Bleeding Edge , riffs on the title

[Monte Davis]

"Detective story" isn't the first capsule description I'd use, but it's not
all that wrong-headed -- especially if you stretch it towards "quest" along
the lines of, say, Ross MacDonald's California mysteries and 'Chinatown' (in
which whodunnit is secondary to family crimes and secrets reverberating for
decades).

Stencil, Oedipa, Slothrop, Lew Basnight, Doc Sportello, and Maxine are out
there explicitly seeking clues and connections. Charles & Jeremiah and the
Chums keep wondering who's *really* behind their orders. Much of Vineland
turns on who ratted on whom. All this can be framed -- and in PynchCrit
commonly has been framed -- in an alternate language of paranoia and
alienation, but I think that TRP (1) absorbed a lot of mystery/detective
fiction, and (2) is comfortable with -- and quite unembarrassed by -- many
of its tropes.

Coincidentally, For your pulpish pleasure:
http://boingboing.net/2013/09/26/true-crime-detective-magazines.html

       

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of John Bailey
Sent: Friday, September 27, 2013 8:33 AM
To: Bekah
Cc: Christopher Simon; David Morris; Joseph Tracy; P-list List
Subject: Re: Bleeding Edge , riffs on the title

"I understand this is not mainly a murder mystery."

Thank god someone has said it. Why do all of the reviews discuss BE as some
sort of detective story? IV was an obvious pot-headed Marlowe caper but BE
is no murder mystery. The earliest reviews already mentioned the killing of
a character weeks, maybe months before the thing was released, though. As if
it was the novel's major motivator, which it ain't, given the several
hundred pages before it occurs, and the general lack of relevance that
character has up until then.



