The Last 'Against The Day' Review One Is Going To Read

In an erudite, readable and reflective review of Pynchon's new novel, James Wood finds the "book's will-to-nullification...deeply frustrating....[it is] a massive novel that never feels spacious, because it so rarely slows down to describe anything properly, never indulges in that rallentando* of respect whereby each note is awarded its imperishable thisness."

If you want to read a book, he goes on, that has "little plot but much internal story, that was morally and aesthetically complex, stylistically difficult and demanding, determined to put language to some kind of challenge, formally lovely and alluring, humanly serious but also humanly comic," you ought to pick up instead The Man Without Qualities, Remembrance of Things Past, The Radetzky March, The Secret Agent, Confessions of Zeno, The Magic Mountain or The Good Soldier Svejk.

*Rallentando: Gradually slackening in tempo.