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A review by jonfaith
Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon
4.0
My friends and I created our online reading group samizdat in the summer of 1999. Our first selection was Gravity's Rainbow and we've made a number of efforts since then to recreate that cherry high. Those distant days of yahoo and dial up are recreated in Bleeding Edge, though most of its characters play with a heavier set of clubs. The Kabbalic notion of a deep web where the eschatological becomes, well, virtual is hardly a new idea. Pynchon drapes it all in a noir apparatus with a crime scene at Ground Zero.
Pynchon goes with a female protagonist, Maxine - mother of two and fraud investigator - Frau investigator. It has been a long time since Oedipa Mass and I think Maxine finds her form with verve. It is rife with all the standard Pynchonian parodies. There is a biopic channel where all notable personalities receive 100 minute, big screen treatment. there are song lyrics at every turn and an entire football roster of blurry men on the grassy knoll. There are fingers pointed to Wahabi networks funded from dot.com dividends, a scratchy DVD showing a fail-safe with Stinger missles being used if the planes didn't complete their mission. There is also a host of Mossad and Russians running around, not to mention an entire room of Jihadis with an ElectroMagnetic Pulse. Oh well, one shouldn't expect subtlety.
There is a scene towards the end where Maxine is discussing the internet with her father. He rebukes here deterritorialized utopian view and tells her point blank that it was designed by cold warriors, that intent has to linger.
Pynchon goes with a female protagonist, Maxine - mother of two and fraud investigator - Frau investigator. It has been a long time since Oedipa Mass and I think Maxine finds her form with verve. It is rife with all the standard Pynchonian parodies. There is a biopic channel where all notable personalities receive 100 minute, big screen treatment. there are song lyrics at every turn and an entire football roster of blurry men on the grassy knoll. There are fingers pointed to Wahabi networks funded from dot.com dividends, a scratchy DVD showing a fail-safe with Stinger missles being used if the planes didn't complete their mission. There is also a host of Mossad and Russians running around, not to mention an entire room of Jihadis with an ElectroMagnetic Pulse. Oh well, one shouldn't expect subtlety.
There is a scene towards the end where Maxine is discussing the internet with her father. He rebukes here deterritorialized utopian view and tells her point blank that it was designed by cold warriors, that intent has to linger.