A bit pedantic and deadpan. Lots of ironic humor. Like a funny professor who's trying not to laugh at his own wit while he lectures. I was tempted to give up early on because I thought, OK jeez I've seen American Beauty, Office Space, Fight Club, what else do I want to hear about the existential dread and lack of meaning in modern American life? Also, Don, the average person doesn't speak in painterly metaphors! I don't know if he was doing it consciously to make some kind of point, but e... (show more)

A bit pedantic and deadpan. Lots of ironic humor. Like a funny professor who's trying not to laugh at his own wit while he lectures. I was tempted to give up early on because I thought, OK jeez I've seen American Beauty, Office Space, Fight Club, what else do I want to hear about the existential dread and lack of meaning in modern American life? Also, Don, the average person doesn't speak in painterly metaphors! I don't know if he was doing it consciously to make some kind of point, but everybody talked exactly the way the author writes, which took away from the intense realism of the characters otherwise. That aside, I'm really glad I finished the book. I pushed on to about halfway through and then couldn't stop turning pages. I'd read the Body Artist and couldn't see what the DeLillo hype was about, but this was pretty excellent overall. Best post-modern writer? I don't know about that, but pretty damn good, and well worth reading. I guess my biggest critique would be that the Point, whatever it is, exactly, is a bit belabored. Maybe not the "point" but the themes: fear of death, consumerism and media as anaesthetic to the fear of death, and repeat, and repeat. But luckily, he handles the material brilliantly and tells a story interesting enough to make you like it, if not love it. (show less)

Unless you've already read some Pynchon and you're just dying for more, don't waste the considerable energy it will take to even heft this book, let alone let yourself get sucked in by the first page, which is actually really good. The thing is, like Joyce, Pynchon is a genius and he's created his own version of what a novel is, complete with it's own language. That said, this book is for people who are fluent in Pynchonian, which I'm not. I have, like tourist level Pynchonian comprehensi... (show more)

Unless you've already read some Pynchon and you're just dying for more, don't waste the considerable energy it will take to even heft this book, let alone let yourself get sucked in by the first page, which is actually really good. The thing is, like Joyce, Pynchon is a genius and he's created his own version of what a novel is, complete with it's own language. That said, this book is for people who are fluent in Pynchonian, which I'm not. I have, like tourist level Pynchonian comprehension. That said, take this with a grain of salt. You can predict some of the differences between this and Gravity's Rainbow by the first sentence, "Now single up all lines!" as opposed to "A screaming comes across the sky". Where GR hits the heart of something, Against the Day is epic in a more sprawling undirected way. Industrial modernism, anarchy, paranoia, the American dream, fantasy of American dream etc etc. And, to test your patience even more: In GR there was a bajillion characters to lose track of, but you could always come back to good old Slothrop. No such luck here, there are at least 5 "main characters" followed by concentric rings of lesser characters. With of course the characteristic byzantine course of the "plot" to get lost in.

So why do I like this book at all? Why did I slog my way through this brick, other than to put it on my bookshelf so the occasional person could go "wow, you made it through Against the Day?" and I could go: "yep"? Because of the skyship "inconvenience". Pynchon parallels two worlds in the story: the world of the earthbound humans, constrained by either the government's laws or the anarchic but almost tamed "law of the west", the other world one of pure fantasy in the form of kids adventure books that the author clearly loved as an adolescent. I love the skyship parts because A) they're fun to read and B) they brilliantly symbolize our giddy hopes for what kinds of magic our booming technology would give us in that period (during the World's Fair). And, as a leader in the explosion of new technology, represents America's fantasy of being the adventurous hero at the center of that techno-fantasy. Aside from this, the prose itself is better and clearer than anything he's written. He is a master of Pynchonian.

Fair-mindedness aside though, I think that he is such a reclusive author because if he ever showed his face someone might grab him by the shirt and be like "what the fuck! why does there have to be a hundred characters and a thousand mini plots. What are you even trying to say, if anything!" and imagine what would happen to his book sales if his answer was something like "Shit man, I dunno, I got bombed every day for a year and this is what happened." (show less)