Welcome to The Against the Day Deathmarch — a mass-tackle of Pynchon’s latest tome. This is our fifth deathmarch, and I haven’t been this excited about an onine mass read of a challenging book since, well, since we tackled Gravity’s Rainbow back in January, 2005.
I’ve read the first few pages of AtD, and I can report from the trailhead that it doesn’t start out in nearly as dense a thicket as Gravity’s Rainbow. But it does appear to share at least three things with GR: (1) silly names packed with portent (“Darby Suckling”), (2) a new character every 7 sentences, and (3) something particularly startling or amusing on every page. “lavatorial assaults from the sky,” “the brighter star-shapes of exploded ballast-bags,” “The Great Bovine City of the World”? What’s not to like?
Um…OK, but how’s this whole deathmarch thing work again?
Here’s a quick recap for new folks….
Short version: read, comment, finish, get a prize.
Longer version: comment on every thread from this week till the end, and finish the book, and you qualify for your choice of either an AtDDM mug or magnet. (Capped at 30 winners to protect my children’s college fund.) Comments can range from erudite analysis to content-free exclamations. “I’ve fallen woefully behind” counts as a comment. Not a great comment. But a comment. Try not to get very far ahead. And if you have zipped ahead, be sure not to get past that week’s reading in your comments. Every Tuesday I’ll post a new thread, and it all starts up again.
Next Tuesday: Let’s meet up at the bottom of page 56, where “the temperature” is “headed down.”
(In other words, use this thread to comment on pages 0-56. Try to finish reading that part of the book and to comment here by end o’ day next Monday)
Merry ‘marching,
-Cecil
"…something like the supervisor of an entire team of political agents…"
Just because I don’t actually have my book in hand yet, that’s not going to stop me from being the first to leave a comment.
I’ve gotten through page 20 and am impressed. I’m loving it so far. Funny as hell. He’s a brilliant wordsmith.
(This is the only comment I need to leave until next week, right?)
Other One:
Yep — you’re all set. One comment down, 20 more or so to go….
(btw, so-called bill and other bay area types, if you haven’t picked up your copy yet, consider shopping at Pegasus in downtown Berkeley — “The Unofficial East Bay Bookstore of the Against the Day Deathmarch.”)
-Cecil
Starting off with a jaunt to the midwest as I enjoy a somewhat brisk -2 start to this fine Wisconsin morning. A quick comment – there is something of the interplay of the Chums of Chance on the airship this reminds me of Enzian and Major Marvy on the train in GR.
I’m planning to be completely lost among the characters by next week.
I must admit that I’m really enjoying this book thus far. And y’all fellow marchers know what a complainer I can be! (I think I whined my way all through To the Lighthouse.) Frankly, the whole first chunk made me think of the old Howdy Doody show, especially the Medicine Man and Princess Summer-Fall-Winter-Spring. The Chums of Chance and the dynamite people later in the reading made Howdy Doody appear before me. I’m totally engrossed.
I’m only at page 3, but find the writing so sharp and funny and clever and – how do I explain it? – brightly colored that I’m just a smidge less intimidated by the book now.
I started the first section (does this book have chapters??) last night, and yes, Its easy & enoyable so far. I have a vague & disturbing feeling that before we go too far the Chums will be turned into lobotomized assasins out to kill Houdini on the orders of Otto von Bismarck’s steam-powered ghost. Already there is an allusion of the inside-out Earth theory, where we live on the inside of a sphere that incorporates a universe at the center.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_Teed
As a great fan of the 2nd series of Tom Swift books, boy heroes and BH groups were a big part of my growing up. Maybe for TRP too. Here’s a quote from Wikipedia:
In Thomas Pynchon’s short story “The Secret Integration” (1964), the “boy genius” Grover is tormented by Tom Swift books which constantly appear around his home. Discussing the matter with his friend Tim, he wonders whether his parents are trying to make him into an inventor or a racist.
See yas all ats the bottom of Pg 56.
I’m betting I have as much, if not more, experience as anyone else here with pulp fiction and serial sf/adventure. But I hadn’t read any in more than 20 years. And now I’m wondering why I gave it up… it’s wonderful!
It’s what Scooby-Doo wanted to be when it grew up.
Good luck, death marchers
pugnax!
What a great start to the book. The beginning of a surely kaliedescopic cast of characters with true-to-form Pynchon names (Cheverolette! and, indeed, Pugnax) and heady ambition (free electrical power by using the entire planet as a circuit).
I was caught off guard by the ominous tone that crept in by the end of this section, with Freddie Turner, the riff on stock-yard tourists, and talk of the midnight plunge.
