Pynchon, Thomas (b. 1937)

Against the Day

New York

The Penguin Press

2006

"It was a time in Cripple and Victor, Leadville and Creede, when men were finding their way to the unblastable seams of their own secret natures, learning the true names of desire, which spoke, so they dreamed, would open the way through the mountains to all that had been denied them."

Webb's trajectory toward the communion of toil which had claimed his life had begun right out in the middle of Cripple Creek, blooming like a flower of poisonous delight among its spoil heaps, cribs, parlor houses, and gambling saloons. It was a time in Cripple and Victor, Leadville and Creede, when men were finding their way to the unblastable seams of their own secret natures, learning the true names of desire, which spoke, so they dreamed, would open the way through the mountains to all that had been denied them. In the broken and soon-enough-interrupted dreams close to dawn in particular, Webb would find himself standing at some divide, facing west into a great flow of promise, something like a wind, something like light, free of damaged hopes and pestilent smoke east of here--sacrificial smoke, maybe, but not ascending to Heaven, only high enough to be the daylight and deny to the walkers of the night the stars they remembered from younger times. He would wake to the day and its dread. The trail back to that high place and the luminous promise did not run by way of Cripple, though Cripple would have to serve, hopes corroded to fragments--overnight whiskey, daughters of slaves, rigged faro games, the ladies who work the line.
(p. 86)

Mineral::Seams

Pynchon, Thomas. Against the Day, New York: The Penguin Press, 2006.

06/26/2007