Pynchon - Blog 10

Aniruddha Joshi
English 1102
Dr Reynolds
April 23, 2009

Pynchon – Blog 10

Going further into Pynchon’s “Against the Day,” I feel more and more confused as I progress. The book has quite a lot of characters and subplots that it is quite hard to keep track of things and also is somewhat annoying. I am left to assume that the book will account for all these somewhat separate plots as the book concludes. The characters themselves are not well developed and this was in some sense a big turnoff for me and I hope that the rest of the book is more rewarding in that respect. The book is quite heavy in my opinion and it does not settle down into a strong single plot. I wonder if the author intended to structure the book with so many characters and plots or if this is a result of Pynchon’s natural style.

Blog #9 - Conclusion Ignatius Donnelly

Aniruddha Joshi
English 1102
Dr Reynolds
April 7, 2009

I found that the book got more and more dark as I read through it. I did not quite like how donnelly chose to get rid of his key problems in the book. First of all, the entire idea of destruction was completely unnecessary. While in the very early stages of the book, I thought that the book would move towards a political uprising to create a utopia in America itself rather than see its end. Society today relies on the idea of political self improvement rather than sheer destruction.

Also, I really wonder why Donnelly chose Uganda to be the true Utopia in the book. Currently Uganda is politically and economically struggling and in the book it is shown to be a place where people are equal and living how man was supposed to live. I find this contrast quite interesting. Furthermore, right now America is the worlds richest and most powerful nation and Donelly represents it as a dystopia which begs the question of what happens to Uganda in its future after the conclusion of the book. It was shown as a utopia but then I felt that it could have also went the other way.