Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon
Published 2006 · 1,093 pages · 443,159 words · about 68 hours at an average pace · Historical Fiction, Modernist & Experimental Fiction, Satire & Humor
How hard is Against the Day to read?
Against the Day scores 83 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it very challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 80 out of 100
- Pynchon draws on archaic boys'-book diction, electrical and optical jargon, mining and dynamite slang, and Finnish and Latin phrases. It is dense but more readable than Gravity's Rainbow, and sits near Midnight's Children with some Sot-Weed pastiche.
- Sentence structure: 76 out of 100
- Long, nested periodic sentences, such as the Midwest road passages and the Hunter-painting description, alternate with brisk vernacular dialogue. It is heavy overall, though less fragmented than Absalom, Absalom!.
- Abstraction: 74 out of 100
- Æther debates, Tesla's free power, alchemy and the Anti-Stone, and ideas about light and doubling carry the story beside concrete scenes like the airship and the mining camps. It is close to Gravity's Rainbow.
- Information density: 88 out of 100
- Every page crowds in period detail, from the Fair's exhibits and Cleveland's Ætherists to dynamite chemistry and Arctic lore. Many threads open at once, near Gravity's Rainbow and 2666.
- Narrative indirection: 82 out of 100
- Reality slips between the boys'-book idiom, historical scenes and the supernatural, so readers must decide what is literal. Connections across threads are implied rather than stated, much like 2666.
- Symbolic density: 88 out of 100
- Iceland spar's double rays, the White City, dynamite and the Æther all carry meaning, as do the figurehead debate and the pearl message. Light and doubling run through every thread, near Moby-Dick's saturation.
- Ironic distance: 80 out of 100
- Pastiche narration mocks the Chums' pieties, Vibe's scripture-quoting piety and the Fair's fakery with a straight face. Anger at capital is plain but delivered through comedy, near The Crying of Lot 49.
- Resolution withholding: 86 out of 100
- The opening sections set up many mysteries (the Vormance Expedition, the Zone of Emergency, Lew's sin, the Anti-Stone) that stay open. The novel favours accumulation over convergence, close to Gravity's Rainbow.
- Structural complexity: 90 out of 100
- Parallel threads for the Chums, the Traverses, Lew, Merle and Dally cut across time and place without warning. Genre pastiches shift voice sharply, near 2666 and Infinite Jest.
How Against the Day is regarded
Against the Day holds a literary regard score of 72 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.