"It sure as hell looked like war": terrorism and the Cold War in Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day and Don DeLillo's Underworld

Abstract

This piece explores, necessarily briefly, the conceptions of terrorism in two novels that stand separated by the calamitous events of September 11th, 2001: Pynchon's Against the Day and Don DeLillo's Underworld, with special focus upon the genesis of these depictions in Cold War politics. While there are cases to be made for many geographico-historical connections in both Pynchon's and DeLillo's work – for instance, Sam Thomas has recently highlighted the Balkans – the Cold War presents a locus of economics, religion and terror that is to be found at few other points