Thomas Pynchon’s novels explore similar themes—more relevant than ever in a world suffering from information overload. Reeling from a kind of spiritual vertigo, his characters wonder whether the paranoiacs have it right—that there are malign conspiracies and hidden agendas connecting all the dots. Or whether the nihilists are onto something—that there is no signal in the noise, only chaos and randomness. “If there is something comforting—religious, if you want—about paranoia,” he wrote in Gravity’s Rainbow, “there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition
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