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Not a Review of BLEEDING EDGE by Thomas Pynchon

     By definition critics turn criticism into a career, but they often raise disappointment to the level of art. We read some reviews and think, Oh, that one’s sharp, has good taste and a certain alacrity with the written word. Then a book comes along, and those same critics we found so illuminating completely miss the boat. They should have been sounding the clarion call for the novel of its time, for a novel that peels away the scabrous obfuscations and shallow preoccupations that litter the cultural dialogue, that cuts deep into the quick and teaches the lessons we’re most in need of. It’s frustrating enough when the new book comes from the pen of a relative unknown. When it’s coming from the inimitable Thomas Pynchon it’s unforgivable.

     Pynchon has made an illustrious career of reanimating the past with madcap vibrancy and breathtaking wisdom, of translating it and revealing the secret roots of the present at its most confounding. In BLEEDING EDGE he hews closer to the present than he has at any point since V. Published in 1963 V was set partially at the height of Eisenhower conformity in 1956, just as The Sixties as we know it was coming of age. BLEEDING EDGE is set in the several months bookending September 11, and the seminal event of our time is the seminal event of its story.

     Thomas Pynchon was the rock star gunslinger for years, the voice of his generation, but he’s in his seventies now. He’s an elder statesman looking back at opportunities squandered, but don’t make the mistake of thinking he’s aged into a bitchy old man hiding in the walled-off world of his own devising, selfishly lamenting how the young have wasted all the ground he and his gained. No. Pynchon gets it. He hasn’t curled up in a cave of glowing reputation. He has engaged the world, and its creature comforts and most poisonous vices are as obvious to him as they are to you and me. That’s where the genius of BLEEDING EDGE resides, in our distractions and ambitions and in particular our most debilitating weakness: fear.

     Maxine Tarnow is a single mother and freelance fraud investigator who starts looking into the suspicious finances of a computer security firm and its ubergeek CEO, Gabriel Ice. As with every Pynchon novel the premise doesn’t matter nearly as much as the cavalcade of oddball characters and near-absurd episodes that course through the pages. And what could be more insane that September 11, an event that Pynchon posits has left our whole country in nothing less than a post-traumatic regression into infantilized self-absorption?

     The pop culture nerds, the computer geeks, the hackers have all taken refuge in online simulacra, the architecture throbbing with a digital marrow coded for the instant gratification of their escapist dreams. Gabriel Ice, the villain, is the geek gone over to the Dark Side, trembling with the anticipation of flexing his unparalleled intelligence. Take away his fortune and he’s AwesomeSauce42 on the Ainitcool message boards. And the book’s older characters suffer the same plague of self-satisfied sturm-und-drang. Maxine’s lifelong friend, now in her forties, thinks she can still play the Upper West Side J.A.P., simultaneously fending off and entertaining the advances of the Wall Street up-and-comers. Maxine’s surrogate mother, formerly an anti-establishment flower child who railed against Vietnam and Kent State and screamed for Nixon’s head on a pike, has aged into a paranoid conspiracy-theorizing muckraker with a blog.

     Only Maxine is aware of the turn her nation has taken. She understands the lure of anonymity. She feels the sensuous warmth of its liberating ephemera. She loves her children, loves being a mom, but the youthful vitality of chasing the bad guys is a narcotic. She could see herself back with her ex-husband. He has his flaws, but he’s a good father and a good man. But, oh, that corrupt CIA spook excites her like the boys she danced and shared bumps with at the clubs back when the future wasn’t worth considering. She’d love to dole out advice to her friends, set them on the right path, but how can she do that and avoid becoming that yenta of a mother she’s spent her whole life not being? Maxine is as scared as anyone, of the truth, of uncertainty, of death. 

     But…

     And that’s why she’s the hero of BLEEDING EDGE. When the unthinkable occurs, when the unimaginable goes down, when terror becomes an unavoidable reality, our culture is given a stark choice, and Maxine alone makes the right one. She doesn’t retreat into an imaginary garden of digital delights. She embraces a brick-and-mortar world, well aware that it sits always on the precipice of self-immolation.

     I could go on and on about Pynchon’s dynamite prose, his character development, his sense of humor and dramaturgy, but all of that is something you as the reader either get or you don’t. But if you are plugged in at all, you would be deaf, dumb, and blind to deny the sage and quiet heroism at the heart of BLEEDING EDGE’s message. You have to face the world no matter the terror. Your only other option is to inhabit a fraudulent existence, a world that is not real. And if your world is not real, what makes you think you’re real?

