Interesting analysis of the work, here (no real commentary on Renfrew, though, except the following):

" ... There is, of course, so much more going on in this text's 1,085 pages and seventy chapters and among its nearly 200 characters than I have space for here. There are other plot vectors such as for Merle Rideout, his daughter Dally, Lew Basnight, and Yashmeen Halfcourt. Other vectors focus on places and events like the mythic lost city of Shambhala or the Tunguska event or the hollow earth or political upheavals in Mexico in the first decade of the twentieth century. There are also various violations of conventional reality as in the concept of "bilocation"--the ability to be in two places at once. This is most directly represented in Professor Renfrew and Professor Werfner [Renfrew spelled backwards], one at Cambridge, the other at Göttingen, who appear to be the same person, but each working on scientific projects for the eventual World War I antagonists. Yashmeen also can jump in time and space, which makes her a target for various spy entities who would like to exploit her ability. There is a set of characters known as the "Trespassers," who appear to be from the future and who know what will happen. Lastly there are many fanciful inventions--some prefiguring later inventions in the real world and others prefiguring fictional ones. Overall, however, Against the Day downplays the fantastic in order to attend to the characters..."

http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/current.issue/17.2duyfhuizen.html

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "geoff carver" <[log in to unmask]>


In "Against the Day," Thomas Pynchon's latest novel (sorry if I'm behind-the-times, but I had to wait for it to come out in paperback), there's a character called "Professor Renfrew" from... Cambridge.
Has anyone mentioned this anywhere, and did I just overlook it, somehow?