What to say about Thomas Pynchon’s most recent novel, Against the Day? The first observation that every reviewer seems to make is that it’s long, and it is. I have the feeling, though, that reviewers see the book’s length as a fault, and if you’re working on deadline then I suppose it is quite a chore to work through 1000-plus dense pages. Against the Day’s length, though, is one of its many virtues. This is a work that spills over boundaries and limitations. It’s a book that can barely be contained between covers, and the weight of this volume is the first indication of this breaking out of boundaries.
The book spans the boundary between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It begins at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1892 and concludes at the opening of the first World War. Historical figures, such as Nikolai Tesla and a young Archduke Franz Ferdinand appear, and historical events like the Tunguska Event (which fascinated me as a child) factor into the plot, well plots. It’s not really an historical novel, though. The history here is a little bit counterfactual and filled with anachronism and fantasy. The book, at any rate, concerns anarchists and the conflict between labor and capital. It also concerns cult-like groups of mathematicians, the properties of light, and superseded scientific theories. Was there an æther before Relativity?
There’s also pastiche, so as we follow the adventures of the young crew of an airship, seemingly benefitting from perpetual motion, the style shifts to that of a late nineteenth-century adventure novel for boys.
Against the Day is an overwhelmingy book that doesn’t overwhelm as you read it. It’s fiction that cannot be imagined otherwise. To try to engage with such a work in something as brief and casual as a blog post is futile.
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