List of episodes in Against the Day

The following is a list of episodes in Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day. The pagination is the USA/Penguin paperback edition, which is the same as the first hardback edition.^[1]

One: The Light Over the Ranges

Episode 1 (Pages 2-9)

The Chums of Chance, the five-member crew of the hydrogen skyship Inconvenience sails for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Composing the crew are Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander; Darby Suckling, the "baby" of the crew who serves as both factotum and mascot; Lindsay Noseworth, second-in-command and Master-at-Arms; Miles Blundell, the Handyman Apprentice; and Chick Counterfly, the newest member of the crew. Also present is Pugnax, a literate dog of no particular breed who is reading Henry James's The Princess Casamassima, a book about the rise of World Anarchism.

Episode 2 (Pages 10-20)

Having almost crashed on landing, the Chums of Chance arrive at the Fair.

Episode 3

Lindsay and Miles enter the World's Fair through an alternative gate and are immediately confronted by the spectacle of unsavory acts and exhibits on the fringe of the Fair. Miles, in an act of divination, wins ten dollars at a game of three-card monte.

Meanwhile, Randolph St. Cosmo agrees to contract the services of the Chums of Chance and the Inconvenience to the White City Detectives for the purposes of surveillance.

Episode 4

The Chums meet a photographer (Merle Rideout) and his fully attired model (Chevrolette McAdoo), who seems to have just stepped out of a ladies' magazine. The Chums also meet Professor Heino Vanderjuice of Yale, who will be seen bargaining with an evil force that is widely celebrated mogul Scarsdale Vibe. On Vibe's way to the lobby, an elderly woman, respectably though not sumptuously dressed, approached him, crying,

"If I were your mother I would have strangled you in your cradle."

Episode 5

Lew Basnight, who wasn't sure what anarchists are, is recruited by the Chums.

Episode 6

Merle Rideout's history with Dahlia. Merle and Dally drift from town to town, and Merle's talents for photography and alchemy emerge.

Episode 7

Webb Traverse is introduced by meeting with Merle. They discuss the equivalent of the Philosopher's Stone for explosives.

Episode 8

On the fourth of July, Webb and his vodka drinking Finnish friend Veikko set to blow up a railway bridge in Colorado. Veikko isn't a fan of the Russian Tsar's regime compares it to American capitalism. Webb dislikes the treatment of the mine workers and originally plans to blow up a passing train, hoping to kill a mine manager or two.

Episode 9

Kit Traverse is in Colorado Springs working for Dr. Tesla on one his latest projects. Kit and his sidekick Jack Gigg meet Foley Walker who persuades Kit to attend Yale with full funding provided by Scarsdale Vibe. We find out that Walker was paid to replace Vibe in the Civil War conscription and was shot and wounded. Foley and Scarsdale later became friends and are known as 'The Twin Vibes'.

Episode 10

Now 1899, the Chums receive a telephone call with instructions to head southwest and await course correction via the airship's new Tesla device (or radio). The Inconvenience sails over several unknown and sparsely populated islands, where work details can be observed from the deck, until finally setting down on an island called St. Masque, the last island where they could take on perishable supplies. The Chums receive their assignment from extended radio communiques, arriving at a volcano antipodal to Colorado Springs, to observe what would happen there during Dr. Tesla's experiments in Colorado. Waiting for the experiment, the Chums begin a quarrelsome debate over what the replacement figurehead should be (having lost their previous one of President McKinley's head in a collision with a Chicago skyscraper). On the eve of the Fourth of July the Chums are treated to a mandatory fireworks display, after which Tesla's experiment commences. After the boys make their observations, they get ready to leave, resolving the figurehead dispute in the meantime, finally settling on a "draped female personage, perhaps more maternal than erotic." Noseworth reminds them that they should all learn a lesson from the dispute, namely to develop protocols against secularity.

The Upper Hierarchy sends a new assignment to the Chums through a "Special Japanese Oyster" (which uses crystals of Iceland spar to separate rays of light into "ordinary" and "extraordinary" beams). The message told them to intercept the schooner Étinne-Louis Malus and attempt to persuade its commander to abandon their expedition, led by Dr. Alden Vormance. To reach the ship quickly, the Chums traverse the hollow Earth, entering into a portal in Antarctica. While nearing the Northern exit point, they receive a distress signal from the indigenous population, wearing blue pointed hats, claiming to be under attack by a horde of hostile gnomes. The Chums stay for a day and a night. Helping to fight against the Legion of Gnomes and narrowly escape through the ever-shrinking Northern portal.

