CHAPTER THREE

“IF PYNCHON BE THE FOOD OF ACTION,

READ ON; GIVE ME EXCESS OF IT”:
PYNCHON’S NOVELS OF EXCESS
AND THEIR PLACE IN POST-POSTMODERNITY

SANJA ŠOŠTARIû

This easily recognizable paraphrasing of the opening line from

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night acknowledges the endless and often
staggeringly fruitless debate about the relationship between postmodern
literature and the “so-called world”, as postmodernists would have put it in
their heyday. A vast body of postmodernist critical theory has grown over
the decades, as a simultaneous footnote to, commentary on, and
manifestation of the phenomenon of postmodern literature, which
illustrates the destabilization of traditional boundaries between literary
production and literary-cultural criticism. In response, among the key
objections raised against postmodern literature by its pro-reformist and
pro-leftist detractors was, and continues to be, that the excessively
experimental literature of high postmodernism, with its deliberately
accentuated formlessness—manifested in convoluted storylines and plots,
multiple narrative frames and voices, stylistic extravagances and thematic
versatility—hinders any consolidated understanding of the world, reality,
society, history, or politics. On the contrary, it obscures and mystifies
(whether intentionally or not) the issues of power and control, failing to
provide an effective and meaningful social or political critique, and,
ultimately, any form of activism. When such confusion is seen as
intentional, postmodernist obscurantism is frequently viewed as serving
the neoliberal agenda.
Since Thomas Pynchon’s fiction has been established as paradigmatically
postmodern (exemplary of all the declared virtues or sins of Anglo-
American postmodern literature), the accusation of obscurantism may
30 Chapter Three

particularly apply to his fiction of postmodernist excess. Such an argument

suggests that the formal and thematic complexity of Pynchon’s fiction—
including the problematization of history, the multiplicity of potential
meanings of events and phenomena, and the triumph of systems and of the
inanimate—merely reflects and recreates the world’s complexity, and that
this artistic approach can be equated to passive acceptance of the world, or
worse, that Pynchon relishes in the world’s unintelligibility.
However, critics have recognized the possibility that Pynchon’s
literary assessment of the condition of Western culture might point to the
possibility of a challenge. For example, Tom LeClair, in The Art of
Excess: Mastery in Contemporary American Fiction (1989), classifies
Pynchon as an American “postmodern naturalist” for his successful
representation and comprehension of hegemonic master systems, suggesting
that comprehending the forces that shape our world might mean saving it.
Even if we disregard Le Clair’s somewhat confusing and obscurantist term
“postmodern naturalist”, his argument seems plausible.
I will focus on Pynchon in the context of the debate over postmodern
literature’s alleged reactionary aloofness, which has seemingly accompanied
the cultural phenomenon of literary (and other) postmodernism from its
birth to beyond its grave.
As postmodern literature took shape during the 1960s and 70s, so did
theoretical debates as to its character, meaning, origin and impact,
including questions as to whether postmodernism existed at all. Ironically,
in the days of Linda Hutcheon (whose work in many ways symbolizes the
canonization and affirmation of postmodern literature in the mature
postmodernism era of the 1980s), the most convincing confirmations of
the existence of postmodern literature came from its detractors. Fredric
Jameson is probably the best-known and best-remembered of these, due to
his claim that postmodern literature did exist but it would be better if it
didn’t, since it was a major hoax: at best a middle class distraction from
the real troubles of the world, and at worst an annoying and extravagant
manifestation of their neoliberal mystification. In his post-Marxist
onslaught, Jameson targeted the alleged ahistoricity of postmodern fiction,
stating that the use of pastiche rendered it quasi-historical; i.e. it lacked a
serious assessment of the operation of historical factors, thus obliterating
the meaning of historical events, and of the past, present, and ultimately
the future.
Conversely, postmodernist authors defended themselves by claiming
that the late 20th century had become so surreal that it almost inevitably led
to acultural production, which attempted to recapture that surrealness by
means of lucid, yet (to some) comparatively elusive, artistic commentary.
 Pynchon’s Novels of Excess and their Place in Post-postmodernity 31

