

In alphabetical order by last name

  • Lew Basnight, a "Psychical Detective" from Chicago
  • Estrella Briggs, a young pregnant woman found in Nochecita
  • The Chums of Chance :
  • * Miles Blundell, the handyman apprentice and jocular cook, who is gifted with mysterious visions and seemingly extrasensory perception
  • * Chick Counterfly, scientific officer and newest member of the crew
  • * Lindsay Noseworth, second-in-command, "Master-At-Arms, in charge of discipline aboard the ship"
  • * Pugnax, a dog rescued from a fight in Washington, D.C. by the Chums of Chance, he reads and can communicate with humans via "Rff-rff" sounds.
  • * Randolph St. Cosmo, ship commander
  • * Darby Suckling, "baby" of the crew, and later legal-officer of the ship.
  • Ruperta Chirpingden-Groin, aristocratic English traveler
  • Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who appears as a troublemaking young man attending the Chicago World's Fair
  • Sloat Fresno, one of the murderers of Webb Traverse, along with Deuce Kindred
  • Rao V. Ganeshi, academic from India
  • Stilton Gaspereaux, "a scholarly adventurer in the Inner Asian tradition of Sven Hedin."
  • Yashmeen Halfcourt, "the stunningly beautiful ward of a British diplomat in Central Asia", and "polymorphous mathematical prodigy", ward of the T.W.I.T., entrusted to the group by her adopted father, Colonel Halfcourt
  • Kieselguhr Kid, freedom-fighter/terrorist. A gun fighter who uses dynamite instead of guns in direct action against the mine owners
  • 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"
  • Al Mar-Faud, a minor character who mispronounces his Rs as Ws
  • Mouffette, the name of a papillon lap-dog
  • Igor Padzhitnoff, Russian captain of the airship Bol'shaia Igra and member of the Tovarishchi Slutchainyi
  • Hunter Penhallow, son of Constance Penhallow who goes to the U.S. with the Vormance expedition
  • Professor Renfrew, British professor with a bitter personal rivalry with one Professor Werfner
  • The Rideouts:
  • * Dahlia Rideout, Merle Rideout's daughter
  • * Erlys Rideout, Merle Rideout's ex-wife, who has run off with Luca Zombini, a magician
  • * Merle Rideout, an itinerant photographer and scientific inventor
  • Captain Sands, inspector in London
  • Lionel Swome, T.W.I.T.
  • Nikola Tesla, the celebrated Serbian inventor and investigator of electrical phenomena, rival of Thomas Edison
  • The 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 at Göttingen
  • * Lake Traverse, daughter of Webb and sister of Frank, Reef, and Kit. Became Lake Kindred after marrying Deuce Kindred.
  • * Mayva Traverse, wife of Webb and mother of his children
  • * Reef Traverse, a cardsharp; son of Webb and brother of Frank, Kit and Lake
  • * Webb Traverse, "a turn-of-the-century... miner" 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"; father of Frank, Reef, Kit and Lake; killed by Sloat Fresno and Deuce Kindred
  • Trespassers, "who appear to be dead people from the future"
  • Miss Umeki Tsurigane, a Quaternion theorist who was educated at the Imperial University of Japan
  • Professor Heino Vanderjuice of Yale University, associate of the Chums of Chance,
  • The Vibes:
  • * Colfax Vibe
  • * Cragmont Vibe
  • * Dittany Vibe
  • * Edwarda Vibe, née Beef,
  • * Fleetwood Vibe
  • * Scarsdale Vibe, "the most ruthless of the mine owners"
  • * R. Wilshire Vibe, a theater producer and Scarsdale's brother
  • Foley Walker, Scarsdale Vibe's special assistant, who took Scarsdale's place in the army during the American Civil War
  • Professor Werfner, German professor with a bitter personal rivalry with one Professor Renfrew
  • Luca Zombini, a travelling magician.
  • *Erlys Rideout, his wife, Merle Rideout's ex-wife, and Dahlia's mother.
  • *Cici, Dominic, Nunzio, his sons.
  • *Bria, Concetta, Lucia, his daughters.

    Notable organisations

  • Chums of Chance, Five "cheerful young balloonists who drop into the story at critical moments and who seem capable of time travel", all aboard the skyship Inconvenience
  • T.W.I.T., True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys, "a covert London group fighting the powers of darkness".

    Themes

Critic Louis Menand sees an organizing theme of the book as

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 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 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.

Menand states that this theme also appeared in Pynchon's Mason & Dixon and that it ties in with a concern present in nearly all of Pynchon's books:
Steven Moore, in a book review in The Washington Post, writes:

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."

Jazz provides a non-hierarchical 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 characterises the Irish Land League as "the closest the world has ever come to a perfect Anarchist organization".
In a Bloomberg News review, Craig Seligman identifies three overarching themes in the novel: doubling, light and war.