Occupy Pynchon examines power and resistance in the writer's post-Gravity's Rainbow novels. As Sean Carswell shows, Pynchon's representations of global power after the neoliberal revolution of the 1980s shed the paranoia and meta physical bent of his first three novels and share a great deal in common with the work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's critical trilogy, Empire, Multitude, and Commonwealth. In both cases, the authors describe global power as a horizontal network of multinational corporations, national governments, and supranational institutions. Pynchon, as do Hardt and Negri, theorizes resistance as a horizontal network of individuals who work together, without sacrificing their singularities, to resist the political and economic exploitation of empire. Carswell enriches this examination of Pynchon's politics as made evident in Vineland (1990), Mason & Dixon (1997), Against the Day (2006), Inherent Vice (2009), and Bleeding Edge (2013) by reading the novels alongside the global resistance movements of the early 2010s. Beginning with the Arab Spring and progressing into the Occupy Movement, political activists engaged in a global uprising. The ensuing struggle mirrored Pynchon's concepts of power and resistance, and Occupy activists in particular constructed their movement around the same philosophical tradition from which Pynchon, as well as Hardt and Negri, emerges. This exploration of Pynchon shines a new light on Pynchon studies, recasting his post-1970s fiction as central to his vision of resisting global neoliberal capitalism.

Fleeing a troubled marriage, a 30-something punk rocker takes a seemingly benign grant-writing position at a psychiatric hospital in Southern California. Soon, the narrator is enmeshed in a struggle between Dr Bishop, a brilliant but batty research psychologist, and Frank Walters, a dapper, blind advertising executive who believes that Dr Bishop's research has lucrative implications. It is up to the narrator to make sure that Frank Walters is unable to harness the findings for questionable ends, as he begins a metaphysical journey that may lead him to murder.

Finding his girlfriend dead on the railroad tracks right after breaking up with her, Danny McGregor leaves Arizona and returns home to Florida, where a maelstrom of past ghosts awaits. Carswell follows his hero's quest to find meaning in life once he realises it is too late to die young.

Occupy Pynchon examines power and resistance in the writer's post-Gravity's Rainbow novels. As Sean Carswell shows, Pynchon's representations of global power after the neoliberal revolution of the 1980s shed the paranoia and meta physical bent of his first three novels and share a great deal in common with the work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's critical trilogy, Empire, Multitude, and Commonwealth. In both cases, the authors describe global power as a horizontal network of multinational corporations, national governments, and supranational institutions. Pynchon, as do Hardt and Negri, theorizes resistance as a horizontal network of individuals who work together, without sacrificing their singularities, to resist the political and economic exploitation of empire. Carswell enriches this examination of Pynchon's politics-as made evident in Vineland (1990), Mason & Dixon (1997), Against the Day (2006), Inherent Vice (2009), and Bleeding Edge (2013)-by reading the novels alongside the global resistance movements of the early 2010s. Beginning with the Arab Spring and progressing into the Occupy Movement, political activists engaged in a global uprising. The ensuing struggle mirrored Pynchon's concepts of power and resistance, and Occupy activists in particular constructed their movement around the same philosophical tradition from which Pynchon, as well as Hardt and Negri, emerges. This exploration of Pynchon shines a new light on Pynchon studies, recasting his post-1970s fiction as central to his vision of resisting global neoliberal capitalism.