Of Pilgrims and Anarchists

Time to get anarchic! Ralph Clare’s review of A Corrupted Pilgrim’s Guide, the first scholarly take on Thomas Pynchon’s 2006 Against the Day, zooms in and illuminates the novel’s anarchist framework as the major claim and long-term contribution of the collection. The aesthetics and ethics of anarchism turn out to be not merely a theme in the novel’s setting - the late ninetieth to early twentieth-century - but the way it impinges on our current situation.