In so doing, they followed in the footsteps of the modernists, who in their

own era had created art intended to keep pace with the modernization and
technologization of the early 20th century, but whose efforts were
frequently dismissed by the statement that the chaotic reality did not have
to engender chaotic or radical art.
A more differentiated or cautious view was that experimental and
difficult postmodern fiction did not necessarily contribute to an understanding
of the complexity of the late 20th century world. It should be added that,
while it is possible that such literature did not necessarily aid clarity for
some, it certainly did for others; this leaves us in a blind alley of personal
aesthetic preferences with the phantom that is “ideal readership.”
At the same time, it is remarkable that straightforward social and
political critique has been expected of postmodern literature to a greater
extent than seemed to be the case with realist, or even modernist, literature
at the time of their respective formations. This might be because realist
authors tricked the readership of the age into believing that “it is a truth
universally acknowledged” that they were documenting reality rather than
selling ideology, while the high modernists (the avant-garde aside)
declared they were not interested in such ephemeralities as a social,
political or economic “here” and “‘now” in the first place, except as loose
and provisional points in the mapping of their protagonists’ minds.
Nevertheless, since they did allow context to vaguely and irregularly seep
into or lurk behind the comfortless images of modern wastelands, the
modernists were mostly left in peace to nominally wallow in the autonomy
of art.
The problem that emerging postmodern authors posed to the readers
and critics of their time was their seemingly insolent approach. This
enabled John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Ishmael Reed, Robert Coover, and
Donald Barthelme—to name the most prominent among them—to have
their cake and eat it too, or, as Linda Hutcheon put it, to operate with the
both/and, rather than either/or, paradigm. As a result, a series of
paradoxical pairs of notions was introduced when it came to describing the
characteristics of postmodern fiction: a formless form, a passionate
virtuosity, a simultaneous ironic revision and enthusiastic reaffirmation of
the past or—in relation to socio-political and moral awareness—the
attitudes of uncommitted commitment, or disengaged engagement. For a
sufficient number of readers and critics this paradoxical hybridity of tone,
purpose and intent in postmodern fiction has for decades remained its
problematic, indigestible spot, and a sign of its inconclusiveness rather
than its inclusiveness. Simply, many could not recognize any trait of
commitment where they saw only playful, hilarious and extravagant art,
32 Chapter Three

and easily sided with John Gardner and his like in labeling most
postmodern authors as “jubilant nihilists”, as Gardner did in On Moral
Fiction (1978). Many felt at ease with a simplistic formula that differentiated
between formally unchallenging and unmistakably committed non-
postmodern art on one hand, and ludistic, and therefore utterly uncommitted,
postmodern art on the other.
To a certain extent, this superficial division seems to have survived
into the early 21st century, the age of the officially declared end of
postmodernism. What is uplifting about the current proliferation of
theoretical writing on postmodernism’s end is that we can now breathe a
sigh of relief, knowing that it did exist once upon a time after all.
Nevertheless, today’s writings frequently echo the aforementioned debate.
For example, Günter Leypoldt reminds us in his article “Recent Realist
Fiction and the Idea of Writing ‘after Postmodernism’ ” that “an escapist
moral detachment has been a key theme of the recurrent critiques of
postmodern fiction since the 1970s” (Leypoldt 2004, 20).
In the context of the critical assessment of the character of contemporary
literature and its observed realist turn, Robert Rebein in Hicks, Tribes, and
Dirty Realists: American Fiction after Postmodernism (2001) implies that
the revitalization of realism at the beginning of the millennium represents
a conceptual and philosophical advancement in comparison with the age
of experimental postmodernism. He adds that the emergence of new
realism (the author calls it “new neorealism”, as opposed to the “old
neorealism” associated with Saul Bellow, Gore Vidal, Bernard Malamud
and John Updike) represents progress, and shows that cultural healing has
taken place since the limitations of both traditional realism and
postmodernism were finally put aside. Leypoldt suggests that such
explanations impose a wrong conclusion, because the historical demise of
postmodernism is simplistically attributed to its ignoring of reality, just as
the return to the representation of reality accounts for the recent triumph of
new neorealism. Ultimately, such an argument would have us believe that
“the recent predominance of realism indicates the victory of reality
represented over reality ignored” (Leypoldt 2004, 22). Instead, the author
accounts for the revival of realism by pointing to a shift in readers’
aesthetic preferences towards representational or mimetic art after the
experiments of postmodernism have lost their subversive edge, and those
innovations that at first shocked, disturbed or challenged have become all
too familiar and monotonous, as has been the case so many times
throughout history. So, the waning importance of postmodern literature
should not be attributed to its alleged dissociation from reality, but to its
 Pynchon’s Novels of Excess and their Place in Post-postmodernity 33

