Against the Day: A progress report from deepest bonkerdom
While Lloyd apparently skipped through the thousand-page Infinite Jest, only to be disappointed by the end, I’m on a gentle uphill stroll through Thomas Pynchon’s thousand-page Against the Day.
Yesterday I found, to my surprise, someone else who’s going through it. And we’re at about the same point. He’s taking it much more seriously than me, though, and he’s referring to the astounding Pynchon Wiki, which includes a sub-wiki dedicated to Against the Day which has a page-by-page analysis and
the Against the Day Alphabetical Index, used to keep track of the myriad characters, real and imagined, as well as events, arcana, and lots of other stuff.
I’ve deliberately avoided it because I thought it would include spoilers, but apparently they’re more thoughtful than that, and the page-by-page analysis is specifically spoiler-free.
It’s not a book I’d recommend. It’s fun, but you do need to apply a certain twisted sense of obstenacy. And the only way I can read it is to resist at all costs any attempt to take it at all seriously. This is not just because the characters have generally silly names (Scarsdale Vibe; Chick Counterfly; Randolph St. Cosmo; the two Englishmen, Neville and Nigel) but also because it’s just bonkers.
At one point, round about page 450, airbourne adverturers The Chums of Chance decide that their organisation has been infiltrated by forces unknown. So to ensure their comradeship is not jeopardised they disband, and for no readily-apparent reason they enroll in a harmonica marching band academy. They learn different kinds of harmonicas, sing a few songs, and then four pages later the threat has vanished, they reform as The Chums of Chance, and carry on as if nothing has happened.
Mad. Just mad, I tell you.
