Bleeding Edge , riffs on the title

[Rev'd Seventy-Six]

Agreed, though re: "general lack of relevence", well, what about to Maxine?
 L. has some, not wholly peripheral relevance to her, or at least her
conscience.  His posthumous, mousy avatar wouldn't have been hanging 'round
that wall outlet at such a pivotal moment otherwise.

"This is America.  You let it happen," seems applicable to both L.'s fate
and the larger implications of the plot, which I find to be -less-
byzantine & less cynical than I was braced to expect.

No, definitely not a runofthemill detective story.  I'm actually getting
the occasional whiff of Rushdie off this, the closer I read.  It's built to
look bone simple for the plebes--  you've got to sell it to get it out
there  --but as Monte sez, it's a quest, and a readily accessible one if
you're capable of dropping a ton of the usual preconceptions regarding
what, or whom, Pynchon's supposed to be.

Strangely enough, I'm hearing a lot of P. speaking through Horst, as though
he were working out his own feelings of impotence as a scribe*, to say
nothing of as an Individual, in this day & age where every definition is a
hyperlink away and a wealth of history (& attendant responsibility to same)
can be eliminated from our collective, conscious mind with but a tweak of
the browser.

[*cf. Horst's rehearsed confession of gifted geekdom, contrasted with
Maxine's streetwise skills.]

Deeper I get, the more I think IV was a dry run on paring his style down to
What Applies.  I know I've shorted it some shrift lately, but strictly as a
result of lining all the books up & ranking them.  It had its points, and
if it -was- a test drive for BE, then it certainly had a purpose beyond
the eulogistic for that high, wild, hopeful tide Hunter S. & so many
countless others saw break & fall away.
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