Blog Posting #10- Relections on Pynchon's Against the Day

I think tedious best describes this novel. Tedious in its multi-plots, already innumerable characters and seemingly unregulated rambling running into the back of and charging ahead of what can best be characterized as the natural pace of the novel. Of the different plots delved into so far, there are certainly some that are much more interesting than others. This is the case of the Chums of Chance and their delightfully-intriguing adventures from the Columbian Exposition to the icy, polar-regions of the North and the skies on high. It is the aeronaut stories which I naturally focus much more on, especially when compared to the boring toils of Webb Traverse on terra firma.

The technologies that the Chums of Chance air squadron possesses are indeed amazing to behold. Airships, for example that glide through the fluid that is the air adds a level of novelty to the story that makes this plot track enjoyable to follow because it evokes so many question in my mind. What is the aether, for example? It appears to be some sort of bizarre material manifestation within the realities of the novel tantamount to that of dark matter in our real world. But why do people want to understand it, why do they want to trace its lines of manifestation in the skies? As strange as these events are they certainly evoke a feeling of the uncanny; reminding me of the World War I dogfights high in the sky, the Red Baron, and antique nautical cartography, and so on. Yet, they are flying in airships, what I envision as boats only in the air with a highly complicated metaphysical navigation system and some form of clockwork electrical mechanization.

One similarity I observed between Pynchon’s Against the Day and S.M. Peter’s Whitechapel Gods is the incorporation of metaphysical science. That is sciences, eerily similar to those we study in class, only with a heightened abstract aspect. In the case of Peters, the metaphysical is characterized by an out-of-body-experience feeling, where a character enters some other dimension where incorporeal beings, gods in the novel, dwell. For Pynchon, the metaphysical, among many other instances, is made evident in the concept of the aether as well as the strange dimensional distortions surrounding the mysterious ‘alien crypt’. It appears that there is some metaphysical association with electricity, magnetism and the physics of light.
Ultimately, the novel may prove much more rewarding as I progress beyond the first two hundred pages. I eagerly await to see further development of the character-rich, and dynamic interactions of the comrades onboard the Inconvenience. And let’s not forget the taking dog, Pugnax, as well.