Pynchon Wiki: Against the Day

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Welcome to the Pynchon Wiki

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The Mysterious Airship of 1896

This is the newly created Wiki for -- inaugurally -- Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day, and eventually for the guides to Pynchon's other "big" novels, V., Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon, which are currently available at ThomasPynchon.com. Eventually, all the novels will be migrated here so that registered users of this wiki can create pages and make changes for those novels' guides.

You can read the Against the Day description, written by Thomas Pynchon, which appeared, disappeared and reappeared at Amazon.com.

1 How to Use this Wiki
2 Alphabetical Index
3 Annotations by Page
4 Pynchon Wiki Help and Contributor Guidelines
5 External Links
6 Featured Article
7 Gallery

How to Use this Wiki

There are two major ways to use this wiki. The first is the Against the Day Alphabetical Index, used to keep track of the myriad characters, real and imagined, as well as events, arcana, and lots of other stuff. The second is the Annotations by Page, which allows the reader to look up and contribute allusions and references while reading the book, in a convenient and spoiler-free manner.

Apart from those, it's up to you!

Alphabetical Index

Information on the characters, events, and everything else in Against the Day, organized alphabetically:

Against the Day Alpha Guide

A·B·C·D·E·F·G·H·I·J·K·L·M·N·O·P·Q·R·S·T·U·V·W·XYZ top of page

Annotations by Page

An alternate form of commentary on the text, to be linked up (or not) to the alphabetical index as future contributors suggest and agree upon. The guiding principle of these annotations is to remain spoiler-free, so that readers can follow along without the fear that later parts of the book will be revealed.

Part One: The Light Over the Ranges

Pages 1-25

Pages 26-56

Pages 57-80

Pynchon Wiki Help and Contributor Guidelines

Click here for help with editing and creating pages.

We have a few conventions we ask that you follow:

When creating a new page, if its information pertains to one (and only one) specific Pynchon novel (currently just Against the Day, please categorize it with the identifier "ATD" using this syntax: [[Category:ATD]]

To open a discussion on an individual listing of the Alpha Index, see the page on Tait. Basically, give it a name that identifies the alpha listing (eg [[Name Discussion|DISCUSSION]]) and notice that the visible name will be "DISCUSSION" in full caps, so it stands out a bit.

External Links

Random House UK ATD Page
The Modern Word ATD page
Pynchonoid Blog
ATD Blog
Wikipedia ATD page
ThomasPynchon.com
Penguin Group AtD Page (Hmmm. There isn't one...)

Featured Article

Tesla's Wardenclyffe laboratory

Was the Tunguska Event Caused by Tesla's Death Ray?
Given that Tesla's inventions generally possessed an element of social conscience, of doing good for humanity, it may seem surprising that he created a number of devices with military applications. And the notion of the Tesla harnessing his mind for purposes of war may seem immensely frightening. After all, this is the man who boasted that with his resonance generator he could split the earth in two... and no one was ever quite sure whether he was joking.

( more...)