Not every book I read, movie I watch, or album I listen to gets a write-up on the blog. I’ve been needled several times in the past for not commenting on a media object of interest, and my usual reply is something like: I’m not a professional critic – I write about things when I have something in particular to say about them.

Which is where Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day comes in. I’ve spent almost three months, in spurts, reading a 1,085 page novel that covers a time period ranging from the Chicago World’s Fair in 1892 to just after World War I. So I should having something interesting to say about it – a recommendation, maybe, or a summation of Pynchon’s ambitious themes. But I don’t have either of those things, or at least not in any way that would lead to a cohesive post – and yet I can’t just let those three months of reading go unremarked, as if Pynchon’s latest was merely another comedy in my Netflix queue.

And so I feel obliged, perhaps even compelled, to throw up some desultory comments, hoping that I’ve managed to toss these last few months of reading a bone or two.

Let’s start with that word: desultory. Many of the tepid/negative reviews of AtD I’ve read criticize it for being haphazard, too unstructured, Pynchon going too far with his allusions, obscure languages, cast of hundreds, lists of terms of art, etc. Those same reviews often then go on to say that while Gravity’s Rainbow shares many of the same qualities, it did in service of the theme and the plot, with far more transcendent prose. I’m not attributing the above to any particular source – a la Fox News – but look around and you’ll find these thoughts.

So: are these criticisms valid? Maybe – it would be hard to say without me rereading GR again, especially since I’d be more prepared to read it a second time around. But when I first read GR , I was frequently amused, often surprised by beautifully clear passages, and constantly struggling to keep up with what was going on, who was who, and what the hell all the German phrases meant. While reading AtD , I was far more consistently entertained, encountered perhaps an equal amount of beautiful prose, but very rarely struggled with what was going on.

Was this because AtD is a simpler novel than GR? Was I just more comfortable with the subject matter? Am I just a better reader now, six years after I read GR? I gained a little insight into this when I ran into one of the harder parts of AtD to read through, wherein one of the main characters is getting involved with a spy network connected to the Austrian government and its interests in Turkey and the Balkans. Pynchon kept on throwing German words and extremely specific references to Vienna locales at the reader, and I kept on stumbling.

But then this subplot shifted to Venice, where much of the novel takes place, and suddenly I was on top of and enjoying the very same things that were previously keeping me back. I got puns involving the Italian language, and could picture with great vividness the narrated events in my mind. Well, duh. I’ve been to Venice, and I know quite a bit of the Italian language; I’ve never been to Austria and the German language might as well be Greek to me. Restating the obvious: if you’re familiar with what Pynchon is writing about, it’s tremendously insightful and fun; if you’re not, it can be a struggle.

After I read GR , I spent several hours online reading about rocket technology, World War II, and Continental geography, all of which helped clarify much of what I had read. I can’t remember why I waited until after I had finished the novel to do this, because it clearly would’ve made for a better reading experience if I had done it beforehand and during. Perhaps it’s because Wikipedia wasn’t fully realized at the time. AtD , on the other hand, was an entirely different experience. If I didn’t understand an important allusion, I would read up on it on Wikipedia or on the AtD wiki.

Additionally, the subject matter of AtD was more familiar to me, probably because, unlike GR , AtD is a contemporary novel. Pynchon has always been influenced by pop culture, and the following cultural artifacts, mostly known to me in one way or the other, all were helpful for understanding allusions in AtD :

• Tetris
• anime
• steampunk/the Final Fantasy video games/Jules Verne
• The Prestige by Christopher Priest (a major influence, I think)
• the works of Howard Zinn
• Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware
• mathematics
• photography/cinema

When it comes down to it, Against the Day is a fantasy/science-fiction novel in the guise of historical fiction. But it’s also about the kinds of people who, in various different ways, live railing against authority, against the Establishment, and yes, against the Day – and while they sometimes succeed on the micro scale, generally they fail on the macro scale, a byproduct of corporations, nation states, governments, and simple human nature. Pynchon is never preachy about these things, but you won’t want to make it through the book if you’re not inherently sympathetic towards those who thrive in the counter-culture, towards those who shake things up.

It’s a cliché to defend a big and messy novel by pointing to the world and saying: “But look, the world is big and messy.” But it’s never been truer here. No one knows for sure how to live in the world but not of it, and anyway, why would one necessarily want to do that? Civilization is plagued by many problems, but who’s to say whether it’s better to work within or outside the system to solve them? Pynchon has clearly been thinking about this predicament for a long time, and AtD may be his last attempt to work out an answer. And it succeeds on the micro scale, and fails on the macro scale – which might be all Pynchon was hoping for.