David Bruce Collins—the Official Site
  • Index
  • Blog
  • Biography
  • Writing
    • Novels in Print
    • Eastern Daylight (1997) >
      • Eastern Daylight: April
      • Eastern Daylight: May
      • Eastern Daylight: June
      • Eastern Daylight: July
      • Eastern Daylight: August
      • Eastern Daylight: September
      • Eastern Daylight: October
    • Bite-Size Hungarian
  • Politics
    • Life As a Green
    • Ten Key Values of GPUS (English)
    • Issues (2014)
  • County Gov't
  • Web Links

"Bleeding Edge" Consuming DBC

21/11/2016

0 Comments

 
Assuming that it leaves enough of my brain uneaten to process what I'm reading, I expect to finish Thomas Pynchon's Bleeding Edge (2013) soon. I have about 100 pages to go.

Yesterday Kayleen observed that I seemed a bit "elsewhere" through most of yesterday. I blamed it on the book. Even when I wasn't busy reading this novel, the eighth in Pynchon's 50-plus-year career, I was reliving it, or reverberations of it, like a waking dream, the way the subconscious mind scrambles and reassembles inputs that the conscious mind cannot immediately interpret.

Since I'm only about 80% through the book, this is not a review. I'm not even going to summarize the plot or dissect any of the characters; you can get the summaries and dissections elsewhere. You can also get analysis of obscure references here. But I do want to convey some impressions from what I have read so far.
  • In many ways, Bleeding Edge is Pynchon's open-eyed love letter to New York City, and to Manhattan in particular. This is an aspect of the book that I have yet to see noted in any of the reviews I have read on Goodreads or elsewhere. TP loves NYC despite its many flaws. Great cities, like great people, often have greater flaws; NYC's greatest flaw is that the biggest parts of the engine of worldwide capitalism live there.
  • For a story that takes place in New York, the cast of characters is rather heavily white. The main character's receptionist is a notable exception, and there are plenty of Jewish and Italian-American characters, but this may as well be an incredibly twisted episode of Friends overlapping an equally twisted episode of Seinfeld.
  • One big knock against it is that protagonist Maxine Tarnow deals with far too many more-or-less interchangeable white male characters, who enter the story at one point, are referred to at random intervals, and reappear about 100 pages later, leading me to wonder, "Who was this guy again?" At least all the Russians keep things interesting.
  • The book is friggin' hilarious, but it is a 477-page inside joke. Readers without an intricate knowledge of New York's history and geography, of pop culture (including Pokémon), and of information technology may not get as many LOLs from it as I have. It makes me wonder what laughs I may have missed.
  • Most remarkably, the hilarity continues even after 11 September happens, about two-thirds of the way in. Pynchon gives us only a brief period of not-so-funny as the characters try to sort out the events and their causes. In real life, people in NYC and around the world may have paused the laugh-track, M*A*S*H-style, and dealt appropriately with the tragedy, but the world as a whole did not get less funny or absurd.
  • The puns. OMG, the puns.
  • So far, I haven't come across Pig Bodine or any analog thereof. This omission has led me to suspect that Pynchon did not actually write the book, but instead farmed it out to a professional Pynchon impersonator. But then, as the wiki notes, there was no Bodine to be found in The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland, or Inherent Vice.
  • At least I have found a passage about an improbable pizza parlor, another Pynchonian trope. There's even a pizza scene in Mason & Dixon. A book about New York that didn't involve pizza would be so wrong.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    DBC Sez...

    Conventional wisdom states that a politician's site should focus on the campaign. I can focus with the best of them, but I choose not to.
    Here you will find campaign-related entries, as well as some about my reignited writing career, Houston underground arts, peace & justice, urban cycling, soccer, alt-religion, and other topics.

    Archives

    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014

    Categories

    All
    2018
    ACORN
    Affordable Care Act
    Ahmad Hassan
    Ajamu Baraka
    Alabama
    Al Gore
    Amazon
    Ballot Access
    Bernie Sanders
    #BlackLivesMatter
    B&N
    Book Review
    Brains And Eggs
    Breast Cancer
    Burning Man
    Caitlin Johnstone
    Caleb Alexander
    Campaign
    Campaign 2018
    Candidates' Forum
    Candidate Workshop
    Catastrophic Theatre
    Cenk Uygur
    Cheri Honkala
    Chicago
    Chris Hedges
    Chuck Kuffner
    City Council
    Climate Change
    Climate March
    Convention
    Corporatocracy
    County Clerk
    County Judge
    Cover Design
    Cycling
    Dan Monahan
    Darryl Cherney
    David Cobb
    Death By Cop
    Death Penalty
    Debates
    Deep State
    #DemEnter
    Demexit
    #DemExit
    Donald Trump
    #DownticketGreens
    Dwight Boykins
    Early Voting
    Earth Day
    Earthworm
    Eastern Daylight
    Ecological Wisdom
    Economic Justice
    Ed Emmett
    Eleanor Goldfield
    Election 2015
    Election 2016
    Election 2017
    Election 2018
    Electoral College
    Emancipation Park
    Emily Sanchez
    Emily Sanchez
    Endorsements
    Energy
    Environment
    Erika Martinez
    Fiction
    Fourth Turning
    Full Frontal
    Fundraising
    Gary Johnson
    Gary Stuard
    Gerrymandering
    Gray Matters
    #GreenEnter
    Green Party
    Greenwatch TV
    Hal Ridley Jr.
    Harris County
    HAUS
    HAUS Project
    HCGP
    Hillary Clinton
    HMS
    Homelessness
    Houston
    Houston Area Progressives
    Houston Astros
    Hurricane Harvey
    Instant Runoff Voting
    Inverted Totalitarianism
    Iran
    IRV
    IUniverse
    Janis RIchards
    Jan RIchards
    Jill Stein
    Jimmy Dore
    Jonathan Franzen
    JosH Darr
    Juneteenth
    Justice
    Kenneth Kendrick
    Kenneth Mejia
    Kent Mesplay
    Keystone XL
    Key Values
    KPFT
    Laredo
    Last Week Tonight
    League Of Women Voters
    Lina Hidalgo
    Local Democracy
    Maine
    March For Science
    Margaret Flowers
    Marijuana
    Martina Salinas
    Mass Shootings
    Mayor
    Media
    Medicare For All
    Metro
    Mudslinging
    Naomi Klein
    NationBuilder
    New Orleans
    New Zealand
    NORML
    North Carolina
    Our Revolution
    Outlander
    Outreach
    Overdevelopment
    Pacifica
    Parkland FL
    Paul Ingmundson
    PDiddie
    Pennsylvania
    Platform
    Plutocracy
    PNC
    Police
    Polls
    Proofreading
    Puerto Rico
    Ranked Choice Voting
    Recount 2016
    Remington Alessi
    #Resistance
    Revolution
    Russiagate
    Samantha Bee
    San Antonio
    School Shootings
    Scotland
    Scottish National Party
    Sema Hernandez
    Sheila Jackson Lee
    Single Payer
    SKCM Curry
    Smart Growth
    Socialism
    Socialist Alternative
    Spoiler Effect
    Straight Party Voting
    Strauss & Howe
    Sylvester Turner
    Tax Policy
    Ted Cruz
    Texas House
    Texas Leftist
    Texas Progressive
    Texoblogosphere
    Texpatriate
    Thom Hartmann
    Traffic
    Transit
    Urbanism
    UU
    Van Cliburn
    Vanessa Edwards Foster
    Vish
    War On Drugs
    Website

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
✕