“Against the Day” Roundtable, Part Four
Written byPosted on January 5, 2007
Filed Under Pynchon, Thomas
[NOTE: The discussion can also be followed at Metaxucafe. Previous installments: Part One (Max), Part Two (Carolyn) and Part Three (Megan).]
The New Chums of Chance, aided by associative penchant and a perfervid desire to ferret out reference, continued their journey, hitting beyond Part One and, with Colonel Bud Parr beginning to see references to the Bible and Eliot, settling into the firm fields of Part Two:
“But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God” (Romans 2:5)
My reading of Part 1, “The Light Over the Ranges,” and early Part 2, “Iceland Spar,” has me coming back to the idea of faith in all of its manifestations. Faith in the Old Testament sense of an apocalyptic fear; Faith in anarchism, Faith in science and technology; magic and pagan rituals and of course Faith in money and materialism, particularly as the book opens on the 1893 World’s Fair, which, as one commentator on that event said, was a dry run for America’s “consumer based society.”
Each of these manifestations appear to be represented by a major character. When the anarchist Webb Traverse shrugs and says “Sufficient unto the day” on page 96 he echoes Saint Matthew (6:34):
“Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
Taken with the quote above where “against the day” is bookended by the word “wrath,” Webb stands as a polar opposite to the capitalist Scarsdale Vibe and the distinctly American optimism of the Chums of Chance who are surrounded by Christian symbols, including, on page 14, “Jacob’s ladder,” which is used literally as a ship’s ladder, but also is a well known symbol from the Bible (Genesis 28:12):
“And he [jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.”
On page 250-252 Chum Miles Blundell has a vision and says:
“‘It wanted us to know that we, too, are here on a pilgrimage….When all the masks have been removed, it is really an inquiry into our own duty, our fate…As the Franciscans developed the Stations of the Cross to allow any parishioner to journey to Jerusalem without leaving his church grounds, so have we been brought up and down the paths and aisles of what we take to be the all-but-boundless world, but which in reality are only a circuit of humble images reflecting a glory greater than we can imagine – to save us from the blinding terror of having to make the real journey, from one episode to the next of the last day of Christ on Earth, and at last to the real, unbearable Jerusalem.’”
With all the talk of alternative universes in this book and clouds of apocalypse hanging over it, the fictive Chums – who do show up alternatively on page 214 as fiction despite interfacing with other “real” characters like Lew Basnight – seem to me to be something like King Arthur’s Knights of the Roundtable with perhaps Blundell as the virginal Galahad himself.
The Chums’ airship parallels the original “Quest of the Holy Grail,” (the original, not the Mallory) which is a tale of overt Christian symbolism, with its itinerant heroes who find themselves meeting challenges on a quest that is initially unknown to them. Ships play a large role in the original Quest too.
It’s interesting that Max said reading Pynchon is like reading T.S. Eliot because it is Eliot who led me to reading “The Quest for the Holy Grail” and Jessie Weston’s “From Ritual to Romance,” which relates the quest for the holy grail to its ritualistic roots and could also be for interesting ancillary reading alongside Against the Day.
Of course, picking a theme like I have could be dangerous territory because it seems to me that once you go mining in a Pynchon novel you start finding things where they may or may not really exist. The inscriptions that pop up everywhere in Against the Day are confusing, but also seem to point toward something. The Dante quote inscribed before (I think) New York City on page 154 “I AM THE WAY INTO THE DOLEFUL CITY” — which we know ends (frustratingly not here) with “Abandon Every Hope, All You Enter Here” — seems to be a signpost. Of the city that this inscription stands before, which underwent an “all-night rape,” Pynchon says in one of his occasional flourishes of sensuous writing:
“Out of that night and day of unconditional wrath, folks would’ve expected to see any city, if it survived, all newly reborn, purified by flame, taken clear beyond greed, real-estate speculating, local politics – instead of which, here was this weeping widow, some one-woman grievance committee in black, who would go on to save up and lovingly record and mercilessly begrudge every goddamn single tear she ever had to cry, and over the years to come would make up for them all be developing into the meanest, cruelest bitch of a city, even among cities not notable for their kindness.”
I say it’s a signpost because the story surrounding this city seems confusing as it pops out of nowhere and recedes into the background of the novel just as quickly, yet stands in contrast to the opening scenes of Chicago’s World’s Fair and captures the connection between a wrathful apocalypse and the Christian journey that Dante had just embarked upon in Canto III of The Divine Comedy, which like “Against the Day” reaches back into pre-Christian elements along its path and challenges Dante in his judgement of others. The passage in the Bible right after the one I quoted from Webb above reads:
“Judge not, that ye be not judged. 7:2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
