Against the Day – Part 4

At around 367 pages, Part 4 of Against the Day is the novel’s longest section. This part, which is the length of many novels, shares its title with the novel itself. The title is taken from 2 Peter 3:7 in the Bible. In the King James Version, that verse reads “But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” Even though this is the longest section, I found it easier to follow the novel’s many plot threads. Some of this is because I’ve now spent enough time with the characters that they’re familiar and some of this is because Pynchon is now bringing his novel to a conclusion. In Part 2, we heard a lot about Kit Traverse’s fascination with mathematics and vectors. Now, in part 4, our characters who are scattered around the world all begin to find their way onto a vector that will carry them through World War I, effectively the novel’s day of judgement, and convergence in Southern California at the beginning of the 1920s.

The 1908 Tunguska Event, a real-life 12-megaton explosion that happened in Siberia, possibly from a comet hitting the Earth proves to be a major event in the lives of many of the characters ranging from Kit Traverse to the Chums of Chance and their Russian counterparts, the crew of the Bolsha’ia Igra. Pynchon notes that the Tunguska Event was so powerful it sent some reindeer flying and even caused some of their noses to glow red. More seriously, it proves to be a transformative event that heralds the coming world war.

Much of part 4 follows Yashmeen Halfcourt, Reef Traverse, and Cyprian Latewood as they form a three-way romance. Over the course of that romance, Yashmeen becomes pregnant. In part because of that, stopping the oncoming war in Europe becomes a priority for her. Reef’s family has fought for unions and in this section, he uses his skills to attempt to prevent the war. Unfortunately, the oncoming storm is too powerful and their efforts are doomed to failure.

Meanwhile, Reef and Kit’s brother Frank is in Mexico caught among the tides of revolution ahead of World War I. He becomes a freedom fighter and is nearly killed before tending to the machinery on a coffee plantation. Eventually he escapes Mexico and finds his way back home to Colorado where he witnesses the death of Scarsdale Vibe, the man who was ultimately responsible for his father’s death.

We spend World War I itself with the Chums of Chance aboard their airship, the Inconvenience. Initially, they’re sent to find the Bolsha’ia Igra, which has vanished. When they find the Russian airship, they discover the crew are helping people weather the storm of war. The Chums abandon their mission and help the Russians on their mission of mercy, delivering food to people in need and carrying wounded soldiers to safety. After the war, they receive a job offer in California. While the offer itself proves to be a sham, they encounter Merle Rideout, the photographer and inventor from the beginning of the book who has found his way to Hollywood. Rideout has not only learned about motion pictures, but he’s learned that he can extrapolate information from photographs to find out what happened before and after those pictures were taken. The one catch is that he doesn’t always see what happens in our timeline. Sometimes he sees different possible futures.

We close out part 4 as Merle catches up with his daughter Dally using an old photograph. What we don’t know yet is whether this is Dally as she is, or whether this is Dally as she might be. It’s like the Iceland Spar and Bilocation of earlier sections. People have choices and different choices make different realities.

I’ll have one last post after I finish part 5 to discuss final thoughts about this expansive novel along with my takeaways.

Against the Day – Part 2

Today finds me at El Paso Comic Con. If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll drop into the convention center and visit me at Booth A15. Also today, I continue my look at Thomas Pynchon’s steampunk novel Against the Day. Part 2: Iceland Spar is nearly three times as long as Part 1 with an elaborate plot ranging the American continent and even the world. Since I want to tackle this part of the novel in one post, I’ll do my best to limit my summary to the highlights. Part 1 opened in 1893. Part 2 moves ahead to 1899 and opens up with the young airship adventurers, the Chums of Chance. The Chums have been sent to find the Voromance Expedition which has found a meteorite harboring a consciousness and a purpose. I found myself reminded of Legion from my Clockwork Legion novels. What’s more we meet an airship crewed by Russians, who are rivals of the Chums. We ultimately learn that the Voromance Expedition is being funded by the industrialist Scarsdale Vibe.

We then join Kit Traverse at Yale. Kit is the son of Webb Traverse, the anarchist and miner from Colorado in part 1. It turns out that Kit’s education is being funded by Scarsdale Vibe and that the industrialist sees Traverse as a better potential heir than his own children.