becoming “the literature of experimental exhaustion”, to rephrase John

Barth’s famous definition.
Alongside attempts to introduce a decisive break between postmodern
and post-postmodern writing by interpreting contemporary fiction as
prevalently neorealist (disregarding the varying degree to which postmodernist
stylistic devices are incorporated into recent fiction), there are assessments
—including Rachel Adams’ “The Ends of America, the Ends of
Postmodernism”—that seek to examine the stylistic and thematic shifts
that have taken place since the 1960s and 70s in a more differentiated
manner. This article compares the experimental fiction of high
postmodernism embodied in Pynchon’s works to the new 21st century
fiction which goes beyond this experimentation in the sense that it
embraces the objective reality more decisively and, in Adams’ opinion,
gains more relevance as a result. She qualifies such fiction as American
literary globalism, and if it is not necessarily called neorealist, it is
certainly represented as an “afterword to literary postmodernism” (Adams
2007, 249), in that it does not dispense with stylistic and thematic
complexity, yet nor does it divorce itself from reality in the manner of the
abovementioned postmodern metafiction. Once again, the amount of
reality embraced is seen as an advancement, or as a long-awaited sobering
up, both by readers and authors, and is hailed as a welcome return to the
socially and politically relevant literature that has appropriately put aside
the extravagances and outlandishness of eternally self-obsessed postmodern
fiction. For this purpose, Adams compares Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic
of Orange (1997) and Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) as
illustrations of a shift from postmodernism to globalism. In contrast to
Pynchon’s novel—which through information overload seems to expose
the unintelligibility of the world, the diffuse nature of the hidden powers
that be, and the impossibility of concrete action, or as Adams puts it, of
“productive knowledge”—Yamashita’s novel is read as a counterbalance
to Pynchon’s quasipolitical obscurantism, and his delight in incoherence,
ambiguity and irony is illustrated by the Trystero system, which represents
“resistance for its own sake,” “purposeless opposition” and “a
depressingly reduced conception of the dissent” (Adams 2007, 255). In all,
this article is typical of the usual accusations leveled at postmodern fiction
in general, and Pynchon’s fiction in particular.
When Pynchon receives partial justification for creating such an
atmosphere of paranoia and conspiracy—or in placing his pseudo-pilgrims
such as Oedipa Mass, Tyrone Slothrop, Herbert Stencil or Benny Profane
in a world marked by a confusing excess of information and an
overproduction of signs that lead nowhere—this is done (in the
34 Chapter Three

