Happy Birthday, Against the Day!

[Mike Jing]

Just ordered mine as an early Christmas present to myself.  Now I
might have to translate that too.

On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 4:31 PM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>