Against the day

Review by Booklist Review

Nearly a decade after Mason & Dixon (1997), Pynchon delivers a novel that matches his most influential work, Gravity's Rainbow (1973), in complexity, humor, and insight, and surpasses it in emotional valence. Approaching 70 and as famous for his avoidance of the public eye as for his Niagaras of prose, Pynchon remains profoundly fascinated by light, time, and technology. The improbable action begins onboard a hydrogen skyship, the Inconvenience, manned by the Chums of Chance, a fabled do-gooder aeronautics club on its way to Chicago for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Aside from some Jules Verne-like voyages beneath the earth's surface, the bickering Chums provide an aerial view of the carnivalesque proceedings as this many-voiced saga modulates in tone from cliffhanger jocularity to metaphysical speculation, lyricism, and devilish satire. As Pynchon whirls his way through such milestones as the invention of dynamite, harnessing of electricity, evolution of photography and movies, development of diabolical weapons, and the bloody turmoil in the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire leading up to World War I, his motley characters circle the globe on quests for enlightenment, profit, revenge, romance, and sanctuary. Cartoonish figures vamp and menace, but Pynchon has also created genuinely dimensional and affecting characters, including marvelously tough and witty women, from saloon girls to a magician's assistant, a mathematician, and an anthropologist. By orchestrating fantastic, dramatic, and all-too-real goings-on in the Wild West, the Bowery, London, Gottingen, Venice, Mexico, Bukhara, Albania, and Tuva, Pynchon illuminates the human endeavor in all its longing, violence, hubris, and grace. A capacious, gritty, and tender epic. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2006 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Looking to add 42 CDs to your collection in one fell swoop? Possessed of 54 hours of free time that desperately need to be filled? Look no further than this audiobook of Pynchon's latest literary behemoth, a product so ridiculously outsized it deserves a Pynchon book of its own to celebrate it. Hill is to be commended for making his way through the 1,100 pages of Pynchon's novel, traipsing all the way from the union-busting American West of the 1880s to the WWI-era Balkans, shifting accents and deliveries with aplomb along the way. While it is hard to imagine anyone mustering the energy to listen to all of Pynchon's admittedly brilliant late career masterpiece, Hill admirably meets the challenge, although he occasionally makes the mistake of emphasizing the book's comedy over its deep moral and intellectual seriousness. At 54.5 hours long, though, a little extra comedy is probably a necessary accoutrement. Simultaneous release with the Penguin Press hardcover (Reviews, Oct. 30). (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Pynchon (Mason & Dixon) has once again produced a work of note. His portrait of a sizable number of characters living in the volatile period from 1893 to post-World War I is equally epic and surreal (and sometimes a bit confusing). It is multilayered and filled with foreshadowing and numerous interesting subplots. Strangely, it is at the same time sadly realistic and idealistic, intellectual and humorous (mostly droll), fictitious and historical. In other words, this is pure Pynchon as he illustrates the arc of the human spirit. The performance of reader Dick Hill is nothing short of masterly; his ability to convey emotion and believable accents over so lengthy and complex a work and yet hold the listener's interest is remarkable. Recommended for those with the patience to stick with the novel to the end, though often this may seem like a challenge.-Scott R. DiMarco, Mansfield Univ. of Pennsylvania (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, Against the Daymoves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the century New York, to London and Göttingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia, Mexico, 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. 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, Thomas Pynchon 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-fact occurrences occur. Maybe it's not the world, but with a minor adjustment or two, it's what the world might be.;PThomas Pynchonis the author of V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, and, most recently, Mason & Dixon. He received the National Book Award for Gravity's Rainbowin 1974 and is rumored to have been a nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Against the Daywas a New York Times Notable Book of 2006. Reader of over 200 audiobooks, Dick Hillhas won three coveted Audie awards and been nominated numerous times. He is also the recipient of several AudioFileEarphones Awards. AudioFileincludes Dick on their prestigious list of "Golden Voices." Excerpted from Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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