Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon: review

[Fiona Shnapple]

I think the reviewers point is not about Pynchon, but about us:

This betrayal of the spirit of the summer of love is part of our pop
history now. Today we are all children of the ’80s, not the ’60s.
Hence Dr. Evil taunting Austin Powers about how “freedom failed” and
telling him that there’s “nothing as pathetic as an aging hipster.” Or
the Big Lebowski crowing at Jeff Bridges’ laid-back Dude: “the bums
lost!”

In other words, freedom and revolution lost; war are tyranny won. So
why write another novel about it? Why write a review about a novel
about it?

The reviewer poses some rhetorical questions in his conclusion:

 Is it too early to say that the Internet only offered an illusion of
individual rebellion, revolution, and freedom? One that turned into a
nightmare of corporate and state surveillance as cyberspace became a
global prison? On the contrary, it’s far too late. But who do you
think’s to blame for that happening? Us or . . . them?

Definitely a child of the 80s, the Reviewer is looking for somebody to
blame but can't see any difference now between Them, Their Tyranny
Their War, and US, Our Freedom, Our Revolution. How did that happen?

Isn't this what Pynchon's novels explore? The history of lost
principles? And the late 50s to late 60s principles were creative, so
the emphasis was on free will, while in the 80s the principles were
conservative or elemental, so the emphasis was on the will to power.
Did the nerds, the young creative kids like Driscoll, the freelance
Web-page artist and singer in the band ever have a chance? Do Maxine's
kids? There is still a lot of hope in Pynchon. The reviewer's
pessimism aside, Ernie says we have to put our trust in youth. I think
he's right. Ernie wonders where all this inertia is coming from. The
Newtonian forces, conservative, eternal, unchanged by change, what got
Freud upset with his student who came to NYC and set up shop during
the Depression/depression period, the will to power is great on this
continent, it opens the veins (Eduardo Galeano) of the Earth and
Bleeds it black and blue.
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l