Against the Day title confirmed on Amazon

[Tim Strzechowski]

>From what I understand, Corlies ("Cork") Smith (TRP's editor) said that 
Pynchon hated the use of astericks to denote chapter divisions, and instead 
wanted little Porky Pig images, but they couldn't secure the use of the 
trademark.  Pynchon then settled for the five small blocks, which were 
simply offered by the Viking typesetters as an alternative to astericks.

I read this years ago in an interview with Smith.



>
> RE: the porky pig faces, I never heard that!  That's a pretty good
> little factoid, but I do like the five squares more I think.  Has
> there been much commentary on whether or not they actually represent
> anything?  I remember hearing that there was some idea floating around
> that they were like the edges of a strip of film, but I don't remember
> where.  Then again, the Porky faces I don't think would have been
> meant to be seriously analyzed (or he probably would have insisted on
> their inclusion), so perhaps those squares don't merit it either.
>