--- product_id: 4204787 title: "Against the Day" price: "6863 kr" currency: ISK in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.is/products/4204787-against-the-day store_origin: IS region: Iceland --- # Against the Day **Price:** 6863 kr **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Against the Day - **How much does it cost?** 6863 kr with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.is](https://www.desertcart.is/products/4204787-against-the-day) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description A New York Times Bestseller • A Washington Post Best Book of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book “[Pynchon's] funniest and arguably his most accessible novel.” — The New York Times Book Review “Audacious, bodacious, entropic, synoptic, electric, eclectic, entertaining, hyperbraining, high-roller, tripolar . . . Buy Against the Day ." — The Philadelphia Inquirer Spanning the era between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, and constantly moving between locations across the globe (and to a few places not strictly speaking on the map at all), Against the Day unfolds with a phantasmagoria of characters that includes anarchists, balloonists, drug enthusiasts, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, spies, and hired guns. As an era of uncertainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them. Review: Come along; read Pynchon. Don't be scared! - I should say that I haven't even finished the book yet, though I'm far enough into it to safely say that I've gotten my 20 bucks worth (desertcart's prices are great on new books, are they not?). All pretension aside, this is quite simply one of the most pleasurable reads I've encountered in years. I've read reviews both positive and negative, both sides having some valid points. I think the naysaying is a bit unfair. Why rate this wonderful book against some criteria created by Gravity's Rainbow, or any other book. On it's own merits, Against the Day is a work of genius. The language is beautiful of course and the plot just dense enough to keep readers hooked. The pages *are* full of some very long sentences, but readers with patience and fortitude will not be disappointed. This is my first Pynchon read and I was apprehensive at first due to the following things I had heard (none true, so far about ATD) about Pynchon: -the language is difficult -the format is confusing/alienating These things are not entirely true, from my perspective. After reading the first half of ATD, I can safely say that anyone who's had a decent run in with the likes of William Faulkner or James Joyce can expect to find no difficulty reading this latest Thomas Pynchon novel. While yes, there are somewhere around 100 notable characters, Pynchon has their lives and behaviors overlapped in such a way that makes them easy to remember. As a reader, I find myself becoming intimately acquainted with many of the characters. Many of them are so dynamic that it really is difficult to determine what exactly is going to happen next, who will next cross who's path, etc. Many characters are related (larger families like the Traverses and the Vibes account for a large part of the novel's plot) Characterization is truly an exciting element of the novel and very well done by the author. For the first 100 pages or so, I was wondering if the science-fiction elements that I perceived early on would dominate the novel. While sci-fi doesn't dominate the novel, Pynchon has created this incredible other-world in which certain characters are able to habitate and many other characters seek fervently. I thought maybe that this would get tired and at least appear tacky, but there's a heavy mist that covers every inch of fantasy in this book, making things much more mystical and appealing--and after all, the Earth is only so big. Pynchon runs the Earth through a nice big hunk of Iceland Spar and now we as readers are able to enjoy not only the known Earth as setting for ATD, but also some alternate dimensions. All sorts of strange inventions are mentioned (I won't spoil it for anyone yet to read the book) and many modern physical laws are broken. Historically, the book covers from roughly 1890 to 1920 (roughly, mind you). Some of the details seem pretty well-researched, though it seems also that Pynchon has created certain details with similarity to their actual real-life counterparts, though differing in minor amounts. The regional landscapes are incredibly described. There is very good continuity, with regard to temporal and cultural details. The plot, generally, involves a battling between what I'd call high-capitalism and slippery anarchism. Here are some themes: Doubling Divergence Time Travel Government Big Business History/Perception of History Electricity/Technology There's an extensive Cameo made by Nikola Tesla, which make the book interesting. The book's first pages include a disclaimer warning that inference to likenesses between characters and real-life figures is discouraged, but this to me almost seems more a flag denoting the opposite. Ultimately, it will be the readers who decide, though it is easy enough to look back in time to see exactly what literary fiction does in terms of sending a message about the world's state of affairs. Overall, this book exceeded my expectations and has proved to be pleasant reading, rather than the constant challenge (though yes it is challenging from time to time) that I had expected. I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in literary fiction. Review: Slow Down, Enjoy The Ride - The temptation with a huge novel like "Against The Day" is to read it at breakneck speed. Pynchon discourages readers