The First Chapter Title

 The Light Over the Ranges

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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.

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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

 

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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

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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?!

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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!