Jumping forward to 1900, we find private investigator Lew Basnight in Denver on the trail of a dynamiter called the Kieselghur Kid. During his quest, Basnight accidently ingests cyclomite dynamite, which proves to be a hallucinogen. Basnight become addicted and eventually teams up with a pair of Englishmen who take him back to the United Kingdom where he’ll get involved with a group called the True Worshipers of the Ineffable Tetractys, or TWIT. The Tetractys is a numerical pattern with spiritual significance and they want Basnight to join as a sort of psychic detective, believing he’s gained special sight from his ingestion of cyclomite.

Meanwhile, we return to the Chums of Chance, who are now in Venice looking for a map called the Sfinciuno Itinerary which dates from just after the time of Marco Polo. As they continue their quest, they find the Itinerary may not be a literal map but a guide to a spiritual quest. One of the keys is the Iceland Spar, which proves to be a lens made from calcite which has many strange properties explored by characters through this section of the novel. In particular, calcite has the property of “double refraction” as shown in the photo I took of a calcite crystal from my home state of New Mexico at the Smithsonian Institution earlier this month.

From here we move ahead to the period from 1903-4, about a decade after the novel’s start. We have an extended sequence out in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado following the family of the anarchist Webb Traverse and people connected to him. We learn about hired guns who kill Webb. Those same men end up getting involved with Webb’s estranged daughter, Lake. Meanwhile, Webb’s sons Frank and Reef vow to avenge their father. All through this section, there are hints that Webb or his son Frank may be none other than the famed Kieselghur Kid.

In the course of their quest, Frank Traverse meets Merle Rideout, the photographer from Part 1, who is now working as a chemist in the mines. Merle points out that Iceland Spar is useful to people engaged in alchemy. While they’re meeting, Frank finds out people are gunning for him. Merle’s daughter Dahlia helps him get away, then decides to make her fortune in New York. She ultimately becomes an actress for a sleezy vaudeville company run by Scarsdale Vibe’s brother and finds her mother Erlys who had run off with the magician Luca Zomboni. He uses Iceland Spar to help create optical illusions, but it also has the danger of creating duplicate people.

Also in New York, Frank and Reef’s brother Kit meets with Nikola Tesla and Dr. Vanderjuice. Kit begins to realize that Scarsdale Vibe may have been responsible for hiring his father’s killers. Kit looks for a way to get out from under Vibe’s thumb and asks to go to Germany to continue his study in mathematics. Vibe, who seems a bit relieved not to have Kit nearby agrees to pay for his journey.

At this point we return west and follow Reef Traverse, who has become fascinated with dynamite and finds himself associated with the Kieselghur Kid. After someone tries to kill him with an avalanche, he heads east and finds himself in New Orleans. Once again, I find a fun parallel with my Clockwork Legion series. We leave Reef traveling to Genoa, Italy with a group of anarchists.

It’s now 1904 and we return once again to Colorado to follow the adventures of Reef’s brother Frank who is on the run from the people trying to kill him. Frank flees to Mexico and finds himself arrested on political crimes. He’s eventually able to break out of prison and meets up with three Tarahumare people who lead him on a spiritual quest worthy of Carlos Castaneda. During this episode, he learns that Iceland Spar has the property of duplicating places. Frank goes off on his own again and catches up with Sloat Fresno, one of the men who killed his father. Frank succeeds in killing him, but the other killer is nowhere to be found.

Finally, while the Chums of Chance are taking a vacation in New York, they learn about a professor who has built a time machine. Following up on that, two of the boys take a trip to a frightening apocalyptic future and then seek more information about time travel. They find themselves at a conference of professors interested in time travel in the Midwest. After this adventure, the chums are sent to Asia to continue their search for the Sfinciuno Itinerary. Along the way, they discover a device that can allow them to travel through sand the way a ship travels through water, which was funded by Scarsdale Vibe.

Whew! All that and I’m not even halfway through the novel! Since I’m writing these posts as I read, it’s distinctly possible that I’m not covering things that will prove to be important and giving too much emphasis to minor plot points. Still, it continues to be an interesting, if challenging read. In part 2, we see more women taking an active role. I love the way Pynchon weaves together all these disparate plot elements and it’s fascinating to see how he sets a lot of the novel in locations I would later visit in the Clockwork Legion series. You can learn more about my series at: http://davidleesummers.com/books.html#clockwork_legion