Bleeding Edge: A Novel

Thomas Pynchon

Sept 2013 · Sold by Penguin

About this eBook

"Brilliantly written...a joy to read...Bleeding Edge is totally gonzo, totally wonderful. It really is good to have Thomas Pynchon around, doing what he does best." - Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

"Exemplary...dazzling and ludicrous." - Jonathan Lethem, The New York Times Book Review

It is 2001 in New York City, in the lull between the collapse of the dot-com boom and the terrible events of September 11th. 

Maxine Tarnow runs a fine little fraud investigation business on the Upper West Side. All is ticking over nice and normal, until she starts looking into the finances of a computer-security firm and its billionaire geek CEO. She soon finds herself mixed up with a drug runner in an art deco motorboat, a professional nose obsessed with Hitler’s aftershave, a neoliberal enforcer with footwear issues, and an array of bloggers, hackers, code monkeys, and entrepreneurs, some of whom begin to show up mysteriously dead. Foul play, of course.

Will perpetrators be revealed, forget about brought to justice? Will Maxine have to take the handgun out of her purse? Will Jerry Seinfeld make an unscheduled guest appearance? Will accounts secular and karmic be brought into balance?

Hey. Who wants to know?

Ratings and reviews

Even when Pynchon writes a novel that I consider to be mediocre, such as this one, it is still miles ahead of many other author's works. I was especially thrilled when I found out what this book was about, for I am fairly well-versed in the cyberculture of the late-90's and early-2000's. I also grew up in that era, so the novel's innumerable period-specific references were not lost on me. The plot starts off strong, but like many of Pynchon's plots, it devolves into a convoluted and confusing mess. The characters are interesting, if not a bit flat, but they still are endearing. The setting was especially well developed, because I, someone who has never visited New York, was able to get a fairly good idea of where everything was supposedly taking place. "Pynchon-lite" gets thrown around a lot, but the term definitely applies to this novel; it is an excellent introduction to the dizzying world of Pynchon.

Mind-numbing writing style.

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About the author

Thomas Pynchon is the author of V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity’s Rainbow, Slow Learner, Vineland, Mason & Dixon, Against the Day, Inherent Vice, and Bleeding Edge. He received the National Book Award for Gravity’s Rainbow in 1974.