A Strange Night with Thomas Pynchon

So yesterday, the great big box showed up from Amazon - with just one thing in it: Pynchon's latest, Against the Day.

I'd been fascinated by the book since it stated making its huge presence felt on shelves and in people's minds, but had debated attempting it because I have a rather rocky relationship with Thomas Pynchon's work. He's had six books published previously, and I've only managed to actually finish three of them, you see.

But, emboldened that (ten years ago when I was a younger and smarter man) I'd finished and adored Mason & Dixon (and possibly understood a fair chunk of it) and that there was a AtD wiki as a safety net if I really did get in over my head, I ordered his latest and cursed every day that it was out of stock at Amazon. "How the hell could they have sold out?", I ranted to uninterested colleagues, "Who on Earth is reading this thing?" I was beginning to suspect it was One of Those Books - you know, the type that everyone buys, but that very few people actually read (Foucault's Pendulum, Finnegan's Wake, A Suitable Boy and others).

So what are the other two I managed? Vineland and The Crying of Lot 49. Don't get me wrong, I love Pynchon's work, I just always seen to bail out of Gravity's Rainbow at about page 50 - and don't even get me started on V. Nevertheless, I was tremendously excited by AtD's arrival and after a large glass of Temperanillo and a David Attenborough documentary, I took the book to bed and read the first four syntactically dense pages.

They were great, as first four pages go, if a little unexpected. I put out the light and fell asleep - and spent the entire night locked in a bizarre, ever repeating loop involving that bloody airship and fellows with strange names. Hour upon hour went by, and even when I awoke and fell back asleep I was on the damn airship again.

My theory here is that there is something about TP's writing, an illogical element, that bypasses the rational mind and goes straight for the subconscious, a bit like some types of hypnosis. Or the irritating music I often listen to.

I still have some 1081 pages to go. Looks like a lot of disturbed nights.