No one knows how much readers anticipate Thomas Pynchon’s sixth novel—his first in nine years—more than Pynchon. You can tell from the self-mockingly breathless catalogue copy for Against the Day, which the recluse wrote himself. Promising a historical epic even longer than his 773-page Mason & Dixon, he rattles off a few dozen locales and characters but reassures fans that “Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business.”

—Against the Day, By Thomas Pynchon, Penguin Press; November 21 ($35).

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