Abstract
The Bleeding Edge excerpt provided in the Fall 2013 Penguin Press catalogue notes that “[u]nhoused people sleep in doorways,”but by the time the Advanced Reading Copy had reached reviewers, “unhoused” had been changed to “unsheltered” (2), an edit that remained in place, even after other changes to the text, a couple of months later when the book became available for general readers. . . . We might ask: what significance is there to the edit? And from whose perspective are we seeing Maxine’s neighborhood in the opening of the novel? . . . The edit actually distances the text from the only characters in the scene to whom we might attribute the perception of unsheltered people, Maxine and her children.
Highlights
As Maxine walks her children, Otis and Ziggy, to school in the opening pages of Bleeding Edge (2013), the narrator catalogues, among other things, the morning residents of Maxine’s Upper West Side neighborhood
A more pertinent question, one that does not deny the possibility that the first one is relevant, might be: from whose perspective are we seeing Maxine’s neighborhood in the opening of the novel? Or—to put it in terms of what Martin Eve has most recently pointed out is a long standing question asked of Pynchon’s texts, of Gravity’s Rainbow (1973)—who is speaking through the narrator?5 The edit distances the text from the only characters in the scene to whom we might attribute the perception of unsheltered people, Maxine and her children
Maxine’s friend Heidi is an exemplary New Yorker in this respect. She sees Latinas—in another dig at V.’s representation of New York—through the lens of West Side Story6: “her idea of the echt Latina” is Natalie Wood, despite Maxine’s reminding her again and again, that Wood was “born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko [. . .] and her accent in the picture is possibly closer to Russian than to Boricua” (27)
Summary
As Maxine walks her children, Otis and Ziggy, to school in the opening pages of Bleeding Edge (2013), the narrator catalogues, among other things, the morning residents of Maxine’s Upper West Side neighborhood.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callSimilar Papers
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