NEWS FROM ROME #1

    As you may know from my Twitter feed (and if you’re not following, start before I send an angry old Russian woman to box your ears - @tonypetracci) I’ve been writing my first novel, The Trial of Marcus Aurelius, for over a year now. The first draft is finished, clocking in at roughly 143,000 words. I’ve got the story and the characters down, and now it’s time to tackle the yeoman’s work and make the book actually, you know, good. So, I thought I’d start updating you all on the book’s progress and my thoughts on my own evolution as a writer, what I’ve learned, what I still have to learn, and whatnot. But first thing’s first...

  SPOILER ALERT!!!

“Tony, you’re spoiling your novel before it’s even finished? What’s your problem?”

I’ll explain. The Trial of Marcus Aurelius is historical fiction, which means it’s a bunch of made-up stuff incorporating other stuff that really happened. But historical fiction is not a sub-genre I patronize frequently. The majority of what I’ve been exposed to has incorporated only the giant, textbook-sized events and made up the rest, usually contradicting the very nature of the characters its portraying. This, to put it mildly, frustrates me. In my opinion this signifies a disrespect for history and an inability to recognize a good story. History is brimming with fantastically rich stories that do not require a rewrite. The life of Marcus Aurelius is one of them, and I don’t intend to alter any more of it than I absolutely have to. I’ll change minor details and some of the chronology, nothing that will impact the story, but I will not rewrite history. I’ll extrapolate from it and expand upon it, not ignore or contradict it. All you have to do is read Marcus’ Wikipedia entry, and you’ll know everything that happens in the book. But that’s the plot, not the story, and if the novel works, it will work because of the story.

So... why am I writing a fictional biography of Marcus Aurelius?

A couple of years ago I was thinking about what I wanted my first novel to be. I had a few ideas and started to explore them, crafting characters, concocting plots, writing scenes, just trying to get a handle on one of those ideas and see which one took root. Eventually one of them did, a sort-of fantasy with some interesting, if not entirely original, ideas. I ended up writing a third of a draft before realizing that the story’s narrative and thematic foundation wasn’t as strong as I’d originally thought, and the ending I’d written myself into didn’t resolve anything. Maybe one day I’ll revisit it or recycle some of its elements into something else, but right now those pages are sitting in a drawer (I write longhand). 

While all this was going on, and I was writing short stories (which I will continue to do), I was listening to Mike Duncan’s The History of Rome podcast. I was already enthralled, being an enthusiast for ancient Rome, by the time Mike got to Marcus Aurelius’ reign. Mike is excellent at putting a beating human heart into the stone effigies we think of when we hear the names of the famous ancients. Inside Marcus, he put the heart of a long-suffering man forced by circumstance into a life he never wanted, but who rose to meet every challenge and fulfill his responsibility. But when we got to the end of Marcus’ reign, and he had to face the reality of his son Commodus succeeding him, Marcus’ story took a decidedly sad turn. Mike noted how, in his biography of Marcus, Frank McLynn illustrated how Marcus was faced with a stark decision regarding the issue of succession. He knew Commodus was going to be a train wreck of an emperor, but on the other hand, he couldn’t name anyone else. Commodus was his only son. If he named anyone else emperor, the parasites would come out of the woodwork once Marcus was dead and swallow Commodus with their talk of, “Who’s this usurper denying you your birthright? You’re the son of the great Marcus Aurelius! YOU should be draped in the purple!” And Commodus would go, “Yeah!” Before long... civil war. It had happened before, and it would happen again. Therefore Marcus had to name Commodus as his heir... unless he had to name someone else because Commodus wasn’t around to be his heir. So, Marcus either had to name Commodus his successor, or kill his own son. 

What must that have felt like, I thought. You dedicate your entire life to fulfilling the gravest responsibility your world can offer someone, against your own wishes, your own desires. In the end you have to make a decision that will ensure all your work was not in vain, and you can’t do it. What would’ve been running through Marcus’ mind as he lay on his deathbed, the Antonine Plague eating away his body? I started reading more about Marcus, and everything I found further convinced me that Marcus' life was a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions. I started writing, figuring out the characters and the story and the tone, everything. But I knew that, as a writer, I needed to find my own personal avenue into the story, that deep connection that makes me, as the creator, emotionally and psychologically invested in this story. Eventually I found it. What was it? None of your business. But as soon as I had it, I knew that The Trial of Marcus Aurelius was going to be my first novel.

My goal is to provide new updates every couple of weeks. I’ll probably focus on some different aspect of the work with each new update. I also have a lot of ideas about how I’m going to try to drum up interest in potential readers -- marketing ideas, that sort of thing -- and I’ll let you know about those when it comes time. I don’t know. We’ll see what happens. If nothing else, I hope these updates get you a little excited about the prospect of what the novel could be and make you more inclined to check it out once it’s done. But keep coming back here. I’ve got short stories I’ll keep posting too, and for godsake, TWITTER: @tonypetracci.

Thanks for reading, and don’t be the internet.