from that option early, signalling within the first 60 pages that this is going to be a tale of many characters, many narrative lines, at times realistic, at others fantastic, often rooted in history, at other times unquestionably about the present. For such a mysterious writer, Pynchon's influences are well known and fully on display here -- the Western scenes evoke Oakley Hall's "Warlock", the discussions of anarchy jibe with Pynchon's own reading (misreading?) of Orwell's "1984", allusions to "Finnegans Wake" are everywhere (even in the name of the comical adventure troop the Chums of Chance.) The book was savaged by some critics with a notable air of self-pity ... oh it's so long, oh it's so meandering, oh I didn't bother to finish it. Yes, there are major reviews in major American publications where paid critics admitted to skimming over most of the last 300 pages. A crime and a pity, because it's only in the last few hundred pages where "Against The Day" fully reveals itself. Critics (and readers) who enter this journey with hard and fast rules of what a novel should (or must) be are warned here ... you may very well hate it. Pynchon's characterizations can be muddled at time -- it took a second reading with the help of the superb audiobook (I don't know if they give Grammys for audiobook performances, but Dick Hill's is outstanding and worthy of some kind of award) for me to fully appreciate the cavalcade of characters. There is no central character, no central plot, but there are a multitude of character arcs and human interactions that I found heartbreaking. All of the great drama of human life is here -- but it's told in the signature, detached Pynchon style. Critics have pointed out one clear flaw -- the book is all over the place. Pynchon jammed everything into this book, leftover threads from every other novel he's written, plus bits from all his favorite books and whatever scientific or philosophic musings he has left on the table. It has the feel of a big book by an aging master who fears that he might not write another. The four Traverse children have enough development for maybe two fully drawn characters. Kit, because of his resemblance to other Pynchon intellectual heroes, you expect to be the main character, but he disappears into the plot for hundreds of pages, much like Tyrone Slothrop did in the waning pages of Gravity's Rainbow. Eldest son Frank Traverse just isn't all that interesting and his meanderings in Mexico are the weakest part of the novel. Daughter Lake and out-of-control drifter Reef are the most compelling of the litter and a book focused solely on them might would have been more tightly focused (Although Kit is clearly needed as a bridge to all the mathematical warfare central to the book's second half.) So it could have used a more thorough edit ... and yet, I'm glad it's all there. Once you get through it once, you'll be glad to revisit even the sections that seemed dull the first time around. Pynchon wrote a book big enough to encompass all of his thoughts about the fall of leftist politics in the West (as anarchism fell and Marxism rose), the dual nature of, well, nature, the various ways capitalism co-opts science and shapes it to its needs, the thin line between mysticism and mainstream religious faith. It's all there and much much more. If you take your time and let this big, strange, overwhelming book sink into you (or, again, listen to the audiobook, which by its 20 pages per hour nature forces you to go slow), you might start to think about whether civilization was crushed by World War I and will never recover. Or whether our war on terror is no different from anarchist bombings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Or whether mankind is in a perpetual cycle of rebirth and destruction, always on the cusp of grand discoveries that go hand in glove with horrible threats, both promising beginnings and ends that never quite arrive. If you want to examine big questions like these and want to be entertained with Monty Python-like broad humor and ridiculous songs out of nowhere and a mix of virtually every genre-prose style in existence, then this might be your book for the next month or two. If not, no worries, there are plenty more books that will suit your needs. As for me, my nine year wait to hear my master's voice has finally ended. Mock me for it if you wish, I'm just glad to have another 1000+ pages to obsess over before I die. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #100,050 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #187 in Alternate History Science Fiction (Books) #576 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction #2,490 in Literary Fiction (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.5 out of 5 stars 540 Reviews | ## Images ![Against the Day - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71WXBhnEnRL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Come along; read Pynchon. Don't be scared! *by M***S on January 2, 2007* I should say that I haven't even finished the book yet, though I'm far enough into it to safely say that I've gotten my 20 bucks worth (Amazon's prices are great on new books, are they not?). All pretension aside, this is quite simply one of the most pleasurable reads I've encountered in years. I've read reviews both positive and negative, both sides having some valid points. I think the naysaying is a bit unfair. Why rate this wonderful book against some criteria created by Gravity's Rainbow, or any other book. On it's own merits, Against the Day is a work of genius. The language is beautiful of course and the plot just dense enough to keep readers hooked. The pages *are* full of some very long