Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge (2013) — while perhaps less overtly erudite and headache-inducing than his previous masterworks — offers an eveloping, conspiracy-fueled view of the days before and after September 11th, 2001 in New York City. Like most readers, I approached Bleeding Edge as Pynchon-lite, which can be forgiven if one only reads the first few pages. The opening sentence, “It’s the first day of Spring 2001, and Maxine Tarnow, though some still have her in their system in Loeffler, is walking her boys to school,” doesn’t pack quite the same punch as Gravity’s Rainbow’s infamous, “A screaming comes across the sky.” However, as the narrative unfolds, folds again, and wraps around itself, it becomes clear that Pynchon is still as sharp-witted as he was in the ‘60s and ‘70s. After finishing Bleeding Edge, I found that the differences between his earlier and later fiction lie not in a lapse of poeticism or erudition, but in his authorial intention.
Maxine Tarnow, a decertified fraud investigator with two insightful young sons, Ziggy and Otis, is at the heart of the novel. The plot follows Maxine as she dives into the fishy activity of a start-up computer company, hashslingrz, and its corrupt CEO, Gabriel Ice. Although her journey takes her through zapfund fraud, 9/11 conspiracies, unsolved murders, and abusive (yet, to her, inexplicably attractive) CIA double-agents, a computer program named DeepArcher is perhaps the novel’s most significant addition to Pynchon’s literary career. DeepArcher is a virtual-reality program that, once it becomes open-source (meaning anyone can access and alter it), blends the distinction between the atom and the pixel. For Maxine, DeepArcher’s virtual reality landscapes become as real as the “meatspace” streets outside her apartment building.
Expounding the virtues of virtual reality, Pynchon makes it clear through Maxine’s experiences with the DeepArcher program that the limitless possibilities of cyberspace, where we may literally control our own destinies through code, represent a clear victor over the horrors of meatspace. Indeed, in one eye-swelling scene towards the end of the novel, Maxine encounters her own sons, Ziggy and Otis, within their eponymous Zigotisopolis, an idyllic representation of NYC before 9/11, before the Internet’s takeover. Maxine chooses to stay hidden, watching her boys without their knowledge, aware that:
They have different priorities here, the cityscapes of [her] DeepArcher are obscurely broken, places of indifference and abuse, and unremoved dog shit, and she doesn’t want to track any more of that than she can help into their more merciful city, with its antiquated dyes, its acid green shrubbery and indigo pavements and overdesigned traffic flows.
pg. 429
In short, the boys have created a refuge from reality which Maxine sees no reason to disturb, and it’s this opportunity for refuge that seals the Internet’s ambiguous position in the novel: although it may be an embodiment of the unseen, antagonistic forces (“They”) of Pynchon’s earlier work, it is also a means of scientific advancement and community against those unseen forces — although, like in reality, they often hide right in front of our eyes.
Interestingly enough, this sentiment struck me as contra to Pynchon’s status as the quintessential postmodernist. This emphasis on family, community, and uncovering the truth sounds more like New Sincerity to me — and maybe that’s where Pynchon decided to trek in his later years, realizing that, despite everything acting against us, the only thing worth focusing on is each other.
Valperga Literature Review 
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