BEg2 Chap 8: Supernatural Intrusions

Sun Dec 12 00:17:54 UTC 2021

The suspension of the Bill of Rights was the worst—I was shocked to find I had to quarter Redcoats in my apartment! They really drank me out of house and home. Couldn't make a decent pot of coffee to save their lives. 

But kidding aside, while your post contains all the eloquence I've come to enjoy from your writing -- I'm a sucker for "chthonic" -- I'm not sure I'm following a few of your points, which is likely my fault. Just to clarify: You feel the book is less supernatural because Pynchon is taking things more seriously, because he's dealing with recent events? Or because he feels modern people, or perhaps his characters, have lost touch with the mythic? And when you say the Deep Web (via DeepArcher) draws people "toward the abyss that is an inevitable part of the subconscious," do you mean loneliness? The self? Depression? Death? All of the above? 

I think I get what you are saying—perhaps in a Gurdjieff/Watts kind of way—but here's something about the Deep Web in Bleeding Edge that still feels more sinister to me than the Dark Night of the Soul, perhaps more—colonized? Or maybe this is just one of the Pynchon things I'll never really "get." (Yes, I admit, there are parts of "Against the Day" that still leaving me scratching my head.)

And finally, what do you mean by "What readers do with that is interesting. Pynchon fans seem distinctly less enthralled." Less enthralled with exploring darkness, or just less enthralled with BE as a whole?

Anyway, I certainly agree with you that our "planet wars" have claimed enough victims, and we should treasure human contact. Well said. (Though I reckon that China may be offended by your claiming that the US has the "largest civilian surveillance system ever imagined." You should really give them more credit, they're trying so hard!)

Thanks,

—Quail

On 12/11/21, 6:02 PM, "Joseph Tracy" <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

    But I do have that question for everyone: how literal do you take Bleeding Edge? 

    Good question, especially because, as you point out, there is distinctly less intrusion of the supernatural or mythic weird than in any other Pynchon Novel: no talking ball lightning, no chasing harmonicas into the underworld, no Thanatoids, lovestruck mecahincal ducks, Pugnax, Vheissu etc.
    I mean there is the cosmic bike messenger and in this very chapter a psychic bladder function, but these are, let’s face it, just not the same. Later there are ghosts but even those can be interpreted as psychological illusions or alternately insights.  It is as though the dreaded nuclear armed V2 had finally hit and the worst it could do was bring down towers and kill a few thousand more victims of the planet wars. Which by the time BE was being written had produced more planet wars and a hundred fold increase in innocent victims. Well innocent in that most people don’t actively drop bombs on other people and wouldn’t even donate to the bombers if the national bomb campaigns relied on volunteer donations. 
       The human suffering is all too real too, and other realities have come with it: the sudden turn to patriot act paranoia, the drone wars, the suspension of the Bill of Rights and the institution of the largest civilian surveillance system ever imagined. 
      Maybe TP  has brought his readers out of a world on which the people interact powerfully with the mythic because that is his sense of what is happening. I have the feeling he is not that thrilled with a world so severed, both from the mystical and from the multicultural, multivalent social hodgepodge that does not so easily lend itself to the manipulations of binary code and binary politics. Maxine is the most interactive human in P’s writings and what she is is the normal social experience of a great deal of human history. She gives us the big picture view that  cyberspace promises but can’t deliver.  Everyone is different, looking for meaning, respect, everyone is struggling with the effects of social isolation and lack of power to stop a growing plutocracy, marital and family breakups, predators, bad habits.
       The deep web functions not so much like a balloon ride into new dimensions of understanding, or even a cthonic confrontation with the deep forces of history and myth like Slothrop’s toilet adventure. It draws people toward the abyss that is an inevitable part of the subconscious. It is lonely and we all must enter eventually.  What readers do with that is interesting. Pynchon fans seem distinctly less enthralled. I have mixed feelings. I been there plenty and the main result is I want to treasure every human contact. 

    > On Dec 11, 2021, at 4:04 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