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 "Presbyterian."

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Shrug emoji. All Christian denominations are the same thing to me! This probably indicates something to somebody who grew up in the Midwest or the South. But I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. I'm a fucking heathen. Nobody ever taught me what all the differences to all the denominations were!
    The extent of my "religion" was being baptized when I was born (my mother is, technically, Catholic. My father is one of those other ones) and being forced to go to one Sunday School class when I was about six during a trip to visit my uncle's wife's family in Salina, Kansas.

So I did the most minimal research possible on Presbyterianism (which means I read the Wikipedia article until I found something that ties it in to Pynchon's themes across various novels). I learned Presbyterianism was greatly influenced by John Calvin who believed in predestination. He said, "All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death." Pynchon seems fascinated with the idea of predestination, mostly in the idea that if one believes in it, one must hold in their hearts the belief that most people, including themselves, can do nothing to attain God's grace. They are damned at birth. The only hope is that they aren't damned at birth (which seems like a pretty major narcissistic hope). In Gravity's Rainbow, he uses the term "Preterite" to describe those destined for death. Here, he brings it up with one mere word. In Mason & Dixon, he brings it up in line 38, page 9, when he invokes the names of Wesley and Whitefield, the founders of the Methodists who had a falling out between them regarding predestination. I can't speak for his other books having either not read them or read them over twenty years ago (The Crying of Lot 49).

That's probably more than enough to write on one word.

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 When their business was done, they invited him over to a table under an awning, where all at once, over root beer and Saratoga chips, Lew found himself confessing "everything," which in fact wasn't much—"What I need is some way to atone for whatever it is I've done. I can't keep on with this life. . . ."

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This entire scene, with Lew Basnight at the head of it, is reminiscent of a character's definition of magic in The Crying of Lot 49: "another world's intrusion into this one". I'm not suggesting there's something magic going on here! Obviously in this novel, it's going to be something scientific! But it brings up a theme shared by many (if not all? I haven't read them all!) Pynchon novels: one world intruding on another. Here in Against the Day, we get an example of this that's as literal as Pynchon can probably get.
    Already this book purports, in the typical Pynchonian way, to be a "historical fiction" of our own world, thus a world intruding on another world." Then within this world, we have the fictional world of the Chums of Chance novel and the Chums intruding on the Against the Day world from their fictionalized world. And here we have Lew Basnight, almost certainly from a different Chicago on a different world, intruding on this Chicago and subsequently entering another pocket universe of people who seem to also be intruding on this world. What does it all mean?! I don't know. I never got my Master's Degree in Literature.
    Who are these people and what world are they from? It's like Lew has found himself on the set of a PBS kids show, Sesame Street or Villa Alegre. They are just as welcoming to strangers as you'd expect a character from one of these shows. Is it because they, too, have somehow intruded upon this world in their own waking swoon? Is that how somebody winds up living on Sesame Street?

"I need is some way to atone for whatever it is I've done"
There are two major ways to get through life: denial or atonement. Most people choose denial, the most popular form simply being passive distraction. Books, movies, video games, drinking, drugs, sports . . . you name it, it's been done in the name of trying to forget about death. It's a hell of a motivator, really. Sitting around bored too often leads to existential thoughts and morbid fantasies.
    But some people, probably those with the most finely tuned sense of self-reflection, choose atonement. Even if, like Lew, you can't really put your finger on what you need to atone for. There's certainly something because we're social beings who live our entire lives surrounded by other people while we allow our selfish desires and motivations to guide us. There's going to be a lot of collateral damage along the way, seen and unseen. You don't have to have a religious bone in your body to understand that maybe you owe the other people trying to get by in life along with you an occasional apology. That's mostly what atonement is. It's just saying, "I'm sorry," to anybody and everybody and yourself.

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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.

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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!).

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 book 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!