“The frontier ends and disconnection begins.”
hurray to ramrodding anarchists
archdukes in negro bars
and all sticklers of proper, uncolloquialized languages
then again, hurray to Pynchon for introducing us to another colorful cast that only he could invent.
may the professor spit in the face of self-aggrandizing, corporate pigs and may the gondola maintain a semblance of disorder!
Problems Inherent in Quality 1,000-page Novels #1: Not knowing, 50 pages in, who will be the protagonist… or even if they’ve showed up yet.
I got to page 80 tonight and decided I better stop. And it took a physical effort; on every page I really want to know what’s next.
“When the Sieges ended, these balloonists chose to fly on, free now of the political delusions that reigned more than ever on the ground, pledged solemnly only to one another, proceeding as if under a world-wide, never-ending state of siege” (of the Garçons de ’71, p.19).
“Despite his youth he was said to give an impression of access to resources beyond his own, of being comfortable in the shadows and absolutely unprincipled, with an abiding contempt for any distinction between life and death. Sending him to America seemed appropriate” (of Max Khäutsch, p.47).
Easier to track than the first fifty pages of GR. And the prose a consistent pleasure the early hostile and/or impatient reviews simply failed to mention. Spotting sly pastiches of James everywhere. And as with GR, the way the narrator flickers onto the page via some idiom or quirk of mind, then recedes again. Relatively chaste so far. Fave names: Darby Suckling, Pugnax, Scarsdale Vibe.
Till next week, chums.
I’m daunted by the length of this thing, but I’m in. I find myself digging the ominous turn cited above. I love the idea of powerful forces converging to stop Tesla.
oh shyte, it looks like there are some really smart people on the march. It feels like the beginning of a movie where I the protagonist show up and look like some sort of disorganized loser while everyone else looks like a really strong dude with the right looks, muscles, girl, and who knows how to punctuate sentences. Also it doesn’t feel like a death march it feels like one of those old cowboy movies where there is a long trail of covered wagons and some schmuck at the back complaining and then he gets taken out by the heroic native americans unfairly portrayed as the bad guys. Where I’m going with this is, that if you read the book reviews about ATD – and if you have even less than 10% normal guy in you – then it will make you want to give some sorry New York intellectual at least a very stern lecture if not an all out severe beating. Why does every single review about the book have to make some asinine comment about how hard or complex the book is or how it will be bought and go unread as people get frustrated by Pynchon’s digressions. What gets me is their sort of reverse self-deprecating style modesty which I find to be just one flattened cat’s width over into the arrogant column. So what I really mean here is that I like the book so far, I probably don’t get 90% of it, Pynchon’s 70 so he probably forgot it as he was writing it, and I’m in. I’ll be in the back bitching about the chow and quietly seething as people post really insightful things that I haven’t thought of or that I am incapable of or that didn’t get as I was reading – (alone, with lips moving like Kevin Kline in a Fish called Wanda).
Were Henry James to read Against the Day, he’d probably appreciate that Pugnax “sniffed briefly in Lindsay’s direction, trying to detect that combination of olfactory ‘notes’ he had grown accustomed to finding in other humans. (p. 7).
without reading any of the other comments first — really enjoying this book so far. trying to keep things straight, i’ve jotted down each lovely character name as I’ve come across it — how geeky is that (as if reading this book isn’t already?) and there are already two pages of them. this is the first book by pynchon that i’ve ever read, so i’m not actually familiar with his idiosynchrasies — but the book does seem fairly straightforward so far, not as dense as what i expected, and masterfully eloquent. a joy to read each long sentence. can i admit that i’ve read a good portion of it out loud just to hear how it sounds? seems sci-fi & noir in early 20th century chicago, while just caressing a multitude of themes or issues. my favorite name is heino vanderjuice. i think i’ll stop there. looking forward to the next 50 pages…
Having fun so far. I love the notion of all of the “The Chums of Chance at …..” books. I anticipate next week’s reading will include references to “The Chums of Chance in San Mateo” and “The Chums of Chance Suffer a Spill at Peet’s Coffee.” I can really relate to these guys.
Another tidbit I’ve really enjoyed is the excess-hydrogen gas burner, which is “predictably disparaged by Dr. Vanderjuice’s many rivals as no better than a perpetual-motion machine, in clear violation of thermodynamical law.” That one brought back fond memories of a comic strip a friend did in college about a futuristic police department that would try to apprehend violators of the laws of physics…..
