BEg2 Chap 8: Supernatural Intrusions

[Mark Kohut]

I refer to *Seven Types of Ambiguity* as a classic that TRP surely knows
well. What has become a modernist writers' classic as the self-aware way to
say more deeply.
It presents the case that literary richness usually shows the language, the
meanings, the scenes, as 'ambiguous' in the sense of multiple meanings
which can all hold. Which all open out the meanings
like an umbrella unfolding.

The Abyss is Nietzsche's or another's like him; The Abyss is the Deep Web;
The Abyss is the mysterious unknown all at once. The Abyss might even be
more that I can't think of....

All of these meanings work with this genius.....All of these literal
meanings work with this genius as they do in every other novel....

Remember that lifelong theme of overcoming the restrictions of the law of
the excluded middle???

On Sat, Dec 11, 2021 at 4:05 PM Allen Ruch <quail at shipwrecklibrary.com>
wrote:

> I liked Myst. I am a hardcore video game player, and I still love open
> worlds the best. Myst was a forerunner to so many great things, even stuff
> like GTA and Skyrim. Great game.
>
> Which brings me to Cassidy. I keep re-reading that section, and even
> though I read "Bleeding Edge" when it first came out, maybe I just don't
> remember—what is there about the abyss in Deep Archer? It's often spoken of
> in mystical terms. I think Cassidy gives the first impression of that,
> beyond Maxine's initial "gee wow," that is. Cassidy remarks:
>
> “Hard to explain. It was all just coming from somewhere, for about a day
> and a half I felt I was duked in on forces outside my normal perimeter, you
> know? Not scared, just wanted to get it over with, wrote the file, did the
> Java, didn’t look at it again. Next thing I remember is one of them saying
> holy shit it’s the edge of the world”
>
> Pynchon loves supernatural spaces, and I think he's strongly suggesting
> that the Deep Web—or video games, or Myst, etc.—has the capacity to be an
> Other World. And not just Gibsonian cyberspace—or maybe it's just that
> after all?
>
> Maybe because weird fiction/horror is my favorite genre, I'm fascinated
> with the intrusions of the supernatural—or if not the supernatural, then
> the sublime?—in "Bleeding Edge." I mean, it's one thing in M&D, AtD, etc.,
> but this seems to be Pynchon's most "realistic," or perhaps "historical,"
> book. Sure, there are some things that suggest an alternate, wackier
> universe—the Naser, proösmia, Maxine being ok with being a stripper—but
> then again, there's something even weirder going on, right?
>
> Anyway, I won’t go into any future events just yet, I'll wait until we get
> there. But it's something to keep an eye on as the book develops. But I do
> have that question for everyone: how literal do you take Bleeding Edge?
>
> —Quail
>
> PS: Sorry I know this post is all jumbled with ideas and not lucidly
> written, but I'm on my third Abelour.
>
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>