Two: Iceland Spar

Episode 1 (pages 121-137)

The Chums encounter their Russian counterparts, the Tovarishchi Slutchainyi, in their vessel, the Bol'shaia Igra, captained by Igor Padzhitnoff, who says a Zone of Emergency has been declared in the area. Despite the Russian's warning about a mysterious, unnamed and dangerous creature in the Zone, the Chums continue to chase the Etienne-Louis Malus, after just missing the schooner at Ísafjörður. The narrator tells of Adam of Bremen, who related the story of Ginnungagap, the lightless primordial void. Hunter Penhallow, heir to the Iceland spar fortune of his forebears, plans to stow away on the Malus, but heads south instead in another vessel. In the Hotel Borealis, the Expedition Headquarters, Dr. Vormance and his companions argue Quaternionist theory and time through the night. Among the guests on board is Fleetwood Vibe, the son of Scarsdale, who has bankrolled the expedition. His son is on board to keep tabs on expenditures.

Episode 2 (pages 138-148)

Fleetwood Vibe recalls a meeting with the Chums, who having inspected a mysterious object recovered by Vormance and his crew from the lee of a nunatak, warn them of its danger. Fleetwood, Vormance and others of the Expedition are given a tour of the control cabin of the Inconvenience, which is full of scientific gear including Manganin resistance-boxes, a Tesla coil, a Poulsen's Telegraphone and more. The Malus sails to a 'great city' in the south, perhaps New York, with the object on board. Vibe disembarks and tries to leave for Washington D.C., but can't because thanks to the object, the city is being "brought to sorrow and ruin."

Episode 3 (pages 149-155)

The great city is in chaos when the Chums arrive, having failed in an attempt to intercept the Malus. The people have erected structures to propitiate the "Destroyer." Hunter Penhallow appears, lost in the distorted grid of city streets. He stumbles upon others readying to escape the city and follows them out on a curious underground conveyance.

Episode 4 (pages 156-170)

Kit Traverse goes to the Yale-Harvard football game, where he meets Scarsdale Vibe for the first time. We learn about Kit's time at Yale so far, including his friendship with Colfax Vibe, a pleasant Rooseveltian type. Kit also meets Mrs. Edwarda Vibe, Scarsdale's wife; Scarsdale's brother R. Wilshire, and Cousin Dittany Vibe, with whom Kit has sex. We learn about the family's history, including Fleetwood Vibe's time in Africa. Vibe has a low opinion of the "crock of cucumbers" he has sired and intimates that Kit might have a place in the old man’s heart.

Episode 5 (pages 171-188)

Lew Basnight in Colorado. He fears that he's being followed by the Kieselguhr Kid, a notorious dynamiter, who Basnight is meant to be tracking down. He hears many stories about the Kid, none of them particularly trustworthy. We flashback to his time in Chicago, where he started to feel that a battle for his soul was taking place between the Union men and the 'Powers.' He meets Nate Privett in the Anarchist saloon, and figures out that the Kid he's meant to be chasing doesn't exist. The following night Basnight starts associating with anarchists, and gets hooked on a dynamite-derived hallucinogen. He almost dies in an explosion, but is rescued by two England dandies, Nigel and Neville, who decide to take him to England.

Episode 6 (pages 189-198)

Webb Traverse has become shift boss at the mine. But Lake is prostituting herself on the weekends; when he confronts her about it, she leaves home. Feeling the loss, Webb throws himself into the Union, whose members suggest he move to a different mine. There he meets Deuce Kindred, who works with his sidekick Sloat Fresno for mine-owners. They abduct Webb and intend to take him to Jeshimon.

Episode 7 (pages 199-208)

Frank and Reef Traverse go to Nevada. At Nochecita they meet Estrella 'Stray' Briggs, Reef's lover, with whom he's had a fight. They party with townsfolk. Then Reef gets a phone call from Jimmy Drop, to say that Webb's been taken by Deuce. Reef tries to convince Frank to look after Mayva and Lake while he goes out for revenge. They travel towards Jeshimon together.

