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 280 characters spread across the United States, Europe, Mexico, Central Asia, Africa and, according to the book jacket blurb written by Pynchon, "one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all." 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 (2 Peter 3:7) reading "the heavens and the earth ... [are] reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men."LeClair, Tom, Lead Zeppelin: Encounters with the unseen in Pynchon's new novel pos, a review of Against the Day in the Dec/Jan 2007 Book Forum. The first reviewer who identified the title with the Biblical quote was Alexander Theroux in the November 24 The Wall Street Journal review Fantastic Journey (full text for subscribers only). 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?" (38:22–23).
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. (The passage in Gravity's Rainbow about the "black indomitable oven" with which the witch-like Blicero, another Faustus character, is left once the Hansel-and-Gretel-like children have departed, alludes to another passage in Absalom, Absalom!.)
Nonliterary sources for the title may also exist: Contre-jour (literally "against [the] day"), a term in photography referring to backlighting. There are also two uses of the phrase "against the day" in Pynchon's Mason & Dixon,Chapter 12 (p. 125) and 70 (p. 683). Against the Day Title at Against the Day Wiki. Pynchon's single use of the phrase in Against the Day ends a chapter at the page 805. and four appearances in William Gaddis's J R. Pages 7, 168, 262, and 507 in New York Review Books edition (2020).
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 [who] 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.Amazon.com's Customer Discussions > Against the Day forum > Found It, Reid Burkland July 16, 2006, 12:48 PM PDT 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.
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 "moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York City, to London and Göttingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all."
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:
If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction.
Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck.
The published jacket-flap of the book featured an edited-down version of this text, omitting the last three sentences, references to specific authorship (as well as misspelling Nikola Tesla's first name as "Nikolai"; Pynchon had previously spelled it correctly).Both versions of the synopsis at Thomas Pynchon Wiki
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:The New Yorker Menand, Louis, "Do the Math: Thomas Pynchon's latest novel", The New Yorker, November 27, 2006, edition, posted November 20, accessed November 28, 2006
"[T]his is the plot: An anarchist named Webb Traverse, who employs dynamite as a weapon against the mining and railroad interests out West, is killed by two gunmen, [...] who were hired by the wicked arch-plutocrat Scarsdale Vibe. Traverse's sons [...] set out to avenge their father's murder. [...] Of course, there are a zillion other things going on in Against the Day, but the Traverse-family revenge drama is the only one that resembles a plot [...] that is, in Aristotle's helpful definition, an action that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The rest of the novel is shapeless [...]"
As to the multitude of plot dead-ends, pauses and confusing episodes that return to continue much later in the narrative, Menand writes:
"[T]he text exceeds our ability to keep everything in our heads, to take it all in at once. There is too much going on among too many characters in too many places. [...] This [including tone shifts in which Pynchon spoofs various styles of popular literature] was all surely part of the intention, a simulation of the disorienting overload of modern culture."
Principal characters
In alphabetical order by last name Lew Basnight, a "Psychical Detective" from Chicago Estrella Briggs, a young pregnant woman found in Nochecita (ATD, p. 200) The Chums of Chance (the crew of the skyship Inconvenience): 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" (ATD, p. 4) 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 (ATD, p. 3) Darby Suckling, "baby" of the crew, (ATD, p. 3) 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", Dubail, Jean, review of Against the Day in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, November 19, 2006, accessed November 26, 2006 and "polymorphous mathematical prodigy", Lasdun, James, "The carnival goes on (and on)" review of Against the Day in The Guardian of London, November 25, 2006, accessed November 26, 2006 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 (the original recipe for dynamite involved mixing nitroglycerin with Kieselguhr — porous dirt containing silica) 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 (rhotacism) (homonym for Elmer Fudd of Bugs Bunny fame) Mouffette, the name of a papillon lap-dog (mouffette in French = "skunk") Igor Padzhitnoff, Russian captain of the airship Bol'shaia Igra and member of the Tovarishchi Slutchainyi (the Russian counterpart to the Chums of Chance) 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 ("Renfrew" spelled backwards) The Rideouts: Dahlia (or "Dally") Rideout, Merle Rideout's (adoptive) 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. (see below) 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 studies with the physicist Willard Gibbs, whose work is preparing the way for 20th-century thermodynamics) 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 (ATD, p. 531) 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