Against the Day

Thomas Pynchon's novel Against the Day, published in 2006, tells the story of how two generations of working families, the Rideouts and the Traverses, fare from 1893 until the mid 1920's. Typical of Pynchon's style and the encyclopedic novel, Against the Day develops no character particularly much, but often uses them to articulate watershed historical developments in more depth than ordinarily expected of fiction. Both families originate in the west and midwest of the United States, where the Traverses live anti-establishment lives rebelling, in their ways, against the life-draining and exploitive practices of robber barons and fast-growing corporations, particularly of the mining and railroad industries. The Rideouts lead more free-spirited lives, which cross paths frequently with the Traverses.