abovementioned article and elsewhere) by referring to the specific

historical-cultural context determined by Cold War tensions, the threat of
nuclear destruction, the Bay of Pigs crisis, the Vietnam war, and the ever-
increasing influence and growth of multinational corporations. Importantly,
postmodernist self-reflexivity is again foregrounded as evidence of
postmodern fiction’s capitulation before a reality that has become an
incomprehensive political and economic helter-skelter of science-fictional
proportions: a capitulation that highlights the impossibility of reasonable
political action or assessment. Adam’s article encapsulates this attitude.
For example, in arguing that the new “globalist” mode of fiction is
superior to Pynchon’s postmodern prose, she congratulates Yamashita on
killing off a skeptical, superficial and politically benumbed postmodern
protagonist, thus leaving space for characters “who are both more
respectful of the past and willing to harbor utopian visions of the future”,
and share “deeper commitments and belief in the possibility of social
change” (Adams 2007, 261).
Thomas Pynchon’s work, and critical studies of it, are available in
print and electronic forms and certainly represent an overwhelming
illustration of postmodernist excess, including the excessive disinclination to
offer any concrete, straightforward depiction of political and social realities,
or practical solutions to the ills of the age. Even if secretive groups and
organizations exist that might represent the modes of potential dissent or
opposition (such as the Trystero system, the Schwarzkommando, the
Counterforce, or DeepArcher), their power and efficiency are severely
questioned, their victories are partial and temporary, and their further
existence and relevance are either unclear or doubted. Evidently,
Pynchon’s fiction, as the best example of experimental literary
postmodernism, is not food for action in any programmatic or immediate
sense, but it would be extremely difficult to argue that contemporary non-
postmodern fiction is either. Is sociopolitical engagement really stimulated
by reading, for example, Jonathan Franzen’s neorealist domestic novel
Freedom (2010), which deals with the marital problems of a white middle-
aged middle class American and a failed environmentalist? Or by reading,
for that matter, the post-postmodern-globalist Tropic of Orange, where
new modes of possible protest in the age of globalization are indeed
delineated, yet the ultimate success of activism (an invasion of a
Californian freeway by the homeless, who move into cars deserted on the
freeway after a huge traffic accident) is as temporary, and its future impact
as questionable, as anything we read in Pynchon?
At this point, it is useful to remember that even liberal humanists of the
most traditional kind have always agreed that literature, and art in general,
 Pynchon’s Novels of Excess and their Place in Post-postmodernity 35

does not have to be and usually is not, food for action, but food for
thought. Or, in relation to the sociopolitical agenda, food for thought that
might or might not engender immediate action. Therefore, it is neither
accurate nor wise to condemn postmodern literature for lacking a
pronounced sociopolitical dimension that instigates oppositional action—
something that non-postmodern (be it pre- or post-postmodern) literature
is usually more easily absolved from.
Furthermore, although elements of Pynchon’s postmodern novels, like
those of Robert Coover and Ishmael Reed, are labeled as obscure,
unintelligible, freakish, irresponsible or nihilist, they still betray their
authors’ solid moral concerns, which are clearly discernible under or
behind the metafictional veils, for all who are willing to recognize them.
An integral part of reading Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) is the
experience of incessant cerebral exercise (food for thought that might or
might not engender action), in asking yourself upsetting questions that
open to further upsetting questions, about the foundations and
foundational myths of Western civilization and the concept of civilization
in general. Gravity’s Rainbow undoubtedly examines the end of WWII as
the key historical moment in which Western culture, embodied by the
United States-led Allies, starts to build upon the Nazi military-scientific
legacy in order to continue along the course of death and destruction by
creating ever more sophisticated military technology. By presenting the
use and abuse of the former ideological enemy’s know-how and think
tanks for military projects of equally dubious morality, Pynchon
undoubtedly questions the ethical dimensions of the Western course, and
the general course of humanity. For him, the turn towards the future
postmodern death culture was being effected in the last years of WWII,
when Westerners, Russians and Africans showed themselves equally
obsessed with war and the development of ever more lethal war
machinery.
On a broader scale though, the late 20th century and its obsession with
weapons of mass destruction is for Pynchon only the most recent and
radical expression of humanity’s death instinct, and the inevitable price of
taming nature with culture. Pynchon scholars such as Lawrence Wolfley
and Steven Weisenburger have acknowledged the significant influence of
Norman O. Brown on Pynchon and his contemporaries. Brown was an
American Freudian psychologist who in his Life Against Death: The
Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (1959) applied Freud’s theory of
repression and sublimation of libido to explain the potentially devastating
effect of both personal and sociopolitical repression on the further course
of human history and civilization, where the repressed returns in “ever
36 Chapter Three

