Thomas Pynchon is the author of V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity’s Rainbow, Slow Learner and a collection of short stories, Vineland, Mason and Dixon. He received the National Book Award for Gravity’s Rainbow in 1974.
Spanning the period between the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, Against the Day moves from the labour troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York: from London to Venice, to Siberia, to Mexico during the revolution: silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all.
It is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. Maybe it’s not the world, but with a minor adjustment or two it’s what the world might be.
‚All that is glorious and exhilarating about Pynchon is found here… a mighty novel that will delight Pynchonians and seduce newcomers’ – Observer. A fine example of a successful marriage between the popular and intellectual, between fiction and science… gloriously, demandingly, daringly, Pynchon has rediscovered vulgarity and continues to prove the novel has never been more vibrant, more various or better able to represent our complex world. Give this book your time – you’ll agree its worth it The greatest, wildest author of his generation Against the Day is a rollercoaster ride that soars, plummets and often loops the loop…. A fantastic chronicle of how the world came into being… there is a beautifully humane, compassionate energy arcing through the book…Pynchon is the only living American author who unreservedly deserves the Nobel Prize for Literature It is a serious book and the finest thing Pynchon has done since Gravity’s Rainbow. It should be acknowledged, nonetheless that Against The Day is immensely funny, an intricate, wheezing shaggy dog joke holds you in its grip for a thousand pages. Quite a feat It is brilliant…There’s a wonderful gathering tenderness – and Pynchon writes some of the most beautiful sentences you are ever likely to come across