Returned to Pynchon's Against the Day recently. More and more clear to this pugnacious reader that it's about being shocked, or occasionally seduced, out of the episodic cartoon by the events of the aforementioned day. The plot lines, in a fanciful though likely not entirely inaccurate reading, seem to trace the varying threads of the post-9/11 response to things. But eventually we're inside a labyrinth of more realistic events affecting a slate of characters on a Dostoyevskian scale -- perhaps an uncharitable reading on my part, but I think, about halfway through, we get to the point at which you would have to know and care about the models for the characters to follow the plot-lines. Even given the mind-candy settings (Michaelson-Moreley, higher maths, etc.). Or perhaps it's not the best novel to read whan nomading through the Balkans. It requires the ennui of the UWS coffeehouse in early evening.
Might see it through this time, but time and mental focus, assuming there's a difference between those two things, are precious things.