With Don Quixote we had a book written & a story set in the past. Here we have a book written today, but set in a time over a century distant. So again I find myself looking for themes and situations from a past era that remain as current issues and concerns. With DQ such parallels would have been inadvertent on the author’s part, since he lived in the time he wrote about. With Pynchon it has to be intentional, since he chose to write an historical novel.
So here’s my working hypothesis: Anarchists, the terrorists of that time; Detective agencies, the CTUs (as in “24”); balloonists provide satellite surveillance; corporate interests exerting control over new technology (electricity). And so on.
Now as I read on, it may become clear that I am all wet. But it will be fun to see if what Pynchon is showing us is (as in the immortal words of Firesign Theater’s We’re All Bozos on this Bus), “that, even then, life as we know it was already taken over.”
Attending the World’s Fair, or the Crystal Palace in London, is one of my choices for when I go to Fantasy Island. And just as, under the power of Mr. Roarke, I am tempted by a marvelous, magical world of dizzying delights, so does Pynchon lead us down the darker streets, the murderous underbellys, and the sordid sidepaths. With Pinkerton men, no less.
Crackerjack! It also reminds me of The Great Brain (’70’s kids books) meets Buckaroo Banzai and his band of merrily-named men (Perfect Tommy, etc.) … Sometimes I don’t like being led so helplessly as I am by Pynchon, from character to character, story to story. But then, and more frequently, I bounce along as merrily as the rest.
Finally – Pugnax. Great. Now I have to get a dog.
I really like the typeface, it’s making my reading extreamly enjoyable. Crisp and clear, fancy in a way, seemingly matched for the mood. I’m starting to wish that I could run this sort of expedition. I definately feel like I’m drawn back in time but every few pages i’m jolted to my senses by a word or two and realize pynchon just finished penning the thing. I can go a few pages engulfed with the sense that it was written as the adventure unfolds. AtD, so far, is much more accessible to me than GR but i’m still reading at 30 pages/hour, is that slow? It seems slow if you go by the numbers but I feel like i’m reading fast.
Quick note on the James family that will go nowhere.
In Vineland, there is a reference to an Emerson quotation found in William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience. It is recited from memory by Jess Traverse as he learned it from a prison copy of the book, so classically in TRP style, it smacks of both fact and fiction. Anyway, it seems somewhat appropriate at the moment, so I’m including the quotation.
Secret retributions are always restoring the level, when disturbed, of the divine justice. It is impossible to tilt the beam. All tyrants and proprietors and monopolists of the world in vain set their shoulders to heave the bar. Settles forever more the ponderous equator to its line, and the man and mote, and star and sun, must range to it, or be pulverized by the recoil (Vineland, 369).
There are so many fun things to comment on already! Pugnax rocks. The descriptions of the various outfits donned in preparation to hit the fair was hysterical. I too am having to jot down character names but this time it’s not annoying me. And one of my favorite Pynchon things is how he uses words I love. My favorite thus far: Factotum.
A quick note to GG. Don’t worry about being in the back. Just have fun. Some of us have ridden the trail before with Gravity’s Rainbow, but others had to fall by the wayside in other books. I still regret my bleached bones being picked at by vultures under the withering sun of Don Quixote.
I know I don’t fully understand many of the references (James, etc.), but Pynchon IMHO is a very personal writer. and he throws in whatever catches his attention. The Gravity’s Rainbow community only just figured out a source of reference for that book, and how long has that tome been out? (The Kenosha Kid pulp story was found, GR fans!)
We’ll all be sure to share our water. Please throw in a can of beans occasionally. And if your are masacreed, we’ll give you a good burial, send your boots to yer kin, and salute you. Good luck.
While it was a bit disorienting at first, for a Pynchon novice, who has read quite a bit of Stephenson and really enjoys the off-hand escape to character building in the middle of a scene, and even enjoys Eco’s deep and brooding attention to individual characters who at first seem non involved only to later become the protoganist… Well, now I’ve gotten over that whole disorientation thing — and frankly, I’m really into it.
My quote of the book so far: “This is Foley Walker,” said Scarsdale Vibe [great name],”in whom his mother claims to find virtues not immediately apparent to others.”
Favorite vignette: chr development of Lew and interaction with FF – what a great, really unknown, historical figure to key off of.
I like the Buckaroo Banzai comparison, but I also like the contrast. The Cavaliers individually had some small various purposes, but largely collectively their purpose was to experience without aim. In Against the Day, the characters have no detachment from or indifference to their next steps, their futures. They’re either striving for some personal goal or they’re working on an assignment from someone else who is ambitious.
