Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 3: Line 9

They were bound this day for the city of Chicago, and the World's Columbian Exposition recently opened there.

* * * * * * * * * *

Not every line can be filled with subtext!

No wait! Maybe I should state that a different way!

Not every line's subtext will be understood by me!

I'm sure you've figured that out by now but I thought maybe I should be transparent about it, just in case. I haven't even read this book all the way through once. I'd have to be pretty freaking sharp to understand it all on the first read through!

Sometimes (maybe most of the time?) the simple right there in front of you typed on the page text should be enough. And this text is saying, "They're going to Chicago and it's 1893 and the Chums of Chance are bound to run into Jimmy Corrigan's grandfather, right? Better him than H. H. Holmes!"

At some point, I'm probably going to have to stop quoting every line from the book for copyright reasons, right? I'm probably still within fair use territory now! And maybe I can do the entire novel like this because who in their right mind would argue that somebody decided to read the entirety of Against the Day for free using my blog, reading one sentence at a time while trying to ignore all of my insane ramblings wedged between?! That would also have to assume that I'm going to get to the end of the novel in this manner! More likely, I'll give up about two hundred lines in and whoever was reading my blog to primarily read Against the Day will find themselves having to go out and buy the book.

Basically, if I do get sued and have to go to court over this, I can argue that I'm a huge quitter and was never going to comment on the entire book, sentence by sentence, anyway! Let's see them try to win a court case based on my ability to finish things! Ha ha! Losers!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 3: Line 8

When the ship reached cruising altitude, those features left behind on the ground having now dwindled to all but microscopic size, Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander, announced, "Now secure the Special Sky Detail," and the boys, each dressed neatly in the summer uniform of red-and-white-striped blazer and trousers of sky blue, spiritedly complied.

* * * * * * * * * *

There was a time when I would dissect a character's name until there was nothing left but useless, bloody, unrecognizable parts. But that was before I began reading Thomas Pynchon novels (okay, fine. I still did it after reading The Crying of Lot 49 and Mason & Dixon but I definitely stopped a few months ago after reading Gravity's Rainbow). Pynchon comes up with some crazy names, right?! Not that I think he doesn't put any thought into those names; I just began to see the benefit of letting the names live and breathe instead of chopping them into mince meat. Take the name Randolph St. Cosmo! Maybe it's a puzzle to be solved but even if I'm incapable of solving that puzzle (or any puzzle, really. Games magazine won't be advertising that I subscribed to their magazine for years as teenager), it still tells a story. It's grandiose! It's majestic! It's the kind of name the leader of a celebrated kids' club would have! A kid with a name like that would be the kid I'd want to make friends with at lunch! After the other kids were done beating him up and taking his lunch money, of course. I wouldn't want to get caught up in the back blast of his "I'm a total nerd" aura. "Don't stand out" was my total personality in elementary school!

Once in the sky, everything on the ground has shrunk to microscopic size. That either means it's beyond notice now and everything important is happening on the ship. Or it could mean that the best way to scrutinize and examine the every day life of every day people is from on high. Sometimes you get conflicting messages from the subtext! It might be helpful if I knew what the "Special Sky Detail" was but it remains a mystery at this time.

What could the Special Sky Detail mean?! Is it a banner? Or an experiment? Is it a task that they all trained to undergo while in the sky? Probably so they don't crash! It's possible it's just some standard ship lingo that doesn't mean anything even though every word is capitalized and it begins with "Special."

If you didn't get the message that these boys were a patriotic lot from the previous sentence that described the bunting as patriotic (I mean, did you immediately fall asleep after you began reading this book? We're not even ten sentences in yet!), you might notice the Chums of Chance summer uniforms here and think, "Hey! Those are the same colors as the Norwegian flag!" If you did think that, you're both smarter and dumber than I am!

I imagine they all look like Stripesy from DC Comics except with short pants (being that it's the summer uniform!).

