Bleeding Edge (Crosscut)

[John Bailey]

A derivatives trader who is "an expert on Thomas Pynchon's 'Gravity's
Rainbow'" and whose middle name is Thelonious! I'll allow it.

I like the line "Pynchon's Internet [...] is anonymous, endless and
often lonely."

I hadn't thought of it like that, but that really is how BE portrays
the internet, isn't it? In 2001 most of us were emailing and clicking
on sh!tty links and hearing about how the internet was creating a
connected world, but while the novel for me captures a lot of the
hopefulness of the era, it's also portrays the internet as a supremely
lonely place. Maxine is always running into people like Driscoll and
March and Tallis who are complicated and require her to engage with
each in complicated ways, but that's in meatspace. BE doesn't get all
Franzen Luddite on the internet, but it does seem closer to Vonnegut's
cute old feller story about going to the post a letter in the internet
age (except of course for the obvious issue there).

On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 6:42 PM, Michael Bailey
<michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
> Interesting take, the reviewers seem as much interested in Boeing and the
> machinists as in BE, and they make it work.  Apparently the review was
> written by 2 brothers, one of them a derivatives trader
> at that...not that that means all derivatives traders aren't scumsucking
> swine, but at least one of them likes Pynchon!
>
> On Jan 3, 2014 2:03 PM, "Dave Monroe" <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> http://crosscut.com/2014/01/03/books/118136/bleeding-edge-review-thomas-pynchon/
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l