Against the Day

A Novel

By: Thomas Pynchon

Narrated by: Dick Hill

Length: 53 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

"Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, 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.

"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. The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.

"As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an 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.

"Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. 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."
—Thomas Pynchon

©2006 Thomas Pynchon (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc.

Critic reviews

"[Pynchon's] funniest and arguably his most accessible novel." (New York Times Book Review)
"Pynchon delivers a novel that matches his most influential work, Gravity's Rainbow...in complexity, humor, and insight, and surpasses it in emotional valence....A capacious, gritty, and tender epic." (Booklist)

brilliant!

Against the Day is Thomas Pynchon's most recent and one of his most accessible and entertaining works. (Mason & Dixon and The Crying of Lot 49 are better books, imo, but this one is certainly a worthy addition to Pynchon's formidable oeuvre.) Dick Hill's reading makes it even better.

Taking place between 1893 and 1914 in Chicago at the Columbian Exposition and going from there to the globe, inside and out, the story involves a group of very fictional hot-air balloonists, western mines unionists and anarchists (terrorists?) and their families, tycoons and their goons, scientists, mathematicians and a whole menagerie of assorted characters some historical, some not.

The plot involves the children of slain anarchist Traverse Webb as they basically try to 1. avenge his death and 2. escape the clutches of the evil tycoon Scarsdale Vibe. Meanwhile, the Chums of Chance glide around observing from their balloon above. But that's a very, very simplified version of the intricate convolutions the plot of this encyclopedic novel takes.

The themes are the closing of the frontier and the onset of modern life, including the boom of technology and capitalist greed. Meanwhile, the common man is doomed to live under the oppression of totalitarian regimes willing to use militaristic force to ensure domination.

Different styles are used for different plots of the book varying from Dime Novel to American Western to erotica and spy novel. This is quite effective in maintaining interest throughout such a long book.

The narrator Dick Hill gives a bit of very appropriate energy and drama to the reading and although it took a few minutes to get used to the voice (as usual for me), it's obvious Hill knows and loves the material and his interpretation is "cracker-jack!" Good show!

Plot, schmlot

Plot in a novel is overrated. If you want plot, read Dan Brown instead- though that's all you'll get.

This is a work of genius- and not only because of the author's penchant for self-promotion and intentional obscurity and obfuscation.

This is truly a piece of art painted with intentionally hammy techniques and wonderful surreal and non-linear streams of consciousness. All of these things dance around the sensation of the characters, the essence of spirit that the author wishes to share with those who can sense it.

I laughed when a reviewer preferred to go back to Ulysses instead. Well, that's a mighty difficult yardstick for each and every novel to stand comparison. It's like comparing every portrait to the Mona Lisa.

Full disclosure: this was my first reading of a complete Pynchon novel. I'm not a literary snob and don't feel the need to crow about how much better his other works are. Some folks more learned and well-read than I am have said Gravity's Rainbow is far superior. Great- more to explore!

For me, this is one of the most wonderful author "discoveries" since I first read Kafka.

Love Pynchon, but...

I advise anyone who really cares to read this book on the printed page where it won't be polluted by Dick Hill's intrusive and cloying narration. I tried to listen, but a giving up because I can't bear another minute of Hill.

Pure Genius

One of Pynchon's best with a great read from Dick Hill. Loved it. Just a brilliant work of fiction.
To address the negative reviews: if you tend to think of Nicholas Sparks or Dan Brown as great literature you may find this book a little confusing and off-putting. You'd be better off downloading the latest Sue Grafton or something of that ilk instead.

Against the Day not bad

It’s taken me two years to finish this novel. I’m a Pynchon fan, but the usual tropes and jokes got buried under layers and layers of plotting. So finishing the novel seems like van occasion for breaking out the champagne as one does at the end of a marathon. But parts of Against the Day are exquisitely funny, touching, brilliant. Will I r as it again? Probably not. Can I recommend it? Absolutely!

Amazing, but...

No doubt this is an amazing piece of work, but it's too long and complicated to easily follow on audio. The three stars aren't for the story, but for the story on audio. There are many charactors that come and go, and I could have used an atlas of characters (or a hard copy book) to be able to go back from time to time to get me back on track. Still the story is so creative and fantasic and well written that I continued to enjoy the book despite having become confused as to who was who many times. I'd suggest you listen to one of Pynchon's shorter books, and if you enjoy his style, buy this book in hard copy.

Great fun, great names

This book is so much fun in so many ways, but I'll just focus on one -- the names. I suffer from biblianomia, a word I made up for inability to remember fictional character names. My paper books are full of highlighting and notes, so I wasn't sure about a 1,085-page book with over a hundred characters. I needn't have worried. The names Pynchon gives his characters, plus the narrator's masterful handling of each voice, made it easy. The itinerant mechanic/photographer is Merle Rideout. The anthropologist is named Provenance. And so on. Even minor characters get great names. My favorite is Mia Culpepper, who was mentioned briefly but so far hasn't been heard from again. I keep expecting her to show up feeling guilty about something.

Easier to read than to listen to

Dick Hill reads like a vaudeville actor. He over-reaches his narrative and voices the characters like they're cartoons. I hated listening to this book. Add to the performance difficulties is the lack of traditional structure to the novel. I found this much easier to read a physical copy with the audiobook playing in the background. I don't normally like to do both, but I found the audio helped me get through this book, despite gritting my teeth at Dick Hill's voice. I think I would have liked the book more if I had just contented myself with reading it with my eyes and hearing the voices in my head.

Traversing time and various Earths

This is an excellent, complex, brilliantly written book loosely set in the time period around WWI. If you liked other Pynchon's novels, you will like this one.

Good Reference to write a steampunk story but....

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

NO --- no recommendation.
Clearly the author was writing a history report on the 1800's and decided to craft it into a book to salvage the A minus on the final report.

What could Thomas Pynchon have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Apply "endings".
One of the big diffs between Stories and Poems: poems, like songs, rarely have Endings.
Just Describe the conflict, speculate about how I feel, and repeat chorus.
This book introduces characters and some good dialog, then Boom next setting, next characters, then boom boom boom.
There is a grand total of ONE plot in a 52 hour audiobook.
For a new story just tack on an ending and you've got a decent story.....hey maybe I should go to my writing desk of dollars......excuse me

Any additional comments?

Mike Perschon, the Steampunk Scholar, recommended this book in multiple top 10's.
From a History-Book-Come-Alive, I guess, it saved Mike from doing the research himself.