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 3: Line 7

It was amid such lively exclamation that the hydrogen ship Inconvenience, its gondola draped with patriotic bunting, carrying a five-lad crew belonging to that celebrated aeronautics club known as the Chums of Chance, ascended briskly into the morning, and soon caught the southerly wind.

* * * * * * * * * *

The Chums of Chance! I haven't been this excited about reading the adventures of a bunch of kids since I read Alan Moore's Jerusalem starring that celebrated club of dead children, the Dead Dead Gang! I'm not familiar with any specific children's adventure book series that feature a bunch of kids running about the world finding mummies and fomenting revolutions against tyrant kings. But that's probably because I grew up in the 70s and 80s and was too busy watching Scooby Doo and the Outerscope series from Vegetable Soup. I mention children's adventure book series because both Moore's Dead Dead Gang and Pynchon's Chums of Chance are well-known in their worlds for the books detailing their adventures. (This is kind of cheating since I'm discussing something that isn't in this sentence. I hope that you, and God, will forgive me.)

We'll learn more about the Chums of Chance and how they're literary heroes in a series of semi-fictional books in a semi-fictional book later. Or are they literary heroes in a series of non-fiction books in a fiction book set in a semi-historical setting? What am I in all this?! Probably the only real person in a simulated setting created for my own entertainment.

The name of the ship has probably launched a thousand essays but it doesn't do a lot for me. Reading anything is an inconvenience, especially when you know there are new episodes of Animaniacs to watch on Hulu. I suppose to people who aren't super intelligent and literate like I know I am (and not like how stupid dumb dumbs all think they're smart! I would know if I were a dumby who thinks he's smart! I'm sure of it!), reading a Pynchon novel would be the biggest inconvenience of their lives because they'd keep looking up from the pages with a look that is the only way they can express how inscrutable the text is seeing as how they don't know the word "inscrutable."

Oh yeah! I know I just sort of casually put that out there but yes I did indeed read Alan Moore's Jerusalem. Talk about an inconvenience!

If I could feel shame, I'd feel shame for using that whole "talk about an X" bit. Especially since it barely makes sense. The most inconvenient part of reading Jerusalem was that I desperately needed reading glasses while doing so and instead of purchasing some, I just held the book further and further away from my face as I continued to read it. I finally got reading glasses so I could draw detailed colored pencil maps of the Apple IIe game Deathlord.

The patriotic bunting indicates the Chums of Chance are super into the American dream. What side of the labor movement will they be on? Union busting or shorter work weeks with safer working conditions?! Is that a question I should be asking after reading this statement? Probably not, according to my Children's Literature teacher. She'd be all, "Stick to only information you can glean from the words in this sentence, you dumb bastard!" Then she'd force me to do a deep dive into the word "bunting" to figure out why, exactly, Pynchon chose that specific word. I'd respond by resenting the entire assignment and deciding I'd rather get a C- than do what she wanted me to do.

The last bit of information that I've gleaned from this sentence is that the Chums of Chance are heading up to Chicago from the South where they probably just finished a thrilling adventure that modern audiences wouldn't feel comfortable reading about due to all of the casual racism. Not from the Chums of Chance, I'm sure! Most of them are probably as woke as a character could be in 1893!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 3: Lines 5-6

 "Hurrah! Up we go!"

* * * * * * * * * *

In the previous section about Line 4, I forgot to mention that an astute reader with a glancing knowledge of geography might have been confused by the number of nanoseconds it took them to read the next few lines before getting to the phrase "hydrogen skyship." They might have put the book down, looked up quizzically from the uncomfortable chair at the mall turned slightly askew from the table to face Cajun Grill (for reasons they don't need to explain to their wife), and muttered, "Wait a second! Who takes a ship to Chicago?!" Then a stranger sitting next to them with a better than glancing knowledge of geography (is "glancing" even a word that works here? It's meant to convey somebody who really doesn't know that much but knows enough to always be confused by it) might respond, "Probably somebody living on the other side of Lake Michigan, I reckon." Then the first person might have felt a bit humiliated and slammed the heavy book down on the table, startling the attractive clerk at the Cajun Grill, and refused to read any more.

