Friday, June 24, 2016

In Search of Furbies Past: Time Travelling with Thomas Pynchon in Bleeding Edge


Reading Bleeding Edge, Thomas Pynchon's great novel about New York directly before and after 9/11, I found it nearly impossible to believe that this insanely allusive (and, well, elusive) detective story was actually written by a man in his 70s. The main reason for this impression, beyond the unparalleled linguistic virtuosity and the characteristically baroque plot, is Bleeding Edge’s period-perfect details, especially those that pertain to the novel's youngest characters. As a millennial who was all of nine years old in September of 2001, I was sent gliding back into my childhood on nearly every page of this book, as Pynchon, like some magnanimous wizard of Time, transformed Britney Spears, Razor Scooters, Halo, Nelly, and the once ubiquitous Furby into the stuff of postmodern myth. And while most great writers are by necessity great researchers, studying their chosen time and topic and using raw fact and historical detail to create their own realities, what Pynchon achieves in Bleeding Edge is so staggering in its sincerity, humor, and insight that it goes beyond mere research and becomes, for this reader at least, something like sorcery. Or, as one of Pynchon's own characters so eloquently puts it, "Proust, Schmoust."

Any old ink jockey can look at a decade-old Top 40 chart and drop Britney Spears hits into his book, hoping for a certain historical effect. But Pynchon's allusions in Bleeding Edge (and, of course, in every one of his novels going back to V.) do so much more than lazy name- or title-dropping. For one thing, Pynchon's constant pop references simulate the inescapable white noise of "late capitalism," an ominous term that runs throughout Bleeding Edge and whose academic ring does little to mute its menace. Pynchon's characters, like us, are inundated in a world of cheap, often disposable pleasures, whether it's music videos, junk food, or Hollywood inventions for which "inane" would be too kind a word. In this sense, there's something Patrick Bateman-esque about Bleeding Edge’s third-person narrator and his comical focus on cultural signifiers, although the similarities thankfully end at an encyclopedic appreciation for all things pop.



The real impression one gets from all these zany invocations, however, is that Pynchon actually enjoys - nay, treasures - the great American culture machine, profoundly stupid and even pernicious though it may be. This affection (especially for the wilder, woolier byproducts of the pop culture beast, the stuff that hits from the margins) is a big part of what makes Bleeding Edge so beautiful and so sad. At the same time, Pynchon uses his allusions (as Tony Wonder sez) to tell us more about his characters - their tastes, their desires, and their dreams.

One of the novel’s more lyrically allusive moments is a sweeping montage of Ziggy and Otis Loeffler’s Midwestern summer vacation, a seasonal escape from New York into the arcades, ice-cream parlors, and endless wheat fields of their father’s youth. Ziggy and Otis are major characters in the novel, but they’re not exactly major players, appearing only in passing while the focus remains firmly on their mother, the very badass protagonist Maxine Tarnow. But Pynchon is clearly “up to something” with Ziggy and Otis, who bookend the novel and who seem to populate its most piercing and poignant moments. Speaking of which, here’s ‘at Midwestern montage:

They ate at malls all across Iowa, at Villa Pizza and Bishop’s Buffet, and Horst introduced them to Maid-Rites as well as to local variations on the Louisville Hot Brown. Further into the summer and days to the west, they watched the wind in different wheat fields and waited through the county-wide silences when it grows dark in the middle of the afternoon and lightning appears at the horizon. They went looking for arcade games, in derelict shopping plazas, in riverside pool halls, in college-town hangouts, in ice-cream parlors tucked into midblock micromalls. Horst couldn’t help noticing how the places had, most of them, grown more ragged since his time, floors less swept, air-conditioning not as intense, smoke thicker than in the midwestern summers of long ago...They played Arkanoid in Ames and Zaxxon in Sioux City. They played Road Blasters and Galaga and Galaga 88, Tempest and Rampage and Robotron 2084, which Horst believes to be the greatest arcade game of all time. Mostly, wherever they could find it, they seemed to be playing Time Crisis 2. (p. 290)

What moves me about this passage is actually a combination of things, most of them personal and serendipitous and of interest probably only to me (such is the blogger’s burden). But the first thing that hits me after re-reading this singing, sentimental chokehold of a passage is that in the summer described here, the summer of 2001, my brother and I made our very own Midwestern pilgrimage, heading northwards from Memphis through our parents’ agrarian homeland and all the way up to northern Wisconsin, where we would attend our first summer of camp. I remember this road-trip vividly, especially all the fields and the gas stations and those out-of-nowhere storms Pynchon describes so well. I also remember the occasional arcade stop, our mother being patient with our burgeoning video-game addictions, which would not be indulged or even acknowledged in our impending seven-week nature-dose of camping, canoes, and absolute digital celibacy.

Which brings us to those arcade games. Pynchon’s list of games is a funny little marvel in itself, a practical micro-history of gaming that connects a father to his sons on two levels, both geographically and through the games themselves. In the process, Ames becomes the land of Arkanoid, and Dad gets to show off his joystick chops.

It makes sense, though, that Time Crisis would be Ziggy and Otis’ favorite. I, for one, loved this game, and the hours I spent playing it were a clear forerunner to my later addictions to Halo and Halo 2. Ziggy and Otis love it, I gather in a flash of self-recognition, because it’s so immersive, so very nearly real. You hold the plastic handgun, you point it, and you shoot at the bad guys, whose badness is never ambiguous. And despite any prudish parental or even Congressional objections, games like Time Crisis were perfectly innocent, especially in the fading summer of 2001. It’s what comes after the summer, the events of 11 September, that will introduce a new and frightening ambiguity to Ziggy and Otis’ world.

But as Pynchon shows, and as I can attest myself, Ziggy and Otis and kids like them are better prepared for that ambiguity than any parent could ever realize. We were raised in this weird digital world, and we know, somehow, in a way that isn’t quite instinct, how to navigate it. Pynchon’s recognition of this is both moving and uncanny. It also confirms, as if I needed any further reassurance, that Pynchon is Great with a capital G.  

There’s so much more I could write about Bleeding Edge, but, like, Time being of the essence, I fear I must move on. Forgive the cheez, but we’re all in the midst of a Time Crisis, and there are other books I gotta plumb the depths of. In the meantime, after having finished Pynchon’s eighth novel, I can only be thankful to this septuagenarian whose books have changed the way I see the world. Here’s to a book or two more.

Buy Bleeding Edge here, or better yet, pick up a copy at a local bookstore (most good ones carry paperbacks of Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge these days).

1 comment:

  1. Getting the Bleeding Edge audiobook for my 30 hour drive back to Wisconsin from Portland! Great review and reflection! Always wonderful to connect with you, Sam! Keep sharing your creative spirit with the world!

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