The sixth chapter focuses on a decisive common dimension in Gravity’s Rainbow, Mason & Dixon, and Against the Day, namely, their treatment of anthropocenic and planetary concerns. These related concepts have featured prominently in recent literary studies, but studies of Pynchon’s relation to the Anthropocene are still largely absent. Moreover, recent discussions in literary criticism of anthropocenic and planetary concerns are primarily centered on works published in the twenty-first century, but the chapter shows that the concerns are extensively prefigured in the early novels of Pynchon’s global trilogy. The notion of planetarity is often seen as incompatible with the idea of globalization, but the chapter shows that the anthropocenic and planetary themes in Pynchon’s novels grow naturally out of the global and world-historical issues discussed in Chapters 1–4. At the same time, it demonstrates that Pynchon’s ideas of humanity’s harmful exploitation of the planet draw on a long tradition in American literature and on the ecological ideas of the 1960s. The chapter concludes with an analysis of how Pynchon depicts language as a significant force in the Anthropocene, and with a discussion of the trilogy’s recurring portrayal of giants as ancient planetary avatars poised to reclaim the Earth.

Planetary Pynchon: History, Modernity, and the Anthropocene has three interrelated agendas: (1) It establishes Thomas Pynchon’s three longest novels – Gravity’s Rainbow, Mason & Dixon, and Against the Day – as an ambitious, world-historical trilogy about the emergence and global spread of European modernity and thus presents a groundbreaking new understanding of one of the most important contemporary novelists. (2) On the basis of the analysis of the trilogy’s profound engagement with global history, it presents an elaborate discussion of Pynchon’s historical methods, which refines our understanding of Pynchon as an author of historical fiction and challenges prevalent notions of his relation to literary postmodernism. (3) It charts Pynchon’s early anticipation of anthropocenic and planetary ideas, including their close connection to modernity’s and globalization’s demand for constant growth. In so doing, it constitutes an important corrective to other recent studies of literature and the Anthropocene, showing how literary fiction is not merely a belated reflection of scientific debates about the Anthropocene, but has taken an early and active part in establishing the contours of the current discussions.

The third chapter of the book analyzes Pynchon’s portrayal of the complex geopolitical situation around 1900. Against the Day is the longest and most relentlessly globetrotting novel in the global trilogy, and the chapter traces the different literary mapping strategies that Pynchon employs to depict the progress of modernity across the planet and his characters’ restless traverses through this and other worlds. The chapter also analyzes Pynchon’s deft use of various genres from the depicted period, just as it discusses the novel’s curious non-depiction of World War I and Pynchon’s rendering of the defeatist attitude which made the war possible. Finally, through an analysis of the related themes of bilocation and refraction the chapter shows which modes of resistance Pynchon’s longest novel proposes to place against the day, and it undertakes a close reading of the novel’s highly ambiguous epilogue, which leads directly into Gravity’s Rainbow.