Or maybe I didn't forget to mention all that and was just a little bit embarrassed about it until I thought of a way to tell it as if it happened to a hypothetical person. What that story was meant to get at is that this sentence, "Hurrah! Up we go!" helped that hypothetical person to realize that this wasn't a story about a boat at all (the only story I know about a boat ends with the phrase "out bored Motor" and it was the first Shaggy Dog story I ever knew and one I told to all of my friends to the point that at least one of my friends continued to tell it while making it even longer and more shaggy). If they were a particularly astute reader, they may have thought, "Oh! This is a story about a balloon!" Also if one of their friends once described Against the Day  as "Mason & Dixon in a balloon," they might have remembered that as well.

"Up we go!" also doesn't need to connote a direction; it could be referencing a state of mind. We're going up now into our imagination! Leave the old rules and status quo ways of those Earth-bound jerks behind! We're going elsewheres!

Also the "Hurrah!" is more of that general excitement of the traveler before a long, 1000 page journey! So exciting!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 3: Line 4

 "Windy City, here we come!"

* * * * * * * * * *

"How much can you possibly write about every stupid line like this, Anonymous Blog Writer?" asks the perplexed reader with a better than average perception skill.
    "Well," I reply magnanimously (because, really, I don't even need to respond. Easy access to writers and entertainers doesn't come with the obligation of return engagement!), "I suppose it depends on how much you think I want to write? The shorter the entry, the better, really! Maybe I'll finally find some time to play Torment: Tides of Numenera which I purchased on Kickstarter years ago and then when it finally arrived, I wasn't too keen on playing it, and now it just sits here on my office desk leering at me like some albatross in an Edgar Allen Poe poem."

I should clarify that the albatross was supposed to be a metaphor for "The Tell-Tale Heart" and not for "The Raven" even though I did say poem and it works better substituting one bird for another bird. And also, you know what, I said it was leering so I almost certainly never actually meant "The Tell-Tale Heart" at all. Never mind.

What was I getting at? Oh yeah! Obviously Chicago is meant by the term "Windy City" because it's windy, I guess. I've never been. But windy can also mean verbose or chatty or gossipy or apt to go on and on and on, like a Thomas Pynchon novel or a blog entry by Grunion Guy. I mean by an Anonymous Blog Writer. So this is probably Pynchon poking fun at the idea he's just presented the reader with a thousand page novel. But he (and it seems he assumes the reader should feel the same as well) seems really excited about starting out!

Here we come! I'm excited! How about you?!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 3: Lines 2-3

"Cheerly now . . . handsomely . . . very well! Prepare to cast her off!"

* * * * * * * * * *

I know what you're thinking! If only you had three sets of handcuffs and a bottle of vodka, your weekend would be set! No wait! That's what I'm thinking. You're thinking, "But Anonymous Blogger Person! That was two lines! What are you? Stupider than I first thought (which was pretty stupid)?!"

Now, I can't say that I'm not stupider than you first thought. That's a philosophical conundrum. But what I can do is explain myself. I don't normally set rules in my life which probably explains some things I'd rather not discuss in a public forum. But early on, I decided I should probably treat sentences within one set of quotations as a single sentence. This, like everything in life, is not a hard and fast rule. The only hard and fast rule I live by is "If you touch it, I will love you forever." Every other rule must be judged by the variables and context of the situation. People often think precedents in law help keep everything fair, so that everybody is judged by the same standard. But often precedents ensure that everything is not fair at all in any way. Life is complicated and we should never treat one situation as if it were identical to a previous situation with some of the same variables.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah! I will be presenting more than one sentence at times but almost exclusively if it's within the same set of quotation marks. Partly because I don't want fifteen hundred entries where I discuss what Pynchon was thinking when he had that character say, "Hello." Or "Yes." Or "Hallelujah!" If you're not as flexible as I am, you might get angry at some of my arbitrary decisions. Also did you notice how I avoided the obvious sex joke about how flexible I am?!

