Pynchon's Against the Day A Corrupted Pilgrim's Guide

Thomas Pynchon's longest novel to date, Against the Day (2006), excited diverse but energetic opinions when it appeared on bookstore shelves nine years after the critically acclaimed Mason & Dixon. Its wide-ranging plot covers more than a decade -- 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 concerns. 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 contribution to Pynchon's already impressive body of works, but also a defining moment in the emergence of twenty-first century American literature. This volume includes essays by Graham Benton, Christopher K. Coffman, Inger H. Dalsgaard, Amy Elias, Kathryn Hume, Martin Kevorkian, Brian McHale, Elisabeth McKetta, Paul Narkunas, Krzysztof Piekarski, Terry Reilly, Jeffrey Severs, Justin St. Clair, as well as an introduction by Christopher Leise.

Jeffrey Severs is assistant professor in the English department at the University of British Columbia. Christopher Leise is assistant professor of English at Whitman College. He is coeditor of, and a contributor to, William Gaddis, The Last of Something: Critical Essays.