Against the Day

It took me over a year to read this book, and as I skimmed through some of the more "professional" reviews of Against the Day, many of which appeared roughly a year ago or even earlier, I can't help but think, "Maybe they read it too fast?" For there is much that is infuriating about Against the Day. Primarily, it's the fact that at 1089 pages long, there is no way to minimize the effort required to read it. Second, the... Read Full Review

I'll be the first one to admit that I'm a radical Pynchonophile. And I'll be the first to admit that Pynchon is not for everyone; reading his books requires patience, an eclectic sum of knowledge (or the willingness to browse through an encyclopedia), and the ability to, every so often, accept that you will never fully penetrate the mysteries that the author creates. Against the Day is no exception. Yet the Pynchon of Against... Read Full Review

Opinions vary, but the numerous reviews that were produced at the time of this books release will likely be long forgotten by the time most folks actually make their way through this thing. One guesses that these reviewers must have felt pretty agitated being put in a position of having to rush through over a thousand pages of Pynchonian sophistication in the short time they had from receiving their pre-release copies to... Read Full Review

The temptation with a huge novel like "Against The Day" is to read it at breakneck speed. Pynchon discourages readers from that option early, signalling within the first 60 pages that this is going to be a tale of many characters, many narrative lines, at times realistic, at others fantastic, often rooted in history, at other times unquestionably about the present. For such a mysterious writer, Pynchon's influences are well... Read Full Review

This book represents the best of Mr. Pynchon's novels. I appreciated all of his works but here is the culmination of his art. As with Mr. Zimmerman's recent concert tour, we now have an artist of the 1960's, who has transcended his comfortable art form. Unlike V and Gravity's Rainbow, which exhausted us with genocide and holocaust, Against the Day not only suggests Tom Swift, Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and Dickens but Cervantes... Read Full Review