---
layout: post
status: publish
published: true
title: ! "Publication: \"Terrorism and the Cold War in Thomas Pynchon's Against the
  Day and Don DeLillo'\x80\x99s Underworld\""

wordpress_id: 2881
wordpress_url: https://www.martineve.com/?p=2881
date: !binary |-
  MjAxMy0wOS0wNSAxNzo0MzowMyArMDIwMA==
date_gmt: !binary |-
  MjAxMy0wOS0wNSAxNjo0MzowMyArMDIwMA==
categories:
- Literature
- Thomas Pynchon
- Academia
- Publications
- Output
tags:
- Thomas Pynchon
- Don DeLillo
comments: []
---
<p>This piece explores the conceptions of terrorism in two novels that stand separated by the calamitous events of September 11th, 2001: Pynchon's <i>Against the Day</i> and Don DeLillo's <i>Underworld</i>, with special focus upon the genesis of these depictions in Cold War politics and notions of capitalist statehood. While there are cases to be made for many geographico-historical connections in these works, both these novels frame the Cold War as a locus of economics, religion and terror that is to be found at few other points.</p>
<p>This piece also stages a direct engagement with Kathryn Hume's article, “The Religious and Political Vision of Pynchon's <i>Against the Day</i>,” which suggested an overt “seriousness” in which a “more aggressive” Pynchon “appears to support political violence”; terrorism (Hume 164). Here I will present the cumulative textual evidence that complicates such a stance through the fact that – in the thematic matrix of the Cold War which grounds this theme – the religious, the political and the terroristic cannot be cleanly separated.</p>
<p>Eve, Martin Paul, ‘<a href="https://www.martineve.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Martin-Paul-Eve-Pynchon-DeLillo-and-Terrorism.pdf">“It Sure’s Hell Looked Like War”: Terrorism and the Cold War in Thomas Pynchon"s <i>Against the Day</i> and Don DeLillo’s <i>Underworld</i></a>’, in Thomas Pynchon and the (De)vices of Global (Post)modernity, ed. by Zofia Kolbuszewska (Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL, 2013)</p>