AtDDtA1: Epigraph

[Tore Rye Andersen]

>From: Sterling Clover <s.clover at gmail.com>
>Subject: Re: AtDDtA1: Epigraph
>
>Struck by how many folks who I assume have finished at least one read
>of ATD already still are looking at the night here as standing for
>bad stuff of some sort. I'm taking the title and epigraph a bit more
>literally here -- it is quite literally *against* *the day*, night
>being where anything can happen and often does, where parallel dreams
>can intersect and where dynamiters and sundry anarchists can skulk
>and carouse in equal parts and in peace. Day being light being
>electrification being there is only one world and one vision and the
>rest evaporates. Am I just stating the obvious here?

Not sure that things are as obvious as that. You're certainly right that 
night isn't *just* a repository for bad stuff, but then again, night is more 
than the positive field of possibilities you outline, just as light in AtD 
is so much more than the electrification/modernity/routinization of 
charisma. Light is also grace, and light is life: as Webb is killed, he sees 
"the light over the ranges slowly draining away", and I'm pretty sure 
Pynchon isn't referring to any old streetlights here. Your reading of the 
epigraph is a good one, and it adds a layer of significance to it, but it 
doesn't supplant the reading that sees night as 'bad stuff', as the dark 
default setting of reality; a default setting we need to oppose with light: 
love, art, fiction, kindness, grace, etc. Pynchon's novel is a bringer of 
light that sets itself 'against the day', the dark day.

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