Bleeding Edge - A Rolling Assessment

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

"Nervous breakdown sounds so Protestant, we think that you were possessed."

Ishmael Reed (/Mumbo Jumbo/, # 54)



On 26.09.2013 06:30, Robin Landseadel wrote:
> 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=nchon-l
>
>

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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l