Bleeding Edge - A Rolling Assessment

[Robin Landseadel]

The first three novels were read 1979-1981. There's the huge  
anticipatory for the next thing. I got Vineland the week of issue at  
Black Oak Books in Berkeley, now defunct. It appeared some time in the  
general vicinity of Judi Bari getting her ass blown up, thought it was  
mighty relevant at the time. It was another one of TRP's books that  
left me feeling like the author had been stalking me much as VCoL49  
did. But then again, he seemed to be everywhere I was. Mason and Dixon  
was picked up at Moe's, Berkeley,  a day or two before the "street  
date'. Absorbing that book coincided with a major nervous breakdown  
and joining the P-List, not necessarily in that order. For a period of  
about four years I was trashed. When Against the Day came out in  
November of 2006, my Father had died the previous July. I was working  
at Borders—now defunct. Borders got the book a week or so prior to the  
street date, I took a copy home asap. When Inherent Vice appeared, I  
had been fired from Borders. Got a copy pre-publication anyway. All  
these connections with book stores, book culture. all blown as of 2013.

And now, disconnected from bookstores, now working for the IRS. I  
order Bleeding Edge from Amazon, it shows up a week late. So I read  
every review. Spoilers galore and a obvious pattern emerges. The  
negative reviews? NYT, Bloomberg, WSJ, The Economist. The further to  
the left, the more positive the review, the farther to the 1%, the  
worse. Not surprising. But the book itself . . .

It arrives yesterday. I'm about 60 pages in. This seems affectless,  
like it was written on autopilot. There's jokes, but I'm not laughing.  
I did what I did to defend I.V. in the group read. it was one of those  
situations where I recognized enough of what the author was pointing  
to. It was like old home week. But this New York City must be a  
species of metaphor, this dialog must be some sort of a code, 'casue  
I'm not getting it. Left, right or center, as  writing qua writing,  
thus far, this is the worst Pynchon I've absorbed. Must be something  
about the city . . .-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l