Episode 8 (pages 209-218)

Reef goes to Jeshimon,^[2] a Utah town of evil-doers and priests, under the martial rule of The Governor. Reef finds Webb atop a "tower of silence," and takes him down under the eyes of Deuce and Sloat, who run off. He returns to Telluride with Webb's corpse. On the road he reads 'The Chums fo Chance at the Ends of the Earth,' a story about the Chums in the Arctic, which he finds strangely real. Webb's corpse starts speaking to him. The Traverse family buries Webb; Frank and Reef will "what Joe Hill calls organize." Mayva gives the boys Webb's old pistol, but they leave it for her. Reef returns to Nochecita, where Stray gives birth to a baby boy. Reef will take on his father's dynamiting trade, which means lying to Stray about what he gets up to when he disappears for days at a time.

Episode 9 (pages 219-232)

Neville, Nigel and Lew make it to England, where it turns out that Neville and Nigel are members of True Worshipers of the Ineffable Tetractys (T.W.I.T.).^[3] Lew becomes a postulant in the order and meets the Grand Cohen of the London Chapter of T.W.I.T., Nicholas Nookshaft and Tzaddik Yashmeen Halfcourt. They have a complicated mystical system and explanation for evil, based on the Tarot, none of which Lew entirely buys into: there are 22 people in the world who are committing some sort of "ongoing Transgression... the invasion of Time into a timeless world." Later, Madame Natalia Eskimoff gives a spiritualist sitting, in which she listens in on various geopolitical intrigues to do with the rights to railways in the Ottoman Empire. It turns out that Madame Eskimoff was once a member of the 22, and now works against them.

Episode 10 (pages 233-242)

Lew misses his dynamite-derived hallucinogen and asks Neville and Nigel to procure him something similar. They proceed to take a lot of drugs. They meet Dr. Coombs De Bottle, who is working on explosives in the interests of saving anarchists' lives. Madame Eskimoff predicts that the British will regain the Ashes the following year, provided they select Bosanquet. Lew goes to Cambridge with The Cohen to meet one of the 22, Professor Renfrew, who asks Lew to track down an anarchist bombing cricket player. He then tells him that the German Professor Werfner (another of the 22) has been following the laying of railways. Lew tells The Cohen that Renfrew offered him a job, and has therefore become a double agent.

Episode 11 (pages 243-259)

The Chums of Chance are in Venice. They are to follow the Sfinciuno Itinerary, a map of routes into Asia, one of which possibly leads - not via the usual geographical routes - to Shambhala. The itinerary is encoded by a 'paramorphoscope' made of Iceland Spar, and can possibly be decoded using devices found at the underwater Isle of Mirrors. Miles relives St Mark's vision "in reverse." Chick Counterfly meets a young woman who reads his Tarot cards, and predicts that the Campanile will fall. They run into the Russian airmen again, and engage in battle, in the course of which the Campanile does, in fact, fall. The two air-crews blame each other, then discuss the 'Manchurian Question;' Chick points out that the Russian captain Padzhitnoff refused to talk about the Trans-Siberian railroad.

Episode 12 (pages 260-272)

Deuce and Sloat are eating at Curly Dee's road ranch, where Lake is working. Deuce and Lake flirt; Mayva tries to put a stop to it, but fails. Deuce asks Lake to marry him, and she runs off with him, much to Sloat's incomprehension. Lake and Deuce do get married; soon the three of them are carrying out a range of sexual fantasies. Despite Webb's death, the "dynamite outrages continue," and the mine company representatives think Deuce and Sloat might have failed to kill him after all; they might be trying to kill Deuce for that failure. Sloat abandons them.

Episode 13 (pages 273-280)

Frank wanders the country, and starts to suspect that people are looking for him. He asks about Webb's death, and starts to suspect that Vibe Corp. is behind it. He goes to Leadville, where people are trying to turn mounds of slag into something valuable. He meets an anthropologist called Wren Provenance there; he takes her to a house of ill repute, which she very much enjoys for anthropological purposes. The prostitutes there ruin her "for everyday bourgeois sexuality." She has theories about Aztlan, the mythical home of the Mexican people, which are vaguely apocalyptic. At a bar Frank learns that Bulkley Wells is looking for him. Reef was last seen in Glenwood Springs, so Frank takes it upon himself to follow up on the Wells lead. Wren decides not to go with him.

