The quote from Thomas Pynchon's "Against the Day" critiques the role of powerful nations in history, labeling them as administrators who reshape and control the narratives of others rather than creating their own. These nations, compared to stock-jobbers, commodify history, treating human lives merely as units of exchange while manipulating the significance of those lives in the grand narrative of history.
Pynchon emphasizes that true history is rooted in the authentic...