I’ve started reading Thomas Pynchon’s, Against the Day. I enjoy Pynchon, though there’s no guarantee I’ll be able to say anything meaningful about his novel because his narratives are often difficult to follow. Take, for instance, the cryptic but thought-provoking quote from Thelonius Monk at the beginning of the book: “It’s always night, or we wouldn’t need light.”

This novel is set at the turn of the previous century, beginning with the Columbian World’s Fair in 1893 and running past the First World War. As usual, Pynchon sometimes seems to play fast and loose with historical facts, so it doesn’t feel like historical fiction in any traditional sense. That’s not a criticism, mind you, just something to keep in mind when reading it.

Maybe I will have to make use of the Thomas Pynchon Wiki, which I just discovered. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll check out some of the many reviews on the novel, though I don’t want to spoil it for myself, especially since I find my tastes are often out of sync with those of the reviewers.

One practical thing I like: with 1085 pages, this $18.00 paperback is a relative bargain; it’s going to keep me busy for a long time.

Perhaps after that I’ll go back and look at some of his earlier stuff. I read Vineland when it came out in paperback, but I hadn’t touched Pynchon before that since I was maybe only twenty-one. I read Gravity’s Rainbow, for instance, while in the field artillery on maneuver in Grafenwöhr, Germany. I still remember clinging to the book while bouncing up and down and eating dust on dirt roads on the back of a self-propelled eight-inch howitzer.