Episode 14 (pages 281-295)

Frank arrives in Telluride. He goes to see Ellmore Disco, who runs a kind of proto-department store in town, and might be able to get Frank an interview with Cap'n Bulkley Wells. Ellmore says he'll need to go through Bob Meldrum to get to him, and asks why he wants to see Wells. Frank says he has a new system for concentrating gold ore by use of magnetism; Disco is skeptical. They wander the town and see 'La Blanca,' Meldrum's wife. Finally Frank goes to bed, but is woken by the slightly deaf Bob Meldrum threatening him, and accusing him of sleeping with La Blanca. Frank sets the record straight, and tries to set up a meeting with Wells. He pitches his new magnetic system to Merle Rideout (just passing by); Merle is skeptical, but agrees to set up the meeting. The Japanese trade delegation happens by the bar, and their mania for taking photographs precipitates a brawl; then they ask about the spirit of the west. Merle suggests that American has no 'national soul.'

Episode 15 (pages 296-317)

Frank heads out to Little Hellkite mine to meet with Merle, who isn't there. Frank looks into the mines, where Dahlia Rideout is working, and sees duendes.^[4] They meet once Merle returns; he knows Frank is Webb's son, and warns him off Wells, but shows him a photo of Deuce and Sloat. Bob Meldrum comes to the mine, and Dahlia helps Frank escape via a mine tunnel. They go to the Gallows Frame saloon. We learn about Dahlia's unconventional upbringing, in a whorehouse. Frank goes to stay at the Silver Orchid to avoid Bob. Merle finds him there and tries to sell him on a method for turning silver into gold, which involves Iceland Spar; he shows him an example of it. This 'Emmens process' could reduce the price of gold dramatically, in theory. Merle says Emmens has been selling transmuted gold to the U.S. Mint since 1897. They go back to the mines and see duendes playing poker and pool; these little people have been stealing dynamite and detonator caps. Frank meets Doc Turnstone, who had his heart broken by Lake... and tells Frank that she's run off with Deuce. He suggests Frank go see Jimmy Drop about this, who explains as best he can what happened. Back at the Gallows Frame, Ellmore helps Frank make an escape by joining a group of itinerant musicians. Frank talks to Webb's ghost. Dahlia is leaving too, to look for her mother in New York City.

Episode 16 (pages 318-335)

Kit gets a letter from Lake letting him know that Webb is dead; it had been opened before he got it and he suspects the Vibes. Professor Vanderjuice tells Kit that he, too, was hired by the Vibes, but came to feel uncomfortable about it, not to mention that they were dangerous. He suggests that Kit should go to Germany to work with Minkowski and Hilbert. Kit and Colfax boat out to an island to look at a tower Tesla has been building, but get caught in a storm. They stay the night on the island and hitch a ride back to New York the next morning, and Colfax tells Kit that the Vibe interest knows how unhappy he is. Kit tells Scarsdale that he wants to go to Germany. After he leaves the office, Scarsdale and Foley discuss their crusade against the "abscesses suppurating in the body of our Republic," concluding that they should smite the lot of them. But Scarsdale can't bring himself to kill Kit, and they come up with a different plan: stipend for Mayva and Lake, a job for Frank, a modest jackpot for Reef. But doubts remain.

Episode 17 (pages 336-357)

Dahliah takes the train east, and ends up taking a job as an actress in the white-slave simulation industry in New York's Chinatown. She moves in with Katie and then gets a contract with a talent scout of sorts: R. Wilshire Vibe. When she goes shopping with Katie, she sees her mother. Dally and Katie go to a ball at R. W. Vibe's townhouse. A magician maneuvers Dally into the cabinet of mystery, and next thing she knows she's in front of her rooming house. She goes to the Zombini residence to see her mother and the rest of the family, who are trained as magicians. She discusses magic with Zombini, who seems to have 'sawed' people using Iceland spar, so that two individuals are walking around. But he can't work out how to unify them again. To fix it he needs to go to the Island of Mirrors in Venice; the whole family is going to Venice. Erlys tells Dally that Merle wasn't her father.

