Bleeding Edge better 2nd or is it 3rd time?

[Mark Kohut]

Yes, it's prescience, it's preternatural knowledge of the culture we are
more and more immersed in, grows in my mind (from only two readings one
right after another. And  also listening to just some of it on audio then).
This is why I want to see what I could not really see the first reads.

On Tue, Oct 19, 2021 at 12:26 AM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> I am listening to Bleeding Edge via Library audio  book system today. It
> seems different with 20 years of distance from actual 9/11 and from  the
> time of  publication, both funnier and darker, in some ways more eerily
> prescient( maybe not so eerily). I have HS students born after 911.
>  Pynchon's approach of viewing the event through the lens of the internet
> and digital technology that is such a large part of our cultural reality
> gives it a McLuhanesque spin that is worth some thought. In some ways New
> York is one of the last outposts of dense non-digital neighborhoods and
> human contacts but is increasingly, as all places, mediated by cell phones,
> commercial media, isolation and less by social gathering and conversation..
> Still there is an intensity of color in NYC that P works with expertly.
>
> If anyone wants to engage in a read/listen/conversation and all the
> attached risks, my idea is to move faster than we tend to do. I also
> suggest we try to avoid the you’re wrong I’m right approach and  handle
> disagreement with more respect or simply to try to enjoy the variety and
> put down one’s own thoughts. No worries about spoilers etc. freely seeing
> the text as a whole in commenting on any given passage, theme or event. It
> really is quick as an audio book. The reader is good with narrative flow
> and dramatic voicing if sometimes weaker with longer ruminations.
>
> Anyone? Mike? How many would make a quorum?
>
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>