sentences, but readers with patience and fortitude will not be disappointed. This is my first Pynchon read and I was apprehensive at first due to the following things I had heard (none true, so far about ATD) about Pynchon: -the language is difficult -the format is confusing/alienating These things are not entirely true, from my perspective. After reading the first half of ATD, I can safely say that anyone who's had a decent run in with the likes of William Faulkner or James Joyce can expect to find no difficulty reading this latest Thomas Pynchon novel. While yes, there are somewhere around 100 notable characters, Pynchon has their lives and behaviors overlapped in such a way that makes them easy to remember. As a reader, I find myself becoming intimately acquainted with many of the characters. Many of them are so dynamic that it really is difficult to determine what exactly is going to happen next, who will next cross who's path, etc. Many characters are related (larger families like the Traverses and the Vibes account for a large part of the novel's plot) Characterization is truly an exciting element of the novel and very well done by the author. For the first 100 pages or so, I was wondering if the science-fiction elements that I perceived early on would dominate the novel. While sci-fi doesn't dominate the novel, Pynchon has created this incredible other-world in which certain characters are able to habitate and many other characters seek fervently. I thought maybe that this would get tired and at least appear tacky, but there's a heavy mist that covers every inch of fantasy in this book, making things much more mystical and appealing--and after all, the Earth is only so big. Pynchon runs the Earth through a nice big hunk of Iceland Spar and now we as readers are able to enjoy not only the known Earth as setting for ATD, but also some alternate dimensions. All sorts of strange inventions are mentioned (I won't spoil it for anyone yet to read the book) and many modern physical laws are broken. Historically, the book covers from roughly 1890 to 1920 (roughly, mind you). Some of the details seem pretty well-researched, though it seems also that Pynchon has created certain details with similarity to their actual real-life counterparts, though differing in minor amounts. The regional landscapes are incredibly described. There is very good continuity, with regard to temporal and cultural details. The plot, generally, involves a battling between what I'd call high-capitalism and slippery anarchism. Here are some themes: Doubling Divergence Time Travel Government Big Business History/Perception of History Electricity/Technology There's an extensive Cameo made by Nikola Tesla, which make the book interesting. The book's first pages include a disclaimer warning that inference to likenesses between characters and real-life figures is discouraged, but this to me almost seems more a flag denoting the opposite. Ultimately, it will be the readers who decide, though it is easy enough to look back in time to see exactly what literary fiction does in terms of sending a message about the world's state of affairs. Overall, this book exceeded my expectations and has proved to be pleasant reading, rather than the constant challenge (though yes it is challenging from time to time) that I had expected. I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in literary fiction. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Slow Down, Enjoy The Ride *by D***Y on November 24, 2006* The temptation with a huge novel like "Against The Day" is to read it at breakneck speed. Pynchon discourages readers from that option early, signalling within the first 60 pages that this is going to be a tale of many characters, many narrative lines, at times realistic, at others fantastic, often rooted in history, at other times unquestionably about the present. For such a mysterious writer, Pynchon's influences are well known and fully on display here -- the Western scenes evoke Oakley Hall's "Warlock", the discussions of anarchy jibe with Pynchon's own reading (misreading?) of Orwell's "1984", allusions to "Finnegans Wake" are everywhere (even in the name of the comical adventure troop the Chums of Chance.) The book was savaged by some critics with a notable air of self-pity ... oh it's so long, oh it's so meandering, oh I didn't bother to finish it. Yes, there are major reviews in major American publications where paid critics admitted to skimming over most of the last 300 pages. A crime and a pity, because it's only in the last few hundred pages where "Against The Day" fully reveals itself. Critics (and readers) who enter this journey with hard and fast rules of what a novel should (or must) be are warned here ... you may very well hate it. Pynchon's characterizations can be muddled at time -- it took a second reading with the help of the superb audiobook (I don't know if they give Grammys for audiobook performances, but Dick Hill's is outstanding and worthy of some kind of award) for me to fully appreciate the cavalcade of characters. There is no central character, no central plot, but there are a multitude of character arcs and human interactions that I found heartbreaking. All of the great drama of human life is here -- but it's told in the signature, detached Pynchon style. Critics have pointed out one clear flaw -- the book is all over the place. Pynchon jammed everything into this book, leftover threads from every other novel he's written, plus bits from all his favorite books and whatever scientific or philosophic musings he has left on the table. It has the feel of a big book by an aging master who fears that he might not write another. The four Traverse