List of Possible Descriptors for Thomas Pynchon’s Novel Against the Day

  1. Study of light and non-light
  2. Byzantine mosaic
  3. Codex of visible and invisible
  4. Musical comedy
  5. Daffy
  6. Anarchist golf
  7. Photograph—the posing of, the taking of, the development of, the product of, the negative of, the future of, the past of, the continuous present of, the potential of…
  8. Revenge story
  9. Spy game
  10. Study of physical and metaphysical
  11. Likely too long for most readers
  12. Advent of modernity
  13. Kaleidoscopic
  14. Alternate history of labor unions
  15. Math discussion
  16. Alternate reality exercises
  17. Invisible portraits, invisible landscapes
  18. Epic romance
  19. Flight log
  20. Hat fetishes
  21. Overstuffed
  22. Hallucinogenic
  23. Endless digression
  24. Maps and legends
  25. Underappreciated
  26. Flaneur’s game
  27. International intrigue
  28. Love story
  29. Lust story
  30. Series of ever-changing vectors
  31. Polyglossic carnival
  32. Sprawling
  33. Doppelgangers and the women who love them
  34. Vaudeville routine
  35. Infinite jest
  36. Over the sky, under the desert, into the center of the earth
  37. Boys’ adventure story
  38. Girls’ adventure story
  39. Post-Victorian sci-fi
  40. Acronyms!
  41. Zingers
  42. Mayonnaise history
  43. Magic trick
  44. Exiles
  45. Time travel calisthenics
  46. Art history
  47. Stamp collection
  48. Lumpy
  49. Like a surreal version of the game of Risk
  50. Genre mash-up
  51. Dream factory
  52. Gilded Age fallout
  53. Unwieldy
  54. Sentimental
  55. Ironic
  56. Holy Grail quest
  57. Whatever word is the most intense and accurate opposite of sparse
  58. Robber barons and the men who hate them
  59. Ever bilocating plot lines unfolding and retangling in the direction of increasing entropy
  60. Pulp fiction
  61. Invisible ink
  62. Flip side of a tapestry, its ragged threads exposed
  63. Salad of utopian visions
  64. Confusing
  65. Vision through Iceland spar
  66. Critique of capitalism
  67. Disappearing act
  68. Polyphonic spree
  69. Moving pictures
  70. Deconstruction of family values
  71. Drunken cavalcade of dick jokes
  72. Rage against the machine
  73. Time travelogue
  74. All-you-can-think
  75. Anti-war tract
  76. Explosions!
  77. Seance
  78. Shaggy ______________
  79. Critique of oligarchy
  80. Jazz improvisation
  81. Polyamory-positive
  82. Coffee-positive
  83. Meta-something-or-other
  84. Cricket with no scorekeeper
  85. 1,085 pages in hardback
  86. Often fuzzy, bilocated, discursive—full of flashforwards and flashbacks and side flashes
  87. Sexy sex sex
  88. Funhouse maze with smoke and mirrors
  89. High adventure
  90. Dictionary of mysticism
  91. Scathing analysis of Manifest Destiny
  92. Simultaneously heavy and light, profound and sophomoric
  93. “What It Means to Be an American”
  94. Goofy
  95. Drug manual
  96. Positive visions of the possibilities for human coexistence
  97. Index of wonderfully bad puns
  98. Perpetual motion machine
  99. Spiralling and unspiralling riffage
  100. A zillion dime novels turned on their ears and spines and just spinning
  101. Flight toward grace

5 thoughts on “List of Possible Descriptors for Thomas Pynchon’s Novel Against the Day”

Leave a reply to Three potential starting points for reading Thomas Pynchon – Biblioklept Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.