AtD: the title

[jbor at bigpond.com]

On 25/07/2006:

> 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).

Should also have acknowledged the exchange between Otto and Michael  
Hussmann focusing on the specific denotations of the term "against" in  
the phrase "against the day" (it sorta got buried, and deserved  
better). Rather than "contra" or "in opposition to", in the phrase as  
most commonly used it implies "measured against" or "gauged in terms  
of" (or "in anticipation of", as Michael noted):

http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon- 
l&month=0607&msg=102774&sort=date

It's the case that fluent non-native speakers often have keener  
insights into a target language than do native speakers.

The difference between choosing to adopt codes of behaviour and ethics  
predicated on a belief in an ultimate "Day of Judgement", and on  
choosing to adopt codes of behaviour predicated *against* any such  
belief, seems most likely to be the dynamic or tension which Pynchon is  
playing on in the title, imho.

2 Peter 3.7: But the heavens that now are, and the earth, by the same  
word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of  
judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

http://bible.cc/2_peter/3-7.htm

best