"Cheerly now . . . handsomely . . . very well!"
So the first sentence must be Pynchon telling me how to read every line. He's asking me, "Please, be kind, buddy." Or he's just cheering on my efforts, maybe! I bet Pynchon is way too confident to think, "I need to beg for the reader to enjoy my work which I enjoy immensely since it's totally been written for my own amusement." He's probably just thinking, "Come on! You can do it! That's it!" Or, if I had to get into Pynchon's mind to think exactly how he'd phrase it, "Cheerly now . . . handsomely . . . very well!"

"Prepare to cast her off!"
The second sentence is exactly what it is. "Here we go!" It's exactly how all books should begin! Instead of "Call me Ishmael," it should have been, "Prepare to cast her off! You can call me Ishmael." Or, a better example (or can there even be a better example being that Moby Dick was also about sailors and ships?), "Prepare to cast her off! A screaming comes across the sky."

Oh! Maybe "A screaming comes across the sky" is Gravity's Rainbow's "Prepare to cast her off!" It's sort of the written opening line version of throwing a Pynchon book at some jerk's head. "Hey! Read this, jerko!"

That's a pretty good opening line too, right?! I should get to work on my new novel!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 3: Line 1

 Now single up all lines!"

* * * * * * * * * *

This is it. The stupid first line of this stupid book that made my brain vomit-scream the idea "You should do a blog where you just write about each individual line of the book!" as I was trying to stop repeatedly playing the old Animaniacs theme song in my head in an effort to remember the lyrics they changed in the new Hulu series. I guess the vacuum that was created sucked in this other terrible thought because my brain has no respect for the amount of time I have to do all the things I already want to do every day. My brain apparently thinks I'm a lazy piece of excrement that needs more projects that I'll never finish not because I abandon them but because the "never finishing" bit is a feature. Here are a few projects I've given myself over the years that I knew I would never be able to finish as soon as I created them:

An online comic based on both Dungeons & Dragons and The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo called Dwarflover. Admittedly, this project has a terminus built into it: the capture of all thirteen ghosts. But the execution was purposefully expansive to give me too much to write about. Eventually the Photoshopping took its toll on me and the project was abandoned after two ghosts (Freddy Kreuger and Acererak) were captured after finishing one dungeon (The Tomb of Horrors). I had the theme and plot of the next dungeon (Dungeonland) figured out in my head with the first chapter written and the second and third chapter basically plotted out in my head. Maybe I'll return to this when I retire.

Reading every holy book (including Dianetics because, I mean, right?) as an areligious person who is mostly unfamiliar with the dogma of the religion and trying to interpret the text as literally as possible. This project was a lot of fun but ultimately abandoned (maybe until I retire from retirement?) after writing 335 pages on the first 45 pages of Genesis. This might still be my favorite project I ever abandoned. It was written in the style of a study guide and included sections like Science vs Faith, Drawing Time, Historical Facts, and Know Thy Enemy. The science versus faith section was always based on some theme in that particular section of The Bible (the subject of the last section I wrote about Joseph in Egypt was "Magicians") and a good amount of the historical facts were actually facts about the television show Lost (this was because I often confused Abram with J.J. Abrams). One entire section was just the first episode of the old Star Trek series inserted and discussed as if it were a chapter of The Bible. It used to be on the Internet (and still might be archived in weird Way Back Machines managed by top hat wearing cows) but I took it down when I thought, "This could be my first book!"

A blog discussing every book DC comics published when they flushed their entire universe and began The New 52. This was just the culmination of a dream I had when I was 12 where I thought, "Wouldn't it be great to be able to buy every single comic DC publishes so I can keep up on the entire story of all their characters?!" The answer turned out to be "No, it's not great. Not at all. Especially when they picked up all of Marvel's worst writers for the project."

