Description
Book SynopsisThomas 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. The book’s eleven essays by established luminaries and emerging voices in the field of Pynchon criticism, address 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.
Table of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction: "Exceeding the Usual Three Dimensions": Collective Visions of the Unsuspected Part 2 Part I: Narrative Strategies Chapter 3 Chapter 1: Genre as History: Pynchon's Genre-Poaching Chapter 4 Chapter 2: Plots, Pilgrimage, and the Politcs of Genre in Against the Day. Chapter 5 Chapter 3: Mapping, the Unmappable, and Pynchon's Anti-Tragic Vision Chapter 6 Chapter 4: Binocular Disparity and Pynchon's Panoramic Paradigm Part 7 Part II: Science, Belief, and Faith Chapter 8 Chapter 5: Bogomilism, Orphism, Shamanism: The Spiritual and Spatial Grounds of Pynchon's Ecological Ethic Chapter 9 Chapter 6: Readers and Trespassers: Time Travel, Orthogonal time, and Alternative Figurations of time in Against the Day Chapter 10 Chapter 7: Narrating Tesla in Against the Day Part 11 Part III: Politics and Economics Chapter 12 Chapter 8: The Religious and Political Vision of Against the Day 13 Chapter 9: Daydreams and Dynamite: Anarchist Strategies of Resistance and Paths for Transformation in Against the Day 14 Chapter 10: "The abstractions she was instructed to embody": Women, Capitalism, and Artistic Representation in Against the Day 15 Chapter 11: Europe's "Eastern Question" and the United States' "Western Question": Representing Ethnic Wars in Against the Day
