The religious and political vision of Pynchon's Against the Day

The postmodern Pynchon of infinite ambiguity gives way to one with fairly explicit religious and political messages in Against the Day. While Buddhism, Islam, Orphic values, and Kabbalism are present, Pynchon foregrounds Christianity and specifically Catholicism. This novel also offers a more than ever before overt political program: Luddite violence against capitalism. The spiritual spectrum he favors runs from entering a convent, to his via media (Keep cool, but care!), to destroying capitalist infrastructure. His dynamiter, Webb Traverse, is treated as a kind of Labor saint, a martyr for a moral cause. In addition to the religious and political messages, Pynchon pushes constantly against a materialist concept of reality by using voices, mystic visions, magic, and all kinds of violations of consensus reality.