Places & Predators, a roleplaying game based on The Game of Life. Technically this isn't exactly a project with "never being able to finish" baked in. I could have completed the basic game and then the "never finished" part would be continually writing modules and building the world. But seeing as how the "never being able to finish" is just a part of my DNA, I kept rewriting the rules. Over and over and over. Ultimately I did put out a finished project based on Cribbage and not The Game of Life. But I did add a character class, Cult Member, and a cult within that class who believe the world they're living in is a pale imitation of the actual world and that world is the original game I created. So I can still force all of my work back into this game! Also, the new game based on cribbage is also just based on the original world so it's not like I've thrown out all the writing I did. It's all still viable! This project actually exists in the real world and you can buy a copy of the basic rules with a starter module on Amazon Kindle!

Can I include "reading Burton's translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night" as a project since I've been reading that three volume monster for over ten years now? No, probably not.

I guess none of that was about this line from Against the Day, was it?

If the first line wasn't Pynchon telling the reader to pay attention to every individual line then I'm wasting my time. Because if every line of Pynchon's text is simply plot related then Pynchon isn't as interesting as I first thought. Also, I would have to learn about singling up lines and whatever that means. I know it has to do with launching a ship (an airship in this case!) but it's easier to jump straight to the possible subtext because that's all speculation that takes place in my head! Learning about the actual meaning of "singling up a line" means having to do outside reading. And who wants to read?! I'm a Writer not a Reader!

Oh, the other reason I decided to do this blog is because I've been complaining recently about my old college Children's Lit professor in my Gravity's Rainbow discussion over on my other blog and how she always tried to get us to write entire essays based on one line from the text. And she was insistent on keeping it out of context of the rest of the novel as much as we could! What was she, crazy?! How do you even do that?! I have no idea because she always marked me down for going too wide on my discussions and not focusing in enough. Maybe I'll finally learn how to do it on this blog!

I will, however, be writing a lot about me because that's all a sociopathic narcissist really knows about.

The First Chapter Title

 The Light Over the Ranges

* * * * * * * * * *

The initial image evoked by this statement is a small avocado green kitchen range sitting up against a greasy peach wall with a two bulb light overhead (one bulb burnt out, the globe filled with the corpses of generations of flies and moths). I'm pretty sure that's not the kind of range Pynchon means.

I suppose he could mean a range of mountains. Or the ranges like in that folk song about that place where the deer play.

The light probably means that thing that we need because it's always night. See how we already have a theme developing? Day and light in every section so far (except the picture of the coin. But for all I know, the writing could be translated as "The main point of this book is to save Daylight Saving Time.").

The second image this statement evokes is of the Northern Lights which makes me think of Gravity's Rainbow and Slothrop's memory of watching the Northern Lights as a youngster and having it scare the feces out of him and his speculation on some other lights after.

"But what Lights were these? What ghosts in command? And suppose, in the next moment, all of it, the complete night, were to go out of control and curtains part to show us a winter no one has guessed at. . . ."

So I guess besides the Northern Lights, I'm also now thinking of the light of an atomic explosion. But that shouldn't matter in this book, right? It takes place (according to something I read. The back of the book?) between the Chicago's World Fair and World War One. So how would the atomic bomb fit in?

But then also ask yourself this! The atomic bomb would have fit in well in Gravity's Rainbow (even though the entire story takes place in Europe) and it's only mentioned in a cryptic newspaper headline Slothrop notices in a puddle which reads:

MB DRO
ROSHI

So it might exist in this novel as it did in Gravity's Rainbow, as a ghost or a phantom haunting practically everything. It's dramatic irony! We, the reader, know it's coming even if the characters don't know nor will ever know because the novel ends well before the bomb is even invented! I bet it's even a huge specter in Mason & Dixon!

Okay, so maybe I've wandered too far afield on this one. The light over the ranges could also just be symbolic of knowledge being spread. Or maybe it's literal and it's the light from the airship which begins the novel, or just the bright lights of the Chicago World's Fair.

I should declare right here in this section that I will be returning to various entries to add postscripts to them as I get further and further into the novel. So just think of these entries as fluid. Maybe I should also explain that I'm not reading the novel one line at a time and then writing about that line before reading the next line! I'm actually reading the book and then, later, when I'm sitting around bored because none of my friends are playing Apex, writing these entries.

