Lost in the Æther With No One to Blame

Hello! I've had a wonderful week, finishing up school assignments before my Christmas break begins Monday and enjoying the cool weather. I hope my readers had a nice end of November!
Against the Day is still going great :). It's like a roller-coaster ride, with extensive parts devoted to scientific/mathematical jargon that any regular person would get lost in suddenly switching to beautifully written, poetic, poignant, heartrending descriptions! The dense parts are fun anyways, because I know Pynchon does not expect the reader to get it all. Instead, I should just experience the confusion of being thrown into something so complex as Quaternion math. Characters in the novel find themselves having little to no control in the events of their life, often thrown into confusing events. Every sentence is loaded with allusions and puns, and I find alternative meanings after re-reading pages, sections, chapters. I finally passed the half-way mark, having reached the 550th page last night!

I also wanted to mention a small coincidence. Recently, I have been listening to the the band Architecture in Helsinki's new album; one day I was listening to my favorite track, Contact High, and couldn't help noticing how much it reminded me of Against the Day! Here are some lyrics of the song:

"Right now my vision is gone and magic's to blame
It's silent down here, hey I want to get loud again
You'll hold the thunder while I bring the rain
I might be busy doing nothing but I've had my share

You've got a strange infatuation with the elements in the air
Contact high! I'm done dreamin' that we can fly
Am I guilty? Boy, you decide
I've got nothing to hide

While perfect nostalgia is dating the enemy
Lost in the Æther with no one to blame
It's silent down here, maybe I want to get loud again"

--> The first line and the reference to magic reminds me of a recurring theme of dualities, of seeing one thing while another truth exists on a deeper level or in a different dimension; I am also in a scene where mathmaticians use the "ancient magic" of card-counting (math as magic). Furthermore, there are these Trespassers who can move around Time and can decide who they reveal themselves to, messing with people's visions.

--> The beginning of the second stanza screams AGAINST THE DAY!! Characters are
fascinated by light and by the space it travels through. This connects directly to the Æether, (what are the chances both my book and current favorite song have to do with this?!) which has been present in the novel since the beginning and is mentioned in the song, as well.

--> The lyric "I'm done dreamin' that we can fly" echoes The Chums of Chance, who are becoming aware that their careers as a flying ship crew immune to the effects of aging are slowly coming to an end!!

The other connections remain more of a feeling, like for example the bit of nostalgia which brings to mind the vast range of time Against the Day spans and the Chicago World Fair the novel opened with. The line of "being busy doing nothing...share" reminds me of the novel as a whole, as SO much happens, even while nothing really happens. It also brings to mind characters like Kit Traverse, who sometimes live their life as others dictate.


Here are some more quotes :)
"It's a peculiar game we all play. Against what looms in the twilight...it doesn't make much sense, this pretending to carry on the day, you know, just waiting. Everyone waiting." -543 (when I read this I noticed the direct reference to the novel's title,but it took the Wiki to show me it was at the exact 1/2 way point of the book!)

"He belonged to the unbroken realm and its simplicities--river-flow, light and no light, transactions in blood." -540

"The woman...was looking Kit directly in the face, right away ruling out all sorts of introductory chitchat, with a gaze animal, timeless.... The difficulty lay in the extraordinary pale amber of her irises--far too pale for safety, less a positive shade than a failure on the side of jaundice to achieve the titanium-white that surrounded them. Put another way, he supposed--if eyes this colorless as these were on a dog, you would quickly enou understand that it was no dog looking back at you." - 537

"...something happened, something too terrible to remember...whereupon everything, along with memory, had gone falling dizzily away, not only downward but out along other axes of space-time as well. This had been happening a lot to him lately." -527

"Ah, shit. This had been so quick, even, you could say, easy. You could. He would soon begin to understand how it all might turn, was already, well before he had the godforsaken little town at his back, turning, to regret." -396