children have enough development for maybe two fully drawn characters. Kit, because of his resemblance to other Pynchon intellectual heroes, you expect to be the main character, but he disappears into the plot for hundreds of pages, much like Tyrone Slothrop did in the waning pages of Gravity's Rainbow. Eldest son Frank Traverse just isn't all that interesting and his meanderings in Mexico are the weakest part of the novel. Daughter Lake and out-of-control drifter Reef are the most compelling of the litter and a book focused solely on them might would have been more tightly focused (Although Kit is clearly needed as a bridge to all the mathematical warfare central to the book's second half.) So it could have used a more thorough edit ... and yet, I'm glad it's all there. Once you get through it once, you'll be glad to revisit even the sections that seemed dull the first time around. Pynchon wrote a book big enough to encompass all of his thoughts about the fall of leftist politics in the West (as anarchism fell and Marxism rose), the dual nature of, well, nature, the various ways capitalism co-opts science and shapes it to its needs, the thin line between mysticism and mainstream religious faith. It's all there and much much more. If you take your time and let this big, strange, overwhelming book sink into you (or, again, listen to the audiobook, which by its 20 pages per hour nature forces you to go slow), you might start to think about whether civilization was crushed by World War I and will never recover. Or whether our war on terror is no different from anarchist bombings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Or whether mankind is in a perpetual cycle of rebirth and destruction, always on the cusp of grand discoveries that go hand in glove with horrible threats, both promising beginnings and ends that never quite arrive. If you want to examine big questions like these and want to be entertained with Monty Python-like broad humor and ridiculous songs out of nowhere and a mix of virtually every genre-prose style in existence, then this might be your book for the next month or two. If not, no worries, there are plenty more books that will suit your needs. As for me, my nine year wait to hear my master's voice has finally ended. Mock me for it if you wish, I'm just glad to have another 1000+ pages to obsess over before I die. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ sprawling, but great *by D***S on December 20, 2013* Sprawling, but never losing its place, this book covers almost everything—light, duplicates, power and control, impossibilities and alternatives, secrets, visions, history, anti-history, vectors and equations, fantasy and reality, Europe and the Wild West, sex and violence, capitalism versus anarchy, and the sky versus the earth—via multiple more or less pulpy storylines. It's as if Pynchon combined all manner of early genre fiction—boy's adventure tales, westerns, detectives and spies, Jules Verne-eque steam-tech scifi, and even some Lovecraftian cosmic horror—into one gigantic post-modern novel. The book follows several plots from the 1893 Chicago World's Fair to post-World War I, all of which interweave and untangle through the book, some of the characters dipping in and out of the realities of the others: The Chums of Chance, aerialist boys who fly a gigantic airship. The children of the Traverse family who follow different paths of anarchism, mathematics, war, love, and hate. Lew Basnight, the lost detective who falls in with a secret society. Cyprian the depraved spy and Yashmeen the math vixen. And the Rideouts, whose activities include engineering impossible machines and just bumming around Europe. The book is long, more than a thousand pages, but with all of those people, plots, and ideas, I think the man needed every page to write this book. True, there were parts I enjoyed more than others—with a book this long, how could that not be? I tended to relish the more fantastical stuff (e.g., the Chums of Chance drilling through the desert with a sand-invisibility ray to find a long-buried but still-inhabited city) than the stomping-around-Europe-on-the-edge-of-world-war, long stretches where the book turned grim, dirty, and a bit exhausting. The book was a lot less crazy and whimsical than "Mason & Dixon," which went to all sorts of weird places and rarely ever seemed grounded in truth, even though many of its characters were historical. While that book seemed more a celebration of the act of storytelling, this book seemed more concerned with emotion and searching. But the searching—whether for Shambhala, or one's father's killer, or the solution to a math puzzle, or doors between dimensions, or the meaning of life, or a person's own family—Pynchon always hooked me into the searches, and sometimes I was there, reading a book with Frank by waning light to his dead father, or forwarding a photograph's light in time with Merle to see his daughter all grown up. Pynchon, too, has a way of creating little moments or ideas, just pages long, that seem to hold entire worlds, such as an Aztec girl who commands a tree filled with glowing beetles, each one named after a person she knew. Although reading this book wasn't as revelatory as "Mason & Dixon," it both entertained and awed equally. The writing does things with ideas, characters, and words I did not know could be done; I don't know if a person could give a book like this higher praise than that. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.is/products/4204787-against-the-day](https://www.desertcart.is/products/4204787-against-the-day) --- *Product available on Desertcart Iceland* *Store origin: IS* *Last updated: 2026-05-19*