* * * * * * * * * * *
First Postscript

After having read a bit more, it seems, possibly, that the lights over the ranges could be UFOs.

The Picture Between the Epigraph and the First Chapter Title

 

* * * * * * * * * *

I don't know what this is. It looks like a coin depicting the Pokémon Togepi crossed with a half-eaten avocado with Lilliputian flags planted on the peaks. Hopefully understanding what this is isn't important to the novel. Maybe it's like a decoder ring and the only way to understand the novel is to decrypt this image. If that's the case, you should understand now that everything I write past this point will be utter nonsense.

I'm only prepared to make one arrogantly confident statement about this picture: the writing isn't English.

I've also just noticed that the image depicted on the Togepi is a lion in a tree. The writing around the edge of the "coin" is probably his name. I bet it's Buttersworth Fuzzy Scrotum.

The Epigraph

 It is always night or we wouldn't need light.

            —Thelonious Monk

* * * * * * * * * *

I'm not even into the meat of the book and it's trying to overpower me with the assumption of things I should know about! Am I going to have to learn jazz to understand it?! I mean, sure, it's a hefty book at over 1000 pages but I still didn't expect to be nearly pinned just after the table of contents! How much should I know about this guy Thelonious Monk?! And why would Pynchon choose a quote by him that boldly proclaims, "There is no day! It's all night, baby!" What am I up against then?!

Thelonious Monk (whose middle name is Sphere (Thomas Pynchon's middle name is Ruggles. Why does everybody else seem to have a cool middle name while mine is basically just Dave or Sally? (I mean, you'd expect somebody named Thelonious Monk to have a pretty cool middle name. But why would Pynchon get Ruggles?! It's not like he's Australian))) is, according to the Internet, an American jazz pianist. I point out that this is information from the Internet because I would have probably just said, "He's some jazz guy." Then everybody who loves jazz would have thrown Internet tomatoes at me and I'd become the disgrace of Buchser Junior High School.

I should probably be more careful about my identity since I'm on the Internet and I've just insulted jazz by not being into it enough. But just calling my junior high school a "junior high school" actually centers me in a quite specific time and place since before that, it was a high school, and after that, it was a middle school. So now people can already pinpoint my age and location if they wanted to throw actual tomatoes at me. Although, it's quite possible I've moved since then! Ha ha! Just try to find me, jerkos!

No, no. Please don't! I apologize!

Anyway, I'm not going to write a book report on Thelonious Monk. Either you know who he is or you can go read Wikipedia. I should probably, at least, read Wikipedia. He might be important to the rest of this novel! And anyway, what good is reading a Pynchon novel if I don't learn more about the stuff he seems to know everything about? Who is this guy? Is he a computer? I bet he's actually a computer!

As for the quote, it's pretty profound, isn't it? I mean, it's always night! Always! Everywhere! And the only reason we can see anything is by producing light. Sometimes we produce light by just sitting still on the face of the Earth and waiting for it to rotate around so the sun gives us some of that precious light. But it's still night if you were to take away the sun! That's a pretty cool way of looking at reality. Sometimes you need somebody like a comedian or an American jazz pianist to come along and sweep your legs so that your entire world view changes from staring at the acting tough scared kid in front of you being screamed at by his lunatic coach to the rafters of the gym where the tournament is being held. Then after you catch your breath (literally in the analogy and figuratively in the reality), you would probably wind up saying something like, "Whoa! I never noticed that before!" And sometimes, you can't ever go back to thinking like you did before!

As for now knowing that everything is always night, you'll probably forget that one. It feels less like a startling revelation and more like when your nerdy friend who probably has Asperger's says, "You mean today," when you find yourself up past midnight playing Dungeons & Dragons and you casually mention what time you have to work tomorrow.

So I decided to read Monk's Wikipedia page and this description of Monk struck me as something maybe Pynchon felt (or feels?) a bit close to:

"Monk was highly regarded by his peers and by some critics, but his records remained poor sellers and his music was still regarded as too "difficult" for more mainstream acceptance."

I wonder if Monk's music also had an inordinate number of references to boners?