more complex forms of violent technology” (Weisenburger 2006, 249). Of

two possible scenarios stemming from the human obsession with
technology—namely the annihilation of mankind or the annihilation of
history in the sense of the reaffirmation of the “polymorphous perversity”,
i.e. acceptance of the body in a feat of erotic holism and the ability to
enjoy the moment of being in its fullness—Pynchon and Brown seem to
be convinced that the former is inevitable, condemning the human race to
an unresolved tension between a simultaneous fear of, and desire for,
death. Pynchon’s specific use of Brown’s ideas is recognizable in
Gravity’s Rainbow through his concern with the unmasking of myriad
unholy alliances, which strive to assert the grip of (war) technology on the
world in order to bring about this feared yet desired end.
The novel imposes questions about shifting power constellations and
constant groupings and re-groupings of power practically inaccessible to
the individual, while the theme of the impenetrable yet firm grip on this
individual, caught in a web of real and/or imaginary conspiracies and
plots, is illustrated by the chasing of Tyrone Slothrop by the Americans,
the British, the Russians and the Herero in the occupied zone of Germany.
Likewise, Pynchon identifies 1945 as the year in which the evil seed of
corporate capitalism is sown. He does this through his depiction of the
cartelization of the German concern IG Farben and American company
General Electric, an act that marked the beginning of future globalization
by dispersing power and transferring it from sovereign states to
transnational companies. Further, the subsequent use of renowned German
rocket experts on Allied and U.S. military programs, and the employment
of countless Nazi officials and scientists in top positions in the American
postwar military-industrial complex are echoed in Gravity’s Rainbow,
which hints at the post-war careers of German rocket program heads
Weissman and Mondaugen, who resurface in the United States “among the
successful academics, the Presidential advisers, the token intellectuals who
sit on boards of directors” (Pynchon 1995, 749). As Weisenburger
clarifies, these are most likely references to the American careers of
Walter Dornberger, who became a member of the board of directors of
Bell Helicopter Corporation, and Wernher von Braun, who became head
of the NASA space program (Weisenburger 2006, 374). Additionally,
Pynchon’s novel is abundant with references to the so-called Project
Hermes, an Anglo-American operation (involving representatives from
British Imperial Chemical Industries and General Electric), whose
directive was to dismantle around a hundred unlaunched German V2
rockets and transfer them to the New Mexico desert for further testing.
These actions led to the advancement of nuclear technology, which
 Pynchon’s Novels of Excess and their Place in Post-postmodernity 37

culminated in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. References such

as these not only suggest upsetting parallels and shady deals between
WWII enemies, but are also Pynchon’s commentary on the ubiquitous
complicity of governments, science, and the military that, since the end of
WWII, has become a fixture in today’s world.
Surprisingly few critical assessments of Pynchon have focused on the
indisputably present political and economic agenda in his work. Therefore,
contributions by Pynchon scholars who have ventured into elaborating on
precisely these issues—usually overlooked in the general conspiracy of
silence—are all the more valuable. Samuel Thomas’ Pynchon and the
Political (2007) represents a unique take on the political dimension in
Pynchon’s writing. Thomas claims that political issues have been largely
marginalized in criticism of Pynchon by a disproportionate interest in the
enigmatic quality of his postmodern style. He states that, building on the
legacy of Judith Chambers, Deborah Madsen and Paul Maltby—who
recognize various aspects of Pynchon’s political and ethical concerns in
his peculiar unmasking of the mechanisms of ideological and cultural
repression—he intends to “make a case for Pynchon as a difficult but
inventive, penetrating political novelist”. He does this by centering on
Pynchon’s “vibrant and unusual socio-political conscience” to show that
“seemingly oppositional regions of Pynchon’s work (the postmodern and
the political) are by no means mutually exclusive” (Thomas 2007, 14).
Likewise, Stipe Grgas has offered insightful readings of Pynchon,
centering on the intricate interplay of capital, technology and power, and
arguing that it is necessary to acknowledge Gravity’s Rainbow as the
canonical American literary and cultural text of the 20th century, because it
addresses key economic and political issues that have been largely ignored
in critiques of Pynchon. He then states that “the economic system of
capitalism is the determining matrix of the book” (Grgas 2013, 23–24). In
his subsequent analysis of The Bleeding Edge, the author demonstrates
that Pynchon’s most recent novel represents a straightforward depiction of
the all-pervading and permanent dictate of capital in the post-9/11 era,
marked by ominous information technologies, urban deterioration and fear
(Grgas 2014).
To use Adams’ term, another globalist dimension—although it
operates from a distinctly Pynchonesque postmodern-postcolonial angle
outside the frame of the simplistic good vs. evil trope—is the theme of the
appropriation of the former enslaver’s methods of destruction by the
formerly enslaved. This can be seen in the South-West African Herero
tribe, whose colonization, enslavement, and near-extermination by the
Germans in the early 20th century is exemplified in Gravity’s Rainbow by
38 Chapter Three

