Changes

gets the benefit of resonance with current events by choosing which facts to highlight from the period, by choosing the diction with which to present them, all building on the reverberations inherent in the subject matter. Strict constructionists may point to the text and say, There's no mention of September 11, 2001, or President Bush, or suicide bombers in Afghanistan specifically on the page here, such an interpretation can't be supported by the text & etc. - and that's a reasonable point to make. The result is, so far in ATD, the frequent evocation of US post-September 11 in terms that will be difficult to nail down, but which are, at the same time, obvious to most readers if not all. Nothing new in Pynchon, of course, this sort of displacement makes his texts notoriously slippery.

"Sufficient unto the day"<br />