Abstract
ABSTRACTIn Bleeding Edge Pynchon uses again a female unconventional detective, as he did in The Crying of Lot 49, with the ultimate aim of evaluating the condition of America. However, whereas Oedipa had to deal with an understanding of American society in terms of science and religion, in Bleeding Edge Maxine is at pains to understand a society ruled by the new paradigms of posthumanity and trauma. By focusing on the binary life/death, the article evaluates Pynchon’s portrayal of current society as posthuman and disrupted by a new type of social stagnation related to the control of information flow, a situation that demands the role of an active protagonist, in line with later theories in the field of trauma studies. The textual analysis points to information, terrorism, and web addiction as the new dangers that Maxine has to cope with if she wants to pull society back to motion.
Highlights
Two heroines for two different timesThe role that categorical or binary thinking plays in our perception of life has been a reiterative theme in Pynchon’s fiction since the publication of his early short stories
The writer portrays once more a female unconventional detective but this time the protagonist’s main role is to gather sufficient information for the reader to ponder on the pervasive and disturbing effects that the imbrication of the new paradigms of posthumanity and trauma have in our present understanding of life
As foreseen in The Crying of Lot 49, by the beginning of the 21st Century social energy overtly manifests as pure information
Summary
Two heroines for two different timesThe role that categorical or binary thinking plays in our perception of life has been a reiterative theme in Pynchon’s fiction since the publication of his early short stories (see Keesey 15–37).
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