Heres an Essay I Wrote About The Bleeding Edge Book Trailer

[David Morris]

Rilly?  Kids essaying Pynchon?  I hope they did good acid.

David Morris

On Wednesday, October 2, 2013, Jay Siskind wrote:

> *Who knew middle-school language arts classes were teaching Pynchon and
> having kids write essays about them?*
> *
> *
> *From:* Oedipa Maas <jumpman23g at gmail.com <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
> 'jumpman23g at gmail.com');>>
> *To:* pynchon-l at waste.org <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
> 'pynchon-l at waste.org');>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, October 2, 2013 9:55 PM
> *Subject:* Heres an Essay I Wrote About The Bleeding Edge Book Trailer
>
> In Which Two Canons And Two Appeals In The Book Trailer For Thomas
> Pynchon’s Latest Novel Bleeding Edge Are Analyzed
>
> On September 3rd, 2013, after a seven month anticipation period, following
> the release of the Penguin Press’ 2013 catalog, the book trailer
> advertising Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel, Bleeding Edge (
> http://vimeo.com/73716114), surfaced on the Internet. Initially, due to a
> number of characteristics regarding the delivery of the advertisement, what
> the main character of the ad chooses to argue, along with the ethos of this
> character, the book trailer ostensible appears hoaxy, but, like most things
> Pynchon creates, after a fourth or fifth viewing, things that at first
> glance appeared to be a hoax are unveiled and Pynchon’s twinkle is revealed
> in a way that is compatible with an attentive viewers logos, and also
> entices the careful (albeit obsessive) fan.
> This promotional video comes as the third in a series of book trailers for
> Thomas Pynchon’s novels, although this one was completely different. The
> book trailers that precede this one, have in common a sleekness and
> professionalism, that when compared to this most recent book trailer seem
> to be in no way related. For example, in an attempt to promote Pynchon’s
> novel, Inherent Vice, the author teamed up with a professional film crew
> and produced a movie-like trailer with the author, who has never given an
> Interview, narrating the promotional video (Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon
> - 9781594202247 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjWKPdDk0_U>). Then some
> time last year, Pynchon allowed his novels to be tablitized, and in an
> attempt to advertise, a second trailer was made that consists of impressive
> animating and captivating typefaces. Then comes the most recent trailer,
> which when compared to the other ones looks like an out of step black
> sheep.
> Firstly, the video looks like it was filmed with a cheap handycam or even
> an iPhone. The typefaces in this video are simple and seem to placed on the
> screen in awkward positions, the filming is shaky, the video skips at
> certain points, and overall looks like something you might find a high
> school student throwing together and turning in at the last minute for an
> end of the year project. Aside from the subpar aesthetic value of this book
> trailer in comparison to the ones that preceded it, how this video got on
> the internet in the first place causes some concern about the ethos of
> those who created and uploaded the video. The first thing that seems
> initially fishy about the video is the fact that Pynchon and the Penguin
> Press decided to upload this video on an obscure Vimeo account with the
> username of The Penguin Press. Until the upload of this video, the account
> in question had only uploaded two other videos four weeks prior with
> strange titles like “Caffeine and Pregnancy” and “Alcohol and Pregnancy”
> with even stranger thumbnails. But what really makes this Vimeo account
> suspicious and triggers the thought that this video may be a hoax, is that
> the Penguin Press already has a YouTube account, with the name Penguin
> Books USA, that has been online since February 7th, 2008, has 4,039
> subscribers, hundreds of videos and 9,629,267 views as of this week. If
> that doesn’t get ones hoax detector blinking, this YouTube account is the
> home of all Penguin’s official online videos and is also the place where
> the two previous book trailers were uploaded. With all that said, there is
> still a couple of things that make the delivery of this advertisement look
> suspicious at first or second glance. Namely, the video trailer for
> Inherent Vice uploaded on Penguin’s legitimate YouTube account reads,
> “Inherent Vice Thomas Pynchon”, and the ostensibly hoaxy trailer uploaded
> on Vimeo reads “Bleeding Edge book trailer”, which in comparison looks like
> a subtle mistake of a hoax artist or impersonator, but as the attentive
> viewer/ Pynchon-head will find out if he or she looks close enough this is
> all done intentionally.
>
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