Pynchon's Against the Day: A Corrupted Pilgrim's GuideThomas Pynchon's longest novel to date, Against the Day (2006), excited diverse and energetic opinions when it appeared on bookstore shelves nine years after the critically acclaimed Mason & Dixon. Its wide-ranging plot covers nearly three decades-from the 1893 World's Fair to the years just after World War I-and follows hundreds of characters within its 1085 pages. Pynchon's Against the Day: A Corrupted Pilgrim's Guide offers eleven essays by established luminaries and emerging voices in the field of Pynchon criticism, each addressing a significant aspect of the novel's manifold interests. By focusing on three major thematic trajectories (the novel's narrative strategies; its commentary on science, belief, and faith; and its views on politics and economics), the contributors contend that Against the Day is not only a major addition to Pynchon's already impressive body of work but also a defining moment in the emergence of twenty-first century American literature. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 13 | |
| 15 | |
| 29 | |
Mapping the Unmappable and Pynchons Antitragic Vision | 47 |
Binocular Disparity and Pynchons Panoramic Paradigm | 67 |
SCIENCE BELIEF AND FAITH | 89 |
Bogomilism Orphism Shamanism The Spiritual and Spatial Grounds of Pynchons Ecological Ethic | 91 |
POLITICS AND ECONOMICS | 165 |
The Religious and Political Vision of Against the Day | 167 |
Daydreams and Dynamite Anarchist Strategies of Resistance and Paths for Transformation in Against the Day | 191 |
The abstractions she was instructed to embody Women Capitalism and Artistic Representation in Against the Day | 215 |
Europes Eastern Question and the United States Western Question Representing Ethnic Wars in Against the Day | 239 |
| 265 | |
| 279 | |
About the Editors | 289 |
Readers and Trespassers Time Travel Orthogonal Time and Alternative Figurations of Time in Against the Day | 115 |
Narrating Tesla in Against the Day | 139 |
About the Contributors | 291 |
Other editions - View all
Pynchon's Against the Day: A Corrupted Pilgrim's Guide Jeffrey Severs,Christopher Leise No preview available - 2011 |
Common terms and phrases
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