references to the historic German colonization of Africa under General

Lothar von Trotha. Von Trotha was involved in, among other infamous
events, a brutal reprisal to the Herero uprising of 1904. In the novel,
members of the Herero tribe organize themselves into the underground
movement Schwarzkommando (the Black Force), and almost succeed in
constructing and firing their equivalent of the German V2 rocket. Thus,
the colonized Black as the West’s repressed Other returns both literally (in
the shape of Enzian’s black rocket troops), and symbolically (as their
identical obsession with the rocket), to terrorize the Zone and further
diminish the chances of any optimistic closure for the human race. Still,
Pynchon’s sarcasm is particularly vicious in his references to the radical,
separatist wing of the Schwarzkommando, known as the Empty Ones, who
have embarked on a program of racial suicide. In doing so, they carry out
in the most blatant and overt form what their former German colonizers
started in the South-West African colonies back in the19th century, and
what the human race in general has been inflicting upon itself since the
beginning of history. Would it be sensible to claim that Pynchon’s novel is
devoid of both postcolonial issues and critique of Western imperialism,
and that it does not playfully or satirically envision the modes of a possible
retaliation by the Other, just because the Schwarzkommando and the
Empty Ones are fictional?
It would be utterly superficial and even irresponsible to claim that
these and related themes highlighted by Pynchon in both Gravity’s
Rainbow and his other works of fiction are irrelevant to us today, living in
a digitalized, globalized world, in which new-old antagonisms are
perpetually engendered, and which is only an intensification and
acceleration of the same processes Pynchon depicted in his fictional works
from the 1960s onwards. The fact that such questions and issues have been
presented in an extravagant and stylistic package does not mean they are
not there, especially if we remember Richard Poirier’s statement in “The
Importance of Thomas Pynchon”, that “his [Pynchon’s] fictions are often
seamlessly woven into the stuff, the very factuality of history”, and that
“in Pynchon’s novels the plots of wholly imagined fiction are inseparable
from the plots of known history and science” (Poirier 1975, 157). If a
writer depicts an entropic world and a death-obsessed humanity, as
Pynchon does, it is equally possible that his literature is not an expression
of nihilism and reactionary antiactivism, but rather an attempt to unmask a
similarly complex interplay of the power factors that shape the world
outside his fiction. Susan Strehle in her Fiction in the Quantum Universe
(1992) argues that Pynchon’s fiction, along with that of Atwood, Barth,
Coover and Barthelme, occupies the middle ground between neorealist
 Pynchon’s Novels of Excess and their Place in Post-postmodernity 39

