Happy Birthday, Against the Day!

[Dave Monroe]

On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 2:11 PM, Albert Rolls <alprolls at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Tuesday, November 21, I'm afraid, but close enough. I don't think I got my
> Amazon copy until Wednesday, though I bought one on the way home from work
> at a B&N on the upper westside.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Kohut
> Sent: Nov 22, 2011 12:45 PM
> To: pynchon -l
> Subject: Happy Birthday, Against the Day!
>
> Five years ago today, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, also the 22nd of
> November, I think. (and hope, but am not checking, 'cause
> then it wouldn't be the EXACT birthday day) "Against the Day" was
> published---and went on sale.
>
> Where were YOU that day? When did you get your copy?  I bought mine at a
> Borders in Chicago, from a big display, (called a dump)--never expected
> this--- and took one to my oldest college buddy with whose family I spent
> Thanksgiving that year. Thrills started with Pugnax & the Henry James
> Princess C. allusion, quiet laughter with Pugnax pissing over the side (and
> the joke about messages from the sky) and the depth charge of meaning
> started with me at the trip down the slaughterhouse chute and Ferdinand
> playing the dozens at the Stockyards.
>
> But I would have been as superficial a reader as your average movie-goer
> without the plist readers, very nice to have met you, AND the wiki.....
>
> Tim Ware's wonderful wiki started accepting contirbutors that day as well, I
> guess, (although as in most terrif projects, hours
> of prep work had already gone into it) so, I salute him at five years too,
> remembering his optimistic remark given at the following
> Pynchon conference that "it would take us at least ten years" to begin to
> get the book, which is easily true, so, as Janeites keep rereading
> her work, we all oughta keep rereading Against the Day---about equal in
> words to Jane's six novels, I would guess---and the rest
> of pynchon's works.....

Publication date: November 21, 2006

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_the_Day

Happy Belated Birthday, AtD!  Do note, as was my custome @ the time, I
opened this e-mail account specifically for the group read, but as
it's essentially bottomless, I didn't need another one after (much
less during (II actulaly filled a couple of Yahoo! accounts during the
1st M&D reading), so ...

... as i also recall, the Germans (Otto, specifically, I believe, but
...) got their copies a week or so early via amazon.  I oredred one
just in case, but as I also recall, I wa on my wy to Chicago that day,
+ stopped @ a local indie shop to grab a copy before getting on the
Amtrak (got lucky, already a 30% duscount, usualy reserved forNY Times
 bestsellers @ the time).  The copy I used during the reading actually
fell in half towards the end, but I was also given a promo copy by a
freind I've kept packed away.  I believe we were @ that one so long
(18 mos - 2 yrs?) I ended up finishing up witha  paperback copy (which
may also have fallen in half, I later got another, used or
remaindered) ...

I'm still not sure just how adequately I read esp. the last 300 pgs or
so though the final ch., though, over and over), though I insisted on
being able to do the 1st ch or so for the group read, then fell
apart/behind (which is waht I do with pretty much everything, so ...)
...

.. but tehn again, we'd already discussed the title, the blurb (in its
bilocated incarnations), + the dustjacekt (and, esp., it's seal)   as
well as, say, the Colubian Exposition (seeing as it was namedropped,
and The Develi in the White Citty had been published not long beforein
no small detail ...

Menawhile, sepaking of Nov 22nd:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/opinion/the-umbrella-man.html