Two questions I keep batting around in my head about Against the Day:

1. The title. What's up with that?


2. Is this book better than Infinite Jest?

(The third question, were I to have one, being, "Will I ever finish?", being not altogether worth asking, at least, right now.)

The first question, I didn't consciously realize I was asking it until I hit this line, tonight:

Even without theatrical shoes on, Erlys was taller than Luca Zombini, and kept her fair hair in a Psyche knot, out of which the less governable tresses continued, with the day, to escape.

- from Against the Day, Thomas Pynchon

Which, okay, I'm retarded, but, duh, right? If you can be with the passage of time, you can go against it, as well. Against the day, resisting the day, defying the natural order of things...nope, still not sure what it's all about.*

Next question! It's not a question of whether this book is better than Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon's own best book ever, though I might posit the question is worth asking. At least, hypothetically. What I'm wondering is what, by comparison, this book brings to the table that one of the contemporary literature's most recognized descendants of Gravity's Rainbow does or does not and how differently and what have you. Hypothetically speaking. Of course, having not read Infinite Jest since '01 or '02, and being only one-third of the way through Against the Day, I'm hardly qualified to answer that question, in my current state. But I can ask, though.

Oh, but anyways, that quote, it's like, perfect meta-commentary about the book itself, and how it functions. But then, I tend to think that about just about any piece of description the book offers up, that in some way the book wants to teach me how to read it, or how to read into the idea of reading into it. Which if that makes your head hurt, fab, mine too.

-

* - To thee amongst you who might be tempted to say, "Uh, moron, the answer's on, like, page 2," please note that I have a near-miraculous ability to defer inquiry into fundamental mysteries, until absolutely required by law or hammering common sense. Like, while my friends were all, "Dead," after frame four, I never for a second questioned the honesty of the movie The Sixth Sense until it announced, wide-armed and whole-lunged, "I am a liar!" Which gets me looked down on in some quarters, but in most all quarters actually means I'm having a lot more fun than the observant folks in the crowd. It's weird.