Episode 18 (pages 358-373)

Mayva meets Stray in Durango; the next day Stray and Reef headed to Arizona. It turns out that Reef has taken up the family business of outlawry. He goes to look for Frank in Denver, supposedly, and gets caught in an avalanche, which was probably caused by somebody hunting him. Reef and Stray separate, and he takes on the identity of "East Coast nerve case Thrapston Cheesely III," traveling with a touring Englishwoman. He separates from her and meets up with an Irishman looking for the Kieselguhr Kid. He's one of a crew of anarchists.

Episode 19 (pages 374-396)

Frank traipses around for months, and meets up with Ewball Oust. They go to Mexico looking for Iceland spar. Frank does amalgamation work at a mine, then the two of them are thrown in some sort of prison, but manage to escape with an anarchist crew headed by El Nato. They want to steal silver from the Mexican Mint, but Frank talks them out of it. Soldiers are chasing them; the anarchists ride on but Frank stays behind with a group of Tarahumares, who feed him a hallucinogenic plant. They split up and Frank rides north, finding Sloat Fresno in the process. He shoots him dead.

Episode 20 (pages 397-405)

The Chums of Chance set up camp in Central Park. Chick and Darby track down Dr. Zoot, who claims to have a time machine--somewhere near where Hunter was translocated in Episode 3--and they 'travel' in it, perhaps getting a vision of world war I. Zoot tells them he got the machine at Candlebrow U., from Alonzo Meatman.

Episode 21 (pages 406-428)

The Chums of Chance go to a conference at Candlebrow University. They go to a municipal dump, filled with failed time machines, none of which look like Zoot's. They go looking for Meatman, but fail to find him; Chick stays behind in the bar when they leave, and Meatman reveals himself. He takes Chick to meet a group of time travelers from the future, "a time of worldwide famine, exhausted fuel supplies, terminal poverty—the end of the capitalistic experiment," who tell him that the Chums' missions are intended to prevent them from entering our time-regime. They offer Chick eternal youth if he'll help them. The other chums are skeptical. Miles accompanies Chick on his next visit to the future people, and says he has seen their leader, Mr. Ace, in a vision. Miles is concerned that someone is double-crossing the Chums. Once they all learn that they can grow old, though, they get scared, some go over to the 'Trespassers.' The group of Chums we've been following immerse themselves at Candlebrow U. as a harmonica band. After some time, they come to their senses and return to the 'Inconvenience'; Meatman takes them a copy of the map they'd been searching for in Venice. It will require them to travel beneath the sand.

Three: Bilocations

Episode 1 (pages 431-448)

Following up on rumors of an "escape nook to Asia," the Chums travel ‘into the sands of the Inner Asian desert’ in search of Shambhala aboard the ‘subdesertine frigate Saksaul’, whose crew, ‘The Viscosity Gang’, is led by Captain Toadflax. Navigation is handled by Stilton Gaspereaux, ‘a civilian passenger… who prove[s] to be a scholarly adventurer in the Inner Asian tradition’. Chick and Randolph become aware of a broader ‘plot’ afoot in the region—that of oil prospecting. Chick finds it ‘distressing’ that ‘once again [they] are being used to further someone’s hidden plans'; Randolph becomes ‘obsessed, recklessly so’, by the Saksaul’s logbooks’ other (monetary rather than sublime) plot potential. Having returned the Chums to the Inconvenience, ‘H. M. S. F. Saksaul [comes] to grief’, attacked by an unknown force, ‘the copy of the Sfinciuno Itinerary which the Chums in their innocence had brought aboard [having] led the Saksaul into ambush and disaster’. Gaspereaux is ordered by Toadflax to escape to London, which he does under protest. He appears in London in disguise, contriving his arrest in order to meet with Inspector Sands, whom he warns that Shambhala has been located but is under increasing threat of ‘sustained conflict over possession… in regimental strength if not larger’.

Episode 2 (pages 449-459)

Following Dally’s departure for New York, Merle heads back east, though ‘only as far as he [has] to’. Arriving in Audacity, Iowa, Merle briefly works at DREAMTIME MOVY, the town’s ‘moving-picture house’; he reflects on the relationship of light and time.

Merle arrives in Candlebrow, whose university is hosting a conference on Time, at which Vectorists and Quaternionists dispute time’s linearity. The university is frequented by ‘undisputably always the same tornado’ named Thorvald, who is apparently sentient.

