Bleeding Edge - A Rolling Assessment

[Carvill John]

Agreed. Vineland really should not be catergorised alongside IV, except in the sense that IV could maybe be seen as Vineland's little brother. VL suffered greatly, it seems, from the fact that it followed so long after GR and was thus seen as a let-down. I have always felt there was (and continues to be) a political dimension to VL's reception too: it was overtly Left-wing, and some Pynchon fans kid themselves that his work doesn't unmistakably display a left-leaning political bias. Anyway, people interpreted the disappointment of VL as evidence that Pynchon had "lost it", burned out with too much dope and junk culture. But then of course M&D wiped such suggestions off the map. ATD again got 'mixed' reviews - some reviewers slated it despite admitting they hadn't even read it all!
IV also, I felt, got unfairly pigeonholed as 'Pynchon Lite'. Yes, in some ways you could look on it as such, but it wasn't the disposable piece of meaningless fluff some too it for - even some on this list (perish the thought).
BE seems to me, so far, almost like a further watering down of IV, in literary terms. VL was actually pretty strong stuff, quality-wise. So if IV is VL diluted somewhat, BE is even less concentrated and I think it's too thin. It's like a martini made with 9 parts vermouth.


From: tyronemullet at hotmail.com
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: RE: Bleeding Edge - A Rolling Assessment
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2013 08:57:52 -0700




I only read a few pages of BE so far and so can’t say too much about it. As I already stated though, my initial impression was of continual and exhausting frantic conversations. I’ll pick it back up and read it at some future time. It’s not uncommon to see BE, IV, & VL spoken of together (maybe CoL49 too, though it's quite different), as P.’s "lesser" works. I’ve always thought though that VL is in a somewhat different category. In my opinion, with VL P. found a fine balance between his "big" books and his lighter ones.
Steve Maas
 		 	   		   		 	   		  
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