Against the Day, re-examined

[mikebailey]

On Sat, 5 May 2007, Ya Sam quoted a reviewer with an odd and dubious view:
> I can forgive Pynchon for being sloppy and not reaching his high ambitions,
> but I can't forgive him for being so arrogant about the era. Pynchon would
> have us believe that the pre-war era was defined by Tesla's experiments and
> the studies that disproved the existence of aether. In reality, that era was
> influenced far more by Sigmond Freud's theories about the psyche and
> Einstein's theory of relativity. "Against The Day" exists in an America
> without Teddy Roosevelt urging us to fight neurasthenia with the vigorous
> cure.

heh, "in reality" indeed - funny criterion to evaluate a novel...

which word, novel, I like take to be a Romance language derived
word referring to "new" as in "a new way to look at things"

a-and, didn't we just see a glancing reference to TR's macho exercise regime;
perhaps Pynchon isn't an extreme fan of such, being as he picks
Deuce as its exemplar
 - leading at least one reader to nod and say "yup, the imperialist
instinct at work at home and abroad, stay in shape by beating people up"

--- btw, the fluorescence metaphor "absorbing violence and emitting it on a
different wavelength" in reference to Deuce's youthful victimization by
bullies is a pretty tasty one, eh?