Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge
By Armando Ortiz
In Bleeding Edge, the author Thomas Pynchon tells the story of Maxine Tarnow who goes into an investigative journey to uncover the workings of events that were unfolding in New York during the first months of 2001. He creates a clear distinction between the techies that are becoming rich profiting from their creations, and those no longer rolling with dough anymore like Nicholas Windust. This review will mainly focus on the connections the book makes with Central America, the alternative online world that had been created called DeepArcher, and how ultimately we all experience new beginnings which in some ways are also a return.
Nicholas is a person who has accumulated an empire through shady government dealings and has the power to run countries, and yet he can't. He is quickly becoming irrelevant and useless to the powers that be and the country is about to get closer to completely becoming digital. As a result his collaborations, while being an operative of the state, will compromise his identity. Windust, a secret agent, spent most of his time in Central America in the 80’s. His ex-wife, Xiomara describes to Maxine his obsession with the idea of Xibalba after getting stationed in Guatemala in the early 80s, “in Huehuetenango, where Windust and I met, it was less that a day’s journey to a system of caves everyone there believed was the approach to Xibalba.” She kept explaining that “the early Christian missionaries thought tales of hell would frighten us, but we already had Xibalba, literally, the place of fear.” Hence real life characters that once walked this earth, like Rios Montt, weren’t something new, but an expression or an incarnation of what came out from the caves and cenotes connected to the Mayan underworld.
In the novel “frontier” is found on the internet and more specifically in the program site that Maxine’s friend’s had created - DeepArcher. People log into the site and can leave the “meat” world, and exist in the virtual serendipity of digital existence, but at the ending of the novel even this has been closed. Along the same lines Windust had experienced an alternative world via the Mayan folktales that he’d heard in the Guatemalan towns he visited- a world where violence didn’t play out on television screens or in the virtual world of the infant internet but came creeping out of caves. It wasn’t he that used a cattle prod, but his alternate self from the underworld that did the dirty deeds.
Aside from reminding us how the U.S. entered the 21st century, Pynchon looks back at our government’s involvement in Central America. The book keeps reminding the reader that there was a dubious American presence in Central America in the late-70s all the way to the 90s. The 21st century for Windust was his departure, he had done the dirty work. Windust, a U.S. citizen, led a secret life abroad, returning to the world of Xibalba- a foreign world. Abroad, he would merge with the crowds, but remained an outsider, and back in New York he became part of the outside class. His obsession with the Mayan underworld is similar to the world that characters living in New York have digitally.
Pynchon’s characters escape from the hell-like conditions that begin to grow and spread in Central America. They also escape the “meat” world of New York as they embark into a digital space where random meetings take place, like a new frontier. For those in the South the frontier is dangerous, teeming with injustice and the only frontier to flee to is the north. DeepArcher keeps getting more and more popular, similar to how many social media companies came to be. Pynchon gives readers a glimpse into life in the U.S. months before the attack on the Twin Towers, describing the realities middle to upper middle class society were experiencing- a time when new technologies were beginning to be used and if you had the money for these new toys then you’d get them. The internet was just beginning to blow up and people were adapting to all the new changes that were happening.
Those living in New York came and went as they pleased, they left for California and returned with a tan, they traveled to a ranch in the Midwest and flew back scruffy and dirty to a spacious apartment or condo. In 2001, I too left my family and went to study in South Korea. I had only been there a few weeks when 9/11 burst into our psyche. I was in my own alternate reality trying to make it, attempting to adapt, and once I could navigate through East Asian cities and countries I returned home. The novel ultimately is about our return and remembering those things that keep us grounded, like family but also dreams and acceptance that over time things get better. Despite the tragedies that people faced at all levels of reality, there was a return and a settling, and one can breathe with a sense of ease as things get back to a new normal.
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