Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Against The Day: Not A Review An Appreciation, 2007

I've taken to typing up large pieces of this book Against The Day by Thomas Pynchon and posting them on random places on the internet. All are duly quoted and attributed, because credit should be given where it is due, as this story deserves a distribution farther, wider and stranger than more than all but just a few have attained. It deserves imaginary distribution, it needs to be read by the people, yes and yes, as well thru lenses kept hidden by governemnts and secret societies the world over. It needs to be read by people of all times and places. It needs to be praised and misrepresented, taught in schools and left by the bulletin board in bus terminals, kept by lighters outside of airport terminals and substituted for Gideon's Bibles in all the Comfort Inn's across Northern America.
If you're not happy with the news these days, read this instead.
If you want a story that paralells your life and yet still twists away from the present, just in time, to remind that it is good now and then to throw away the rulebook, then this might be the book to read.
Have you ever thought two superficially unrelated occurences were actually deeply connected in some otherwise undocumented way? You think of someone and they call, you have a feeling of dread or sadness and the news reports it, you miss an appointment somewhere and it turns out it was better you weren't there at all . . . these kinds of things happen to characters in this book with such ease, we are left to wonder why everyone doesn't dwell on these things all the time. But then the commercial ends, or the phone rings, the belly rumbles, the sirens go off. We nod and lose our way.

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Against The Day is by Thomas Pynchon, and the 1st edition, by the Penguin Press, was published in NY, late 2006.

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