Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day" is finished. It has been a long haul, reading the book, but it never lost my interest. During the reading I slipped five or six other books in, more-or-less to ground myself before going back into the chaos of "Day."

Those who diagram a trace of the action within their heads, those who shiver at too many improbable events, those who are disturbed by temporal discontinuities or almost parallel realities may not enjoy this book. Those who cannot read semi-authentic period language, do not approve of such clever word usages as a play by the name of "The Burgher King" taking place in London in the 1910's, or enjoy abbreviated descriptions of sex of every sort (and anarchy) may also not enjoy the book. In self-referencing scenes it may be that reading this book is compared by the author to use of peyote. That may be as close as I'll ever get, but I now know of its nature.

But to those who can handle Alice in Wonderland for 1100 pages that take one not into a particular hole, but everywhere in a world similar to ours after the turn of the last century (and similar worlds, less or more similar to ours), and to those who appreciate mathematics (even of the imaginary sort), firearms (of the period and of a retro-speculative nature), think Central Asia and the Balkans would be nice to know (or imagine) more about ... et cetera ... this is THE book! I will begin Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon" in earnest once I leave the keyboard.

Tomiko illustrates this post in a photograph every bit as sensible as the reviewed book. Not as entertaining though. "Day" has opened a whole new genre of literature to me. Not sure what that genre is exactly. More after "M&D."