Difference between revisions of "Against the Day"
(Replaced Mysterious Airshop with pic of book cover) |
(Add link to cover analysis) |
||
| (One intermediate revision by the same user not shown) | |||
| Line 14: | Line 14: | ||
— [[Thomas Pynchon]] | — [[Thomas Pynchon]] | ||
| + | * [[ATD cover analysis|Cover analysis]] | ||
* [[Against the Day Title|Title speculations]] | * [[Against the Day Title|Title speculations]] | ||
* [[Against the Day description|More on the book description]] | * [[Against the Day description|More on the book description]] | ||
Latest revision as of 21:08, 10 December 2006
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. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.
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, the author 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-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction.
Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck.