Bounce Roswell arrives, via the Inconvenience. He is an inventor known for taking on Scarsdale Vibe in court over intellectual property. Roswell is heading to California in pursuit of ‘the future of light… in particular the moving pictures’. Roswell laments film’s indebtedness to linear time, referring to feature films as ‘clock movies’; he and Merle fall into partnership.

German mathematician Hermann Minkowski visits the university. Bounce and Merle do not understand his lecture, delivered in German, but speculate that Minkowski’s workings confirm their respective theses on light and time.

Episode 3 (pages 460-471)

Frank, ‘or the spur line of his destiny’, gravitates toward Nochecita, where Linnet Dawes directs him to Fickle Creek, on the outskirts of which she informs him Stray is living with Jesse. He finds Stray living above the town’s ‘pancake emporium’ with ‘regionally famous… motor outlaw’ Vang Feeley, but she does not recognise Frank.

Returning to Denver, Frank is informed by Reverend Moss Gatlin that Mayva is living in Cripple Creek. He visits her, and she expresses contentment at Frank’s murder of Sloat, and discourages him from ‘[feeling] like that you need to give me no happy endings here’ in hunting down Deuce, and, with him, Lake.

Episode 4 (pages 472-488)

Deuce and Lake move to Wall o’ Death, Missouri, Deuce having been made the town’s Deputy in error. While on duty, he receives official report of Sloat’s death and sets out for revenge. He returns a week later, despondent, and is haunted by Sloat’s ghost. Though the subject is never directly confronted, it becomes ‘clear to [Deuce] that [Lake] knew, and to her that he knew she knew’ about the circumstances of Webb’s death; Deuce falls into supplication and the couple try unsuccessfully for a child. When Deuce imitates Webb, Lake assaults him, but stops short of murder.

Episode 5 (pages 489-504)

At Cambridge, Cyprian Latewood, despite his reputation as ‘a sod’, has fallen in love with Yashmeen Halfcourt, who too ‘prefers, her, own, sex’. Halfcourt obsesses over G. F. B. Riemann’s ‘Zeta function’ and sets off to Göttingen to examine his papers. Renfrew takes an interest in Halfcourt, which may owe to her rumoured ‘eastern’ origins, or to Werfner’s residence in Göttingen. Cyprian sees Yashmeen off, but the disconsolation he anticipates fails to arrive.

Episode 6 (pages 505-524.)

Erlys and Dally depart aboard the S.S. Stupendica; Erlys tells her daughter of meeting Merle and Luca. Erlys observes that a Yale mathematician is giving her the eye; this is Kit, who spends his time in fourth class with another mathematician Roots Tubsmith. Kit and Dally meet; she recognises him, while he seems to better remember Katie. She recalls meeting Frank.

The Stupendica lives a bilocated existence as the S.M.S. Emperor Maximilian. While being built in Trieste, the two ships ‘merged’, despite being in two different locations. When the ship comes under apparent attack by torpedo, it metamorphoses from the Stupendica into the Emperor Maximilian. Kit gets trapped in the engine room, becoming the ‘Phantom of the Lower Decks’. The ship reaches Morocco, where Kit comes ashore, being taken on by the crew of fishing trawler Fomalhaut, bound for Ostend. Along the way the trawler is inundated with fish. The Emperor Maximilian arrives safely in its ‘home’, Trieste. Dally wonders what became of Kit.

Episode 7 (pages 525-547)

In Ostend, Kit comes across a group of Quaternioneers from Trinity , Dublin. He stays with them at the Grand Hôtel de la Nouvelle Digue, where he also encounters a ‘living cell of belgian nihilists’, and Rocco and Pino, who are conducting tests on a manned torpedo, the Siluro Dirigibile a Lenta Corsa. Kit also becomes reacquainted with Roots Tubsmith, and on a trip to the casino they meet Pléiade Lafrisée, whom Kit desires but does not trust. Pléide is liaising with Piet Woevre, a violent member of the Belgian Force Publique who is investigating the Siluro Dirigibile a Lenta Corsa. Pléiade arranges a rendezvous with Kit at the Regional Mayonnaise Works, promising to teach him more about the sauce. Finding the largely automated factory abandoned, Kit is submerged in mayonnaise and nearly drowns. He is rescued by Rocco and Pino, who arrive aboard their torpedo.