Recharged

Thomas Pynchon must relish the release of a new novel, adding a new chapter to his outsized literary legacy. His first since 1997’s Mason & Dixon, Against the Day (Penguin, $35) is another typically surreal and ambitious outing, though at this point, one wonders if it’s ambition that still drives the old recluse, or simply a batty desire to reinvent history.

A thorough plot synopsis of the novel, clocking in at nearly 1,100 pages, would likely fill the rest of this magazine. Instead, we’ll hit some highlights. The book begins in 1893, as the fictional Chums of Chance, a rowdy but righteous crew aboard the airship Inconvenience, float from New Orleans to the World’s Fair in Chicago, attracted by the promise of the White City and the dizzying array of new technologies the exposition promises. The Chums are a sort of airborne Boy Scouts, ruled by a strict moral code that compels them to come to the aid of anyone in peril.

The Chums are the book’s messengers, interacting with the story but mostly there to travel the world so Pynchon can link up his varied interests. In Chicago, they pick up Lew, a young private detective, and deposit him in Denver so that he may keep an eye on the workman disputes and nascent socialism that are seen as clear and present dangers.

In Colorado at the same time is Nikola Tesla, perfecting his alternating current and working on a machine that will change the way the world gets its electricity. He wants to build a sort of socialized electrical network, where energy would be free to everyone, a thought that chills the turn-of-the-century industrialists who are just learning how their money can buy them power in a world quickly changing shape. Meanwhile, down the road in Denver, anarchist Webb Traverse is stirring the pot in the labor ranks.

Both electricity and egalitarianism fascinate Pynchon as permutations of power. This new harnessing of energy gives hope to industrialists and socialists alike; electricity is both current and currency for the power struggle at the turn of the century.

Pynchon’s work is perhaps best known for being fearfully long and dense, the type of books college professors won’t assign for fear of triggering outbreaks of scoliosis in the student body. Given his reputation, it can be forgotten just how hilarious the old man is. Archduke Francis Ferdinand makes a cameo (the first of many historical figures distorted to Pynchon’s delirious delight) at the World’s Fair, drunkenly telling a Hungarian stockyardsman that his mother “is so fat, that to get from her tits to her ass, one has to take the ‘El’!”

The author is doggedly digressive, and pages upon pages are composed almost entirely of overcooked dialogue. He sticks close to the history texts in parts and burns it in others. These are old tricks of his, as he goes about reinventing the way in which we can reinvent the wheel. It’s worth wondering whether this sort of prolonged bombast is viable or self-indulgent. The answer is probably both. No matter how great a book Against the Day is, it cannot be denied that Pynchon is simply pleasing himself at some points. To get where he goes, an artist has to trust his whims.

Pynchon fancies himself society’s shrink, and by laying out this comprehensive fictional history, tackling industry, labor, economics and hallucinogenics at a time when all of those things seemed to be unfathomable revelations, he’s hit upon a world that was gripped by a potent mania. And maybe it takes his singular imagination to see it.