On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 10:24 PM, Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Oh absolutely!   I was not meaning to discount the geek-side meaning to
the term at all!  I was only suggesting a certain amount of layering to the
meaning.  And yes,  the techie meaning was probably the main point of the
title.  I only said "not to neglect"  and "part of the plot."     I
understand this is not mainly a murder mystery.
>
> I just checked -  pages 78 and 437 use the term "bleeding-edge"  (spelled
like that) and in both cases it's about technology,  not knives or  murder.
>
> Bekah
>
> On Sep 26, 2013, at 9:24 PM, Christopher Simon <kierkegaurdian at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
>> Prior to reading BE, 99% of the time when I saw the term it was referring
to certain Linux distros like Arch. Everything (software) new enough that it
came with warnings. Possible instability, much tinkering required to
operate. I think that was a main point for title. The dot com bust, 9/11,
DeepArcher-level gaming experiences ... all stuff new enough and dangerous
enough that everyone was a new user without the requisite skills to see the
clear path forward ...
>> From: Bekah
>> Sent: 9/26/2013 10:41 PM
>> To: John Bailey
>> Cc: David Morris; Joseph Tracy; P-list List
>> Subject: Re: Bleeding Edge , riffs on the title
>>
>> Not to neglect the fact that part of the plot concerns a murder with a
lot of blood and the knife handle gone missing. Only the blade - the edge -
is left in the victim.
>>
>> (trying not to be specific due to spoilers)
>>
>> Bekah
>>
>> On Sep 26, 2013, at 7:33 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Both/And? Don't think there's any primary reading - pretty polyvalent
metaphor.
>>>
>>> When I think of the word 'bleed' I think of sound bleed, or image 
>>> bleed in print, where a signal or whatever travels where it's not 
>>> supposed to. Noises from next door, or a photo that's accidentally 
>>> escaped the border it was given on the page. (I recall someone 
>>> posted a different, more technical definition of edge bleed in 
>>> relation to publishing).
>>>
>>> So Bleeding Edges are those points where a very Pynchonian line has 
>>> been drawn, a border or fence or 0/1 split, but where things 
>>> nonetheless make it across the excluded middle.
>>>
>>> Among many, many other things, I imagine.
>>>
>>> On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 12:23 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
wrote:
>>>> So "bleeding edge" means primarily financial bleeding.  Losses. Of 
>>>> speculators, and all the rest.  Money, not Tech.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wednesday, September 18, 2013, Joseph Tracy wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> At first I thought the reference in the title was obviously to 2 
>>>>> modern phrases with similar meanings- the cutting edge and the leading
edge.
>>>>> Somehow I just amalgamated that into a Detective style title with 
>>>>> blood where the cutting was and didn't think much about it. But it 
>>>>> is rather a sinister spin on the known phrases themselves. Cutting 
>>>>> edge has somehow become a generic reference to the borders of 
>>>>> technology and we use it that way without any real sense that 
>>>>> something is actually being cut, let alone something that could 
>>>>> bleed. But Pynchon has a long history of looking at the very 
>>>>> bloody cutting edges of  all colonialist and all technological 
>>>>> front lines. Where there are blunderbusses, rockets, surveyors, 
>>>>> trains, mining, drilling, doodoes, hereroes, native north 
>>>>> americans, electrical marvels, photos killing souls ...there will 
>>>>> be  greed, lust, fighting, blood and mangled bodies. I didn't know
that leading edge is not just a similar term but also refers to the forward
edge of a wing.
>>>>>
>>>>> So even in the title there may be a hint that the cutting edge and 
>>>>> the leading edge may be the forward momentum of something 
>>>>> dangerous to the soft flesh of the human, something destructive 
>>>>> and possibly something self destructive.
>>>>>
>>>>> But then I started looking up terms in wikipedia and came across 
>>>>> the phrase itself-
>>>>>
>>>>> Wikipedia:  Bleeding edge technology is a category of technologies 
>>>>> incorporating those so new that they could have a high risk of 
>>>>> being unreliable and lead adopters to incur greater expense in 
>>>>> order to make use of them.[1][2] The term bleeding edge was formed 
>>>>> as an allusion to the similar terms "leading edge" and "cutting 
>>>>> edge". It tends to imply even greater advancement, albeit at an 
>>>>> increased risk of "metaphorically cutting until bleeding" because 
>>>>> of the unreliability of the software or other technology.[3] The 
>>>>> first documented example of this term being used dates to early 
>>>>> 1983, when an unnamed banking executive was quoted to have used it 
>>>>> in reference to Storage Technology Corporation.[4]
>>>>>
>>>>>   Obviously we are seeing the downside risk of internet technology 
>>>>> threatening to become its most pervasive political and social 
>>>>> character as Cheney's Total Information Awareness is started under 
>>>>> Bush and secretly finished under Obama with much help and side 
>>>>> benefits from google, verizon, apple, microsoft  hackers, etc.
>>>>>
>>>>> Wikipedia:  The leading edge is the part of the wing that first 
>>>>> contacts the air;[1] alternatively it is the foremost edge of an 
>>>>> airfoil section.[2] The first is an aerodynamic definition, the 
>>>>> second a structural one. As an example of the distinction, during 
>>>>> a tailslide, from an aerodynamic point-of-view, the trailing edge 
>>>>> becomes the leading edge and vice-versa but from a structural point of
view the leading edge remains unchanged.
>>>>>
>>>>>   ( This  aeronautic  meaning is clearly a use  pynchon would be 
>>>>> familiar with. Along with the obvious reference to jet aircraft in 
>>>>> the 9-11 attack It adds a reference to GR  that suggests we are 
>>>>> not quite in the clear from colonialist blowback.)
>>>>>
>>>>> Wikipedia: Cutting edge or The Cutting Edge may refer to:
>>>>>       . The cutting surface of a blade or other cutting tool
>>>>>       . State of the art, the highest level of development, as of 
>>>>> a device, technique, or scientific field
>>>>>
>>>>>  Interestingly, in the Margaret Atwood trilogy I just finished , 
>>>>> the character who kills most of humanity with a bio-engineered 
>>>>> disease packaged in a sex drug has a scene where he goes from one 
>>>>> part of the bio-enngineering complex he manages to another 
>>>>> constantly referring to the work taking place as cutting edge.
>>>>>
>>>>> The leading edge has taken on a more genaric spin-
>>>>>
>>>>> The Leading Edge:  Journal of the Society of Exploration
Geophysicists.
>>>>>
>>>>> And finally just for fun -here is an actual company who works in 
>>>>> close alliance with the Golden Fang, Goldman Sachs, The Golden 
>>>>> Triangle and wherever else the  shiny yellow gold is: Leading Edge 
>>>>> Alliance: LEA Global www.leadingedgealliance.com/  A U.S. based 
>>>>> international association of independently owned accounting and 
>>>>> consulting firms whose services are listed as:
>>>>> ACCOUNTING & AUDITING,  BUSINESS ADVISORY,  CORPORATE FINANCE, 
>>>>> EMPLOYEE BENEFIT SERVICES, ESTATE & EXECUTIVE FINANCIAL PLANNING, 
>>>>> FINANCIAL PLANNING, HUMAN RESOURCES,  INFORMATION SECURITY, 
>>>>> LITIGATION SUPPORT, RISK, TAX PLANNING & COMPLIANCE, TRANSACTION 
>>>>> ADVISORY SERVICES, TRANSFER PRICING, VALUATION
>>>>>
>>>>
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=nchon-l
>
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=nchon-l

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