Here's the deal: you don't read Thomas Pynchon for his plots. It's all a mess and you're never going to actually find out what's going on. You just have to accept it.1
Finally, at a phone number obtained off a toilet wall at a bar in Mile End, she located one Felix Boingueaux, who'd been working out of a basement apartment, what they call a garconniere, off of Saint-Denis, for whom Vip's name didn't just ring a bell but threatened to kick the door in, since there were apparently some late-payment issues. They arranged to meet at an Internet-enabled laundromat called NetNet, soon to be a legend on the Plateau. Felix looked almost old enough to drive.
She is Maxine. And she's the star of the show. A no nonsense Jewish lady from New York who's tougher than an over-boiled bagel.
Maxine runs a small fraud-investigating agency down the street, called Tail 'Em and Nail 'Em--she once briefly considered adding "and Jail 'Em," but grasped soon enough how wishful, if not delusional, this would be--in an old bank building, entered by way of a lobby whose ceiling is so high that back before smoking was outlawed sometimes you couldn't even see it.
You might think it's about Maxine sifting through pages of account books and double checking things with her calculator. Maybe some excel spreadsheet action. Not so. There's a lot of breathless charging across town on questionably important errands.
It's really about Maxine's many different relationships: ex-husband, kids, CIA agents, crusty activists, hackers, rich wives, cabbies, crafty convenience store owners. And how the dot-com bubble felt. And the days before and after 9/11. And some secretive tech mogul who's funneling money to terrorists? And also a 3D graphical representation of the internet, like the metaverse, but really it's just a search engine. And a lot of just being in New York. And food.
Each sentence is loaded, like he wrote a paragraph and cut away at it until all that was left was this sentence and it's not got a single whiff of filler left in it. But also, it might be missing some of the regular parts you're used to.
"So," shrugging away any scold signifiers in face and voice, "a mom-approved first-person shooter."
In Bleeding Edge, as all Pynchon, things get zany, serious too, but goofy, and you find yourself reading along happy to believe in scent detectives with odor-guns ("The Naser") and retired Russian mobsters who have turned into tech VCs with a deep appreciation for ice cream.2 There's no trouble being there. He's got a gift for sucking you in so that when you finally come back up for air, you're wondering whether you've been reading for five minutes or fifty. But it can be tiring and sometimes you end up never finishing.
"Envy," supposes Heidi, "is so often all that stands between some of us and a sad, empty life."

Footnotes

  1. It's been a while since I posted one of these reviews because this darn book got me lost and maybe I lost interest and it took me a while to finish--which I will admit has happened before with Pynchon.
  2. "Fucking Nestle," Igor rooting through the freezer. "Fucking unsaturated vegetable oils. Hippie shit. Corrupting entire generation. I have arrangements, fly this in once a month on refrigerator plane to Kennedy. OK, so we got Ice-Fili here, Ramzai, also Inmarko, from Novosibirsk, very awesome *morozhenoye, Metelitsa, Talosto...today, for you, on special, hazelnut, chocolate chips, vishnya, which is sour cherry..."
The Crying Of Lot 49 actually had a plot I could follow. Gravity's Rainbow- no way! I still loved it.
reply
Here's the deal: you don't read Thomas Pynchon for his plots.
I think you're right, and I've always wondered what you do read Pynchon for. Not just him, there are others in that same boat, who write giant tomes that feel like homework, or repairing some arcane machine that you don't have parts for. I own a literal handbook designed to allow people to comprehend Gravity's Rainbow; I got a modest way through it before I came to my senses.
I am not a stranger to effortful reading, but I've never understand what reward people get by reading Pynchon except the veneer of intelligence that reading him seems to confer; or that the reader believes is conferred.
He's got a gift for sucking you in so that when you finally come back up for air, you're wondering whether you've been reading for five minutes or fifty. But it can be tiring and sometimes you end up never finishing.
Question, and this isn't me trying to be a jerk: if nobody knew the name Pynchon, would you really bother with it? If the world hadn't concluded that James Joyce, DeLillo were geniuses, would a naiive stranger grab Finnegan's and be like: holy shit, this is astounding? Or would they say: jesus, what a sad attempt at being original, and toss it in recycling?
It really comes across as the lady protesting too much. For what little payout you describe, it seems that there are nearly infinity better options than Pynchon. What am I missing?
reply
I read this one because I've read a few other Pynchon books that I liked. Gravity's Rainbow is similarly muddy but he got me with the v2 rocket thing (rockets falling randomly over London but also always some place the main character was a few days ago, but also statisticians say it's just a coincidence) caught my imagination.
Which leads to your larger point: if the world started with something like Finnegan's Wake I doubt we ever would have heard of Joyce. But Ulysses was something new and maybe even a good read. So these artists build trust by producing things we do think are good and then they step out into unknown territory and try something unexpected.
There are no guarantees that it works out. And they definitely get to draft off their previous success. But sometimes it works out and we end up adapting our sensibilities to this new thing and it turns out to be quite enjoyable.
(I don't think it worked out for Pynchon here--it will be a while before I read another one of his books)
reply
I really admire people who get into a groove when writing.
reply