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Against the Day
Thomas Pynchon
€ 21.99
€ 16.18
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Description for Against the Day
Paperback. 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. Num Pages: 1232 pages. BIC Classification: FA. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 197 x 130 x 55. Weight in Grams: 838.
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.
Product Details
Publisher
Vintage United Kingdom
Number of pages
1232
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2007
Condition
New
Number of Pages
1232
Place of Publication
London, United Kingdom
ISBN
9780099512332
SKU
V9780099512332
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 5 to 9 working days
Ref
99-98
About Thomas Pynchon
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.
Reviews for Against the Day
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
Michael Moorcock
Daily Telegraph
The greatest, wildest author of his generation
Ian Rankin
Guardian
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
Stuart Kelly
Scotland on Sunday
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
Tom Adair
Scotsman
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
Spectator
Now aged 70 [Pynchon's] astonishing sense of place is undiminished...That such a heavy book should bear such a light-hearted message is one final irony - yet another example of Pynchon's wayward brilliance
Mark Sanderson
Sunday Telegraph
Expertly spoofing Victorian pulp and western dime novels, as well as paying tribute to more contemporary genres..the tone is pitched a a generally jaunty angle to the apocalyptic subject matter, and whatever drawbacks of this it certainly keeps the book moving at a good clip
James Lasdun
Guardian
Heart-stopping felicities of description lurk around every corner
Tim Martin
Independent on Sunday
Pynchon can be totally maddening, but he has a great sense of mischief
Douglas Kennedy
The Times
Clever and inventive in a mad professor kind of way...Intermittently warmed by paragraph-long sunbeams of iridescent prose-poetry
Economist
Michael Moorcock
Daily Telegraph
The greatest, wildest author of his generation
Ian Rankin
Guardian
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
Stuart Kelly
Scotland on Sunday
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
Tom Adair
Scotsman
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
Spectator
Now aged 70 [Pynchon's] astonishing sense of place is undiminished...That such a heavy book should bear such a light-hearted message is one final irony - yet another example of Pynchon's wayward brilliance
Mark Sanderson
Sunday Telegraph
Expertly spoofing Victorian pulp and western dime novels, as well as paying tribute to more contemporary genres..the tone is pitched a a generally jaunty angle to the apocalyptic subject matter, and whatever drawbacks of this it certainly keeps the book moving at a good clip
James Lasdun
Guardian
Heart-stopping felicities of description lurk around every corner
Tim Martin
Independent on Sunday
Pynchon can be totally maddening, but he has a great sense of mischief
Douglas Kennedy
The Times
Clever and inventive in a mad professor kind of way...Intermittently warmed by paragraph-long sunbeams of iridescent prose-poetry
Economist