Yair’s Reviews > Against the Day > Status Update

“Until one day one is left with only traces in the world, a few tangles of barbed wire defining the plan-view of something no longer quite able to be seen . . . perhaps certain odors as well, seeping in, late at night, from somewhere upwind, a wind which itself possesses now the same index of refraction as the departed Structure. . . .”

Pynchon, Thomas. Against the Day (pg. 625)

"Once, among mathematicians, ‘the infinite’ was all but a conjuror’s convenience. The connections lie there, Kit—hidden and poisonous. Those of us who must creep among them do so at our peril.”

“Come on,” Kit said, “let a trivial fellow buy you a beer.”

Pynchon, Thomas. Against the Day (pg. 594)

“We are the Jews of mathematics, wandering out here in our diaspora—some destined for the past, others the future, even a few able to set out at unknown angles from the simple line of Time, upon journeys that no one can predict. . . .”

-Pynchon, Thomas. Against the Day (pg. 533)

"A high-mountain sunlit spareness, a house framed in absolute rectilinear purity, dry, bleached, silent but for the wind. And her young face, remembered by a hundred no-goods all through the San Juans for its clean delicacy, unshielded before the days and what they were doing to it."

Pynchon, Thomas. Against the Day. (pg. 483)

“All due respect to the Professor,” protested Lindsay Noseworth at the nightly Unit meeting, “but is this what we have to look forward to around here, these sophomoric slogs through endless quagmires of the metaphysical? Frankly, I don’t know how much of that I can tolerate.”

Pynchon, Thomas. Against the Day (pg. 406)

"Sometimes he was just after the explosion, it was like telling them in a voice too loud to ignore to fuck off."

Pynchon, Thomas. Against the Day (pg. 362)

"There was room for Frank and a cigarette, if he tore it in half."

-Pynchon, Thomas. Against the Day (pg. 304)

“Bells are the most ancient objects. They call to us out of eternity.”

-Pynchon, Thomas. Against the Day (pg. 259)

"THEY STOOD HUDDLED together in Lone Tree Cemetery, the miners’ graveyard at the end of town, Mayva, Lake, Frank, and Reef, beneath the great peaks and behind them the long, descending trace of Bridal Veil Falls whispering raggedly into the cold sunlight. Webb’s life and work had come to this."

Pynchon, Thomas. Against the Day (pg. 215)

"But it’s always finding the time, isn’t it.”
“Sure, always something. . . . Chores, something.”
“Tithing,” Tesla said, “giving back to the day.”
“Not complainin about the hours here, nothin like that, sir.”
“Why not? I complain all the time. Not enough of them, basically.”

Pynchon, Thomas. Against the Day (pg. 104)