Bleeding Edge - A Rolling Assessment

[Bekah]

I don't think there's a writer out there who has an oeuvre of over 4 books where I've thoroughly enjoyed every one.   Even Faulkner had his "Intruder in the Dust"  and DeLillo had "Cosmopolis."   I'm a huge fan of both.  So Pynchon has some "lesser" or "lighter" works, too.  Fine.  

And as I was reading it occurred to me that I really think Pynchon must get out more than we are led to believe.   How could he know so much about how people talk and interact if he didn't -  movies and TV? (Possibly, I suppose.)    IV didn't have such great dialogue and that might have been from clouded memory as well as imagination and a generally stoned protagonist,  but it seems to me (a non-New Yorker) that BE had a lot more contemporary and  "realistic-type"  personal interaction. 

Bekah



On Sep 24, 2013, at 8:57 AM, Steve Maas <tyronemullet at hotmail.com> wrote:

> 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