"Bin Laden May Not Exist"

Mon Jun 23 17:55:06 CDT 2014

The irony can't be ignored. Ernie is parked in front of the Tube. He
makes a connection with his daughter, not by going to the opera with
her, because she hates opera,  or by preventing her from watching cop
shows, because she likes cop shows and will watch them when he's not
watching her, or by getting her to watch the shows he thinks are
better for her, because she, like other young people, has a mind of
her own and besides, if he wants his daughters to think, to pay
attention, he has to let them make their own choices. Even if he
doesn't like what they choose.

The Tube in Pynchon's minor works is not a Telescreen, not Big
Brother's weapon, but an amusement, an entertainment device that
distracts us from the things we need to pay attention to. It gets in
our dreams, our identities, our relationships. We are saturated with
TV.

But it is not Big Brother, or the Inner Party that vaporizes the
citizens who commit thought crimes. We vaporize ourselves and each
other with the Tube.

Ernie is smart enough to know that the post-60s Tube is propaganda,
endless prosecution and enforcement.

He bans his daughters from watching cop shows.

But it backfires. Or does it?

He's not smart enough to figure out that the TUBE, the cop shows
didn't turn his daughters.

He's smart about politics and the tube but he's a very average parent
and grandfather.

He can't figure out what went wrong with his family.

He thinks its the Tube and politics, the times, the zeitgeist, Nixon,
Reagan.....

So now he tries again with his grand kids. He'll feed then the right
stuff, the Tube that will make them pay attention, make them know what
he knows, keep them safe from the Ice Monsters.

No chance.

Ernie hasn't got a chance.

It's sad and we want to feel for the guy. He's a good guy. But the sad
irony is that Horst is better father and his ideas abouyt the Tube and
Humor are far more important to the theme of BE than Ernie's tired and
cranky Lefty drivel.

On Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 6:42 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
<lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>
> No, no, no ...
>
> There are two hot issues in Bleeding Edge that never got discussed
> adequately. One is the Luddite perspective on the Internet which at the
> novel's end becomes obvious in Ernie's historical excursion to the roots of
> the Internet in the Cold War (pp. 417-420) and then in Eric's related
> diagnosis:"We're being played, Maxi, and the game is fixed, and it won't end
> till the Internet - the real one, the dream, the promise - is destroyed" (p.
> 432). Do note that these utterances are not downplayed with irony. Actually
> the opposite is the case. But nobody looks at them. This central aspect is
> neglected with the same sense of embarrassment as the novel's construction
> of 11 Sep ... "Foolish Pynchon, was this really necessary?!" Michiko
> Kakutani has occupied your brains, folks. And you don't even realize it.
> Bleeding Edge is not an anti-truther-satire. Not even in the case of March,
> who is not a ridiculous yet a tragic character. And the arguments which
> question the official version of the event come from a number of characters
> in the book. Horst for example is neither hysteric nor an idiot. He
> recognizes insider trade when he sees it because this competence is part of
> his profession. So it is not at all clear - though formulations here like
> "(t)he use of Conspiracy was examined" seem to suggest this - that Pynchon
> shares the official version that the attacks came as surprise. The fact that
> 11 Sep already played a role in Against the Day should make a detailed
> analysis of its treatment in Bleeding Edge a must. But no, no, here this is
> read as a merely atmospheric thriller ingredient, as if BE was fucking IV.
> Same for the Luddite perspective on the Internet. "Uuh, Pynchon wants to
> take away my toy, I rather ignore this ..." So instead of concretely
> examining Pynchon overall major theme --- TECHNOLOGY & CONTROL - in this new
> novel where we learn about the genesis of Cold War 2.0, you suckers write
> about shelf warmers like 'Neo-Liberalism' and even 'Late-Capitalism'. Yeah,
> how could one not call this a "fine job"?
>
> Rest in Pussyness!
>
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=1406&msg=180729&sort=date
>
>
> On 22.06.2014 17:17, Mark Kohut wrote:
>
> Well remembered and stated.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Jun 22, 2014, at 10:03 AM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think we did a fine job with the political themes.  Neo-Liberalism
> and Late-Capitalism were explored in depth. The use of Conspiracy was
> examined. We discussed the family because it's impossible to ignore
> the fact that Pynchon's politics are played out in his fictional
> families.  In Bleeding Edge families have nice boys, good kids, given
> a great education...who turn out to be Ice Monsters...families have
> daughters they protect from the struggle they wage to keep their
> neighborhoods, who, because of cultural and technological forces (Tube
> & Co.) turn, not completely, but turn to power fascism....and so on.
> We discussed this at some length. Unless I dreamed it.
>
>
> OK, back to the game most Americans don't know is going down.
>
> Peace,
>
> Al
>
> On Sun, Jun 22, 2014 at 6:00 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The interview sounds wrong to me in possibility and from the word ' trendy'
> on. It has been disavowed by Ms. Jackson.
>
> "Late capitalism" in BLEEDING EDGE has been discussed. And the usual
> miscellany of other aspects, many of them 'political'. A key cultural (
> embodied politics )aspect of BE is what made many plisters dislike it: pop
> has totally won. Also pretty clear that money took NYC and in the way
> novels write themselves larger than their literalness.....
>
> And the future awaits anyone on the paths less traveled now on the plist.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Jun 22, 2014, at 3:01 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
> wrote:
>
>
> What “Bleakhaus” couldn’t have known when he or she wrote this is that,
> while Against the Day (2006) may touch on 9/11 symbolically, his 2013 book
> Bleeding Edge deals with it literally—it’s part of the book’s plot. <<
>
> Very true.
>
> Unfortunately neither reviewers nor plisters seem to be interested in
> discussing the novel's construction of 11 Sep ... They discuss Bleeding Edge
> as family novel and/or NYC novel. The basic political dimension of the plot
> has not been analyzed by anyone so far.
>
> On 21.06.2014 21:22, Dave Monroe wrote:
>
> http://touch.dangerousminds.net/all/bin_laden_may_not_exist_did_thomas_pynchon_give_this_9_11_interview
>
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