Against The Day

For those of us who like modern american literature, it's a bumper year. As well as Richard Ford's new novel, we have the first novel in nine years from Thomas Pynchon.

Against The Day, he says, "moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska event, Mexico during the revolution, Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all. With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred. "

Sounds vintage Pynchon and at over a thousand pages should keep us going for a while. Anyone new to Pynchon could start with this assessment by crime novelist Ian Rankin.

I confess I never finished Gravity's Rainbow, but Vineland (one of the more straightforward novels) is still among my favourites and a good place to start.