AtD: the title

[jbor at bigpond.com]

The title's fine, and I think it's up on the B&N site. Most usages of 
the phrase derive from the Biblical quotation(s), referring 
specifically to the Day of Judgement, and I'd say that's the primary 
referent. Even before checking it out it struck me that it was a 
Biblical or quasi-Biblical phrase. That's not to say that it's not 
being adopted ironically by Pynchon, like the epigraph from Wernher von 
Braun in GR, but it does fit in with the possibility of apocalyptic, 
millenarianist thinking as alluded to in the blurb (Tunguska, " a 
worldwide disaster looming", "an era of certainty comes crashing down 
around their ears" etc).

Pace Mal, but I don't buy the everything means everything argument that 
"Against" can reasonably be broken up into "again" and "gain" and "in 
and "gin" and whatever. Instead of opening up meanings it renders the 
phrase meaningless. It would surprise me if Joyce countenanced "fin" 
and "in" and "an" as legitimate associations in his title.

Credit goes to Jeremy, Paul and Ghetta for asserting that the blurb was 
Pynchon's off the bat. A number of people thought it wasn't, and there 
were quite a few more who sat on the fence. No shame in being wrong 
about it, nor in being sceptical or expressing an opinion. A couple of 
people wrongly blamed Amazon.com for putting it up prematurely, when in 
fact it was Penguin who asked Amazon to take it down, for no good 
reason. So those of us who speculated on the marketing strategy aspect 
of that sequence of events might well have been right.

best