speaking to the phrase 'Against the Day' used for this (last) section of AtD

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

I'm about to get into the tub with "Finding Time Again", finding 
Proust's treatment of the "Great Gap" twixt the eras before and 
after the Great War resonating with Pynchon's backwards 
glances at a catastrophe that everyone is trying to avoid.
I'm sure that Pynchon's musical sense of phrasing is informed
with a sometimes seemingly infinite extension of sentence 
structure, often well past the bursting point, a mode of writing
obviously inspired by Proust. And then there's their shared kink 
for Mauve Toques:
http://tinyurl.com/2ptd4a

Both authors express issues of gender-bending, role changing 
and the shift of apperances depending of the angle of light, the 
overall perspective of the characters. Cyprian, AtD's heretical saint, 
emerges as a major character in this section. I'm sticking to my 
metaphor of Illumination as the prime cause of the novel's title, 
and note shared concerns with À la recherche du temps perdu, 
in particular in Proust's epic's closing passages:

I now understood why the Duc de Guermantes, whom I admired when he was
seated because he had aged so little although he had so many more
years under him than I, had tottered when he got up and wanted to
stand erect--like those old Archbishops surrounded by acolytes, whose
only solid part is their metal cross--and had moved, trembling like a
leaf on the hardly approachable summit of his eighty-three years, as
though men were perched upon living stilts which keep on growing,
reaching the height of church-towers, until walking becomes difficult
and dangerous and, at last, they fall. I was terrified that my own
were already so high beneath me and I did not think I was strong
enough to retain for long a past that went back so far and that I bore
within me so painfully. If at least, time enough were alloted to me to
accomplish my work, I would not fail to mark it with the seal of Time,
the idea of which imposed itself upon me with so much force to-day,
and I would therein describe men, if need be, as monsters occupying a
place in Time infinitely more important than the restricted one
reserved for them in space, a place, on the, contrary, prolonged
immeasurably since, simultaneously touching widely separated years and
the distant periods they have lived through--between which so many
days have ranged themselves--they stand like giants immersed in Time.

THE END

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300691.txt

Proust's on to the whole space/time continuum thing, the issues 
of physics dribble into his book as well, as best as this eternal 
dilettante ever allows.

My musical sense tells me that the heart of the matter---the central 
movement of the work---is found in the name of the work that 
informs the best known movement of the work. Like the "Moonlight" 
sonata's opening movement or the "Heiliger Dankgesang" 
movement of the same composer's 15th string quartet. There are 
movements towards various "Shambahalas" in this section in this 
section of Against the Day, folks doing what they can to move 
towards the light.

There is a great musical section in Against the Day on page 896:

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_892-918#Page_896

Of course, "Lost Time" could be a skipped beat. . . .
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
I don't know much of anything about music but 'what I like" as the philistine 
puts it.
> 
But we all know TRP knows music, can write (at times) like a song and might 
use music in deep structural ways.
 
So, my question of those who know music, still taking off from Michael 
Bailey's FIRST new host post, is why is this section given the same 
title as the whole work?.......I ask because I thought there might be an
answer within musical understandings.  
 
Misc. other possibility: Is Proust's great work so structured and titled?.. 
mark