Books: A reclusive genius

Author Thomas Pynchon hasn't been photographed for 50 years, and has never been interviewed. His books are multi-layered, chaotic, fantastical and extraordinary. Edward O'Hare reviews his new novel, which could be his best yet

Against the day by Thomas Pynchon. Published by Jonathan Cape, €31.99

Reading Against the Day, the new book by Thomas Pynchon, was always going to be an unreal event. Even after you have read a new book by a writer like Pynchon, you can't quite believe it. Pynchon has had an enormous influence on the generations of writers who have followed in his uniquely turbulent wake, but he is perhaps more famous for having never given an interview or even been photographed for the last five decades.

If the mark of genius is that it can create what nobody else can, then Pynchon certainly deserves this title. A Pynchon novel is like an imagined episode of The Simpsons script-doctored by Ludwig Wittegenstein and designed by Salvador Dali. Infinitely daring, at times phenomenally complex and, for the determined reader, massively rewarding. His books breed a confusion that becomes exhilarating.

Against the Day has received a tidal wave of acclaim in the United States, but does the book really deserve it?

Even after a single reading it can be said that for once the explosion of praise is fully justified. Against the Day makes a convincing case for being Pynchon's greatest novel yet.

But what do those who have never heard of Pynchon need to know? Born in Long Island in 1937, Thomas Ruggles Pynchon studied physics at Cornell University before transferring to an English course taught by Vladimir Nabokov. A few of his short stories found their way into assorted publications but nobody was prepared for the arrival of Pynchon's first novel, V, in 1963.

V remains one of the most extraordinary literary achievements. Covering a phantasmagoric montage of locations, including Florence, Alexandria, Paris, Malta and the alligator-infested sewers of New York, the novel spans over 80 years. A random collection of themes, characters and ideas, including warfare, nose-jobs, gyroscopes, an artist who can only paint pastries, the brutality of the colonial powers in Africa, a priest who preaches to a congregation of rats and a conspiracy to steal Botticelli's ‘The Birth of Venus' revolve around a central plot involving a mad English spy's attempt to track down a clockwork woman with detachable feet who has appeared at pivotal moments in history.

“Few books haunt the waking or sleeping mind but this is one,” declared TIME magazine of V. If anyone thought that Pynchon's intentions would become clearer as his career progressed, they were wrong. Gravity's Rainbow (1973) is an often baffling and rage-filled anti-war novel about a man biologically related to the V-2 rocket. Then came the many years of silence until Vineland in 1990. Pynchon's most recent work was Mason & Dixon in 1997, the sprawling tale of the two British astronomers who surveyed America in the days before the revolutionary war.

So what of Against the Day?

Although over 1,000 pages, the book moves over such a vast geographical and intellectual territory that it never becomes tiresome. The novel opens at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. When their anarchist father Webb is murdered, the Traverse children decide to leave home. As the empires of the world collide and chaos gains the upper hand, the family gets caught up in some of the more insane incidents of the past 100 years. Frank winds up in Mexico and joins the revolution, Kit travels to Germany and finds himself embroiled in a group of radical mathematicians, Reef takes up gambling and bomb-making. The unfortunate Lake becomes lost as the book culminates with the escalating lunacy of the first world war.

From its premise, Pynchon constructs a truly epic exploration of the dark origins of the modern world. It takes no great imaginative leap to see how the “unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places” he describes belongs equally to the present day, but the brilliance and irony with which he draws these parallels make this book the masterpiece it is. Even at his wackiest, Pynchon's alertness to the abuse of power, both political and technological, is devastatingly effective.

Not everything is meant to be taken seriously. Pynchon's work has always displayed a fantastic capacity for finding comedy even in the most horrendous circumstances and in Against the Day, his characters are constantly cheating, stealing and philandering and one nearly drowns in a vat of mayonnaise. What's more, the text is interspersed with a new collection of ‘stupid songs', bizarre sea shanty-like ditties that Pynchon's books have always featured.

When presented with a book like Against the Day you find yourself in the rare situation of not knowing what to praise most – the historical detail, the meticulous characterisation or the limitless scope Pynchon's creative imagination. Most impressive is the way he manages what is literally a cast of thousands, including Groucho Marx, Bela Lugosi and Nikola Tesla. As Lawrence Norfolk, author of Lempriere's Dictionary and The Pope's Rhinoceros has said, Against the Day is a book that you should devote months of your life to. It is like experiencing both a dream and a nightmare at the same time. Let us hope that Pynchon dreams on.π