Anderson’s newest film takes a distinct step in the Pynchon canon in that it more-clearly depicts what’s encoded in every Pynchon text: The war between the powerful and the powerless. Across Pynchon’s novels, it’s been One Battle After Another since the 1960s, and the 1930s before that, and the Wobblies, and the revolutions of the Victorian Era before that. Pynchon’s work is often labeled “Postmodernism,” but it’s also interpretable as a body of left historical literature concerning antifascism, and the struggle of working people navigating the oppressive systems of their era. Pynchon does it through a signature style pockmarked with magical realism and historical parody, and he writes at length about the various guises and motivations of fascists like One Battle After Another’s Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, played terrifyingly, in leathery fashion, by Sean Penn.
— Thomas Pynchon Has Been Warning Us About American Fascism the Whole Time
© Henning Bertram 2026