The phrase

[David Payne]

On Sat 1/26/08 4:46 PM, Mark Kohut  wrote:

>>AtD does contain a lifetime of Pynchon's obs, opinions, ideas, etc.............BUT my quibble: they are not leftover.

For what it's worth, I found The Phrase ("against the day") 4 times in Gaddis' J.R. Three of the four seem to mean the idea of fortifying against some day of reckoning. The other one seems more of the fog blots out the day variety.

Although the fourth time appear to be quoting the third? 

(Take all this for what it's worth: I am older than 13, yet have somehow never read Gaddis! So the preceding Gaddis interpretations are brought to you by my five minutes of reading a few paragraphs completely stripped of context. Insert your jokes about Biblical experts here.)

So, Gaddis wrote:

[p. 6-7] —I simply included it because … he began in a tone that seemed to echo the deep, as he fixed the newspaper streamer flown before his glazed eyes. —Word comes in to a newspaper of a death, if someone there is in a hurry and just hears the last name, he might grab the obituary that's already written on someone like your brother James, as prominent as your brother James, they keep one written and up to date against the day…
—But James isn't dead! he's just away…
—Abroad, accepting some sort of award.
—Yes, yes in fact, I think if you'll read that clipping…
—That seems to be about all James does now, going about to accept awards.

[p. 159] —Don't do it for me Leo you just do it and these pictures, you just let me take care of it… and he pulled the door hard behind him against the day that seemed to dim as he entered it, gray dimmed overhead to vindicate small shams of housefronts' glassed porches boxing retirement in undervests no longer anywhere for sale behind aluminum doors bearing aluminum initials, yards parceled behind chain link not even his waist high toward an American flag flown high and bleak some blocks ahead down one curb, up the next, shoulders down hands fallen to the depths of pockets, when a rubber ball hit him on the leg. He stooped and caught it, and looked up, around, into a drive squeezed along the fence to a man poised there in a gray patterned suit and wearing a shirt and a tie, and he threw the ball and stopped dead. —Wait is, Jack… ?

[p. 245] A train passed from the opposite direction with an enveloping shock and was gone, the door up ahead banged half open, half closed to the sway of the car past billboards, unfinished apartments Now Renting, another vacant platform, diaper service trucks marshaled against the day to come. —Do you stay in? she asked finally, —in town I mean? for the weekend?

[p. 476]—Can't be alone like a God damned lunchroom, sit down at the empty counter he comes in sits right down beside you, twenty empty God damned stools comes in sits on the stool right beside you… A train passed from the other direction with an enveloping shock and was gone, and the door up ahead banged half opened, half closed to the sway of the car past billboards, finished apartments Now Renting, diaper service trucks marshaled against the day to come. —Might start a diaper…
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