Years ago, I spent a lot of time and typewriter ribbon analyzing Sinclair’s The Jungle and Addams’ Twenty Years at Hull House; this take on the stockyards and anarchists is almost too neat and clean for me to suspend disbelief.
i hope i’m sneaking in before the dead/punch line. I absolutely haven’t read a better phrase than the description of Counterfly: ‘picklesome youth’. Are the opening sentences as fine as they seem to me: (up to) “Windy City, here we come!”? Is a ‘Liverpool kiss’ the same as a Glasgae kiss? I laughed outloud (lol-d) many times but most at:
‘For…
the Chum of chance is a pluc-ky soul,
Who shall neither whine or ejac-u-late,
For his blood’s as red and his mind’s as pure,
As the stripes of his bla-a-zer immaculate.’
I had ‘psychogastric twinges’ until I looked up what ‘absquatulated’ means.
‘Anybody feel like dancing?’ offered Chevrolette.
Cuidado! Take care! Xiangxin!
What’s in a name? Only a loose-headed outlaw-scribe could manufacture such nomes de guerre:
randolph st. cosmo
chick counterfly
professor heino vanderjuice
president porfirio diaz
pugnax
herr reimann
waziris from waziristan
merle rideout
miss mcadoo
scarsdale vibe
foley walker
ray ipsow
chevrolette
nate privett
reverend moss gatlin
madge and mia culpepper
ed addle
Colin — you bet — you made it with plenty of time. The deadline strictly speaking is whenever the next post goes up, which will always be sometime Tuesday PST. So the safe bet is to post sometime Monday PST.
Pugnax!
-Cecil
“absquatulated”? Is that like “O, Brother, Where Art Thou’s” “r-u-n-n-o-f-t”?
I’m with Del in my astonishment at how masterful and lucid the prose is so far, even if it’s a borrowed elegance as Pynchon deftly pilfers another era’s prose (the Joyce trick). Some canny newbie at Penguin ought to seed ABE.com with fake copies of “Chums of Chance” novels–I think I’d shell out for “The Chums of Chance at Krakatoa” even if I knew it was a stunt.
Rodney: those Chums novels reminded just a little of Vonnegut tossing out Kilgore Trout titles and plotlines like mardi gras beads.
I did end up happily shelling out for the faux Trout book, Venus on the Half-Shell and I’m sure I’d buy a Chums of Chance serial too. Or mebbe a Chums of Chance comic book, illustrated by Hergé of Tintin fame…..
-Cecil
Well, I am pleasantly surprised I made it thru the first week’s readings – and Im just talking about all the great posts so far. Does create something of an incentive to read and post quicker to be towards the front of the commenting line.
I too am enjoying the book so far, doubting Im getting the finer points, certain Im confusing characters already. and not convinced I will be able to pace myself and make it thru.
For some reason when I read in the first few seconds that the vessel was named Inconvenience I had the feeling that this might work out after all.
Some of images, ideas and language I liked:
Relieving oneself from above as entering the realm of the religious
For cattle, unshaped freedom being rationalized to a progressive reduction of choices, until the killing floor.
the modern state depends on a state of eternal seige
to put money for research into a system of free power would be to betray the essence of everything modern history is supposed to be
“unusually vivid reveries … all stricken with a tenderness he had never noticed in their actual life together.”
So far, so good.
well, hell. i, too, have a running list of all the characters. though after reading AnemicPrince’s post, looks like i’m missing a few…mmmm… i AM enjoying the book, oddly enough. it reminds me of a turn-of-the-century vaudville musical with a dash of eraserhead thrown in. i think i’ve been to the Esthonia Hotel…
The book sits in my bathroom and waits for me. I’ve started using the bathroom downstairs, but I can still feel it up there, at the corner of the house, waiting. I walked in today and looked at it. The front leaf of the cover jacket is tucked into page seventeen, right where I left it. I peeked inside to see if anything looked familiar. I experienced an immediate sense of psychic aggravation, a kind of brain itch. I want to like this book. I’m going to give it a chance. I’ve moved it to my bedside. If the book makes it to the coffee table next to the sofa downstairs – the big one that’s good for naps – then I may actually finish.
I identify with Miles “sometimes these peculiar feelings will surround me, like the electricity coming on-as if I can see everything just as clear as day, how…how everything fits together connects. It doesn’t last long, though. Pretty soon I’m just back to tripping over my feet again.” Perhaps I need a group cure like Lew – anyone know of a hotel I could check into without paying? The book reminds me a lot of the Singing Detective, I think if it were made into a motion picture it would have to be a musical. But that’s got nothing to do with the price of turnips…