fiction and pure metafiction. Not only does it abandon traditional,

representational practices of realism, and contain an abundance of accurate
historical detail that undercuts its potential self-reflexivity, but it is a good
example of what the author calls “actualist prose of our age”. By this, she
means prose that is created as a response to, and a symptom of, an altered
understanding of “reality”, influenced by quantum theory. Thus, where
some see nihilism, and delight in postmodern fiction’s catastrophic
scenarios, others perceive a bitterly humorous and mischievously serious
response, that hovers somewhere between utter desperation, satire, and a
small but indestructible hope. After all, this debate takes us back to the
question of personal aesthetic and political preferences. Those more
susceptible to specifically postmodern strategies of coping with
humanity’s alarming issues will have no difficulty finding sufficient links
with and correspondences to postmodern literature and the external reality
that renders it socially and politically relevant.
For better or worse (depending on your standpoint), the summoning of
postmodernism’s ghost is far from over. Pynchon’s latest novel Bleeding
Edge (2013) is the prime justification for this. It is late postmodernism’s
brilliant swansong (or, alternatively, a work that confirms the existence of
the new trend of “transrealism”, which might or might not be the latest
guise of postmodernism). Bleeding Edge is fundamentally postmodern in
its thematic concern with the almost hopeless postmodern condition,
reminiscent in this respect of DeLillo’s White Noise (1984). In many ways
this novel can be read as a sequel to Gravity’s Rainbow, due to its
depiction of Western culture witnessing the perpetuation and absolute
dictate of all the social, political, economic and cultural trends previously
addressed in the earlier novel: the impenetrable networks of secretive and
malicious military-entrepreneurial forces, the demise of the individual, the
triumph of the inanimate and, most notably, civilization’s course for death
and destruction. Gravity’s Rainbow begins with the launching of a German
V2 rocket at London in 1944, and includes further detonations, such as
that of the fictional Weissman/Blicero rocket 00000 during Easter 1945,
followed by the real American nuclear bombs dropped on Japan in the
same year, and the planned but apparently unsuccessful fictional Herero
rocket, and ending with a fictional nuclear attack on a Los Angeles theater
in 1970. In the case of the latter, it remains unclear as to who planned the
attack and why, yet enough space is left to conclude that it might
somehow be connected to the Schwarzkommando. Dehumanization in
Bleeding Edge appears primarily in the shape of digital technologies,
which are manifested in the commodification of the Internet and the
appropriation and manipulation of information for economic gain and/or
40 Chapter Three

shadowy political power plays with potentially lethal consequences.

Recurrent hints are given as to the possibility of mysterious ties between
the machinations of the digital geek kingdom of Gabriel Ice, and murders
of individuals, or even large-scale events such as the 2001 attacks on the
World Trade Center. Another way in which Bleeding Edge might be read
as a bleak sequel to Gravity’s Rainbow is in the sense that the real-life
catastrophic strikes in New York in 2001 that vandalize the fictional (as
well as real) New Yorkers’ dreams and minds have served as a viciously
sarcastic corrective to Pynchon’s premature placing of fictional strikes on
American soil by hostile forces in 1970. Thus, although their timing is
belated with respect to that of the fictional nuclear rocket—which
demolished the Orpheus Theater in Los Angeles—the hard reality of the
suicidal attacks proved more destructive and traumatic than Pynchon’s
then-extravagant fictional scenarios, proving once again his unique
position as the literary prophet of our era. Pat Kane’s September 2013
review of Bleeding Edge in The Independent pays tribute to that intricate
intertwining of the real and fictional that has always characterized
Pynchon’s writing:

‘A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is
nothing to compare it to now.’ Quite the opening line, from Thomas
Pynchon’s 1973 masterpiece set in the Second World War, Gravity’s
Rainbow. On a Glasgow morning, 11 September 2001—after I had slowly
put down James Harding’s hopeful business article about the ‘counter-
capitalist movement’, then stared at the first screen images of the
punctured North Tower of the World Trade Centre—Pynchon’s words
were the first thing that came to my mind. And they remain there still.
(Kane 2013)

As for Bleeding Edge, food for thought it certainly is. It is also food for
action, insofar as it allows its heroine Maxine Tarnow and her unofficial
network of accomplices to get away with their idiosyncratic activism, and
enables them to resist total mental appropriation by the system. To an
extent. To what extent exactly, and for how long, will be revealed in the
Pynchonesque future that has already begun. If nothing else, while Tyrone
Slothrop seeks, and possibly finds refuge in, his dispersal towards the end
of the 1973 novel, in the last lines of the 2013 novel Maxine Tarnow
wants to hope that the maternal love she has instilled in her sons might
equip them for whatever trials await them, their generation and their
species in the future.
 Pynchon’s Novels of Excess and their Place in Post-postmodernity 41

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42 Chapter Three

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