Every section of Monk's Wikipedia page seems to end in a confrontation with police. I can't imagine the kind of person who reads that and thinks the police were just doing their job. How are we living with people who still don't understand not just systemic bias and systemic racism but actual boots on the ground racism?! The cops weren't just content to hassle, arrest, and, at times, beat him. They also tried to end his career by taking his New York City Cabaret Card which allowed him to play public venues where alcohol was served. And who except drunk and buzzed people enjoy jazz?!

Oh crap! Here come those Internet tomatoes!

The Title

 If I had read this book previously (and some of you might be thinking, "Isn't this the type of project that should only be attempted on a—at the very least—second reading? And shouldn't the person doing this kind of critical reading of a Thomas Pynchon novel also be intimately familiar with his books written prior to this one instead of just having read the first few pages of Vineland twenty-three years ago, The Crying of Lot 49 only once twenty-five years ago, Mason & Dixon twenty-three years ago, and Gravity's Rainbow, twice in a row, one month ago? Shouldn't you have some—I don't know—credentials?!), I might understand what the title of the book means. It's not as complicated as Gravity's Rainbow (which isn't really all that complicated after you read the book. I mean, it's the arc of the rocket and also maybe something about God's promise to never send another flood to destroy mankind? That's part of it, right?) but not quite as simple as Mason & Dixon (it's the names of the main characters! Also it reminds you of the Mason/Dixon line. And that makes you think of borders. And if you know the only thing anybody knows about Mason & Dixon's line, it might make you think of slavery too. And that will probably make you think of modern race relations and past race relations and imperialism and justice and getting boners in South Africa while attempting to view the transit of Venus. But mostly you'll probably just think, "That was them two guys what explored the Louisiana Purchase, right?").

I don't mean to suggest I don't understand the words in the title! I know that against means either in opposition to or adjacent to. So right there you've got a bit of a quandary! Is Pynchon suggesting we're battling the day, maybe like Don Quixote attacking windmills, or are we just casually leaning on it like a stack of clean laundry knocked over by the cat to lean helter-skelter against the wall without quite falling over?

I'm really beginning to regret not starting this project only on the second reading! Just imagine all of the great insights I'd have about the title if I knew what the stupid book was about! You'd be slapping that like and subscribe button like a Goddamned maniac! And by "maniac," I mean supernatural serial killer and not condemned lunatic because I'm not an unfeeling bastard who uses disease and mental illness simply for dramatic effect! That's the style of way better writers than me!

Should I say something about the concept of "day" or do you think we're all probably on the same page there? Nothing special about the day, right? It's just that thing that happens when it's not night. You know? It's the part of the Earth's rotation which you spend eating doughnuts while watching game shows or smoking pot while ditching class. Pshaw! We all know what the day is! And I've got to say, after the way I've just described it . . . who would want to be against it?!

* * * * * * * * * *

Postscript: A few ways to interpret the phrase "against the day" which I can't believe I didn't think about before. One might be the contemplation of mortality and how we have a limited time to get things done; we race "against the day," to finish what we must while light remains. Metaphorically, this works in a number of ways. We race against our finite time to complete what we think might be our purpose before darkness and death engulf us. We struggle to make due or make things better while goodness and light still overpower the darkness and selfishness of those who would end our agency and freedom. The day is a limit on our endeavours. It becomes an opponent which we must struggle against to scrape meaning from our time.
    "Against the day" is also a phrase that comes up in The Bible and since every in Western Literature is ultimately referencing The Bible, that's probably important. Usually it's used in such a way that we must "prepare against the day" that something awful or aweful will happen. Prepare yourselves against the day of salvation or the day of judgment. Prepare yourself against the day of invasion or acceptance. People in The Bible are always preparing for something yet to come! So "against the day" might just be a way of expressing a need for preparation for whatever is coming. Perhaps to prepare against the day of God being dead. Or perhaps to prepare against the day of the V-2 and atomic bombs.
    I'd probably have a better idea if I'd read the book once through before writing these entries!