The thing about Thomas Pynchon is, always has been, for me at least, this strange combination of a certain Vorfreude because of the newness of the new work and a nauseating feeling the first, depending, 45 to 450 pages on. This confusion, is there a higher purpose to it or is postmodernism just an excuse for a lack of discipline? These asides, is there a problem if I don*t laugh but see the image of these über intelligent guys in front of me who swap hahaha against life? These digressions, is there really a need for all of that because this is the way that stories happen these days, maybe always have, the terror of narration against the meandering stream of things? There is a lot of time to think about these things, in Bleeding Edge as well as in the books that Pynchon wrote before in the last, ten, 15 years. They are, in fact, very menschenfreundlich, these books, they are long, but you can glide along, you can say hi to the story and bye and then glide some more, until you rest on a sentence like this: “The past, hey no shit, it*s an open invitation to wine abuse”. Very nice. For a septuagenarian as well for any writer. There is power and force and a steady abyss in these sentences, “life is a party isn*t it Daytona, yes and Horst was fine with that, but as he happened to think marriage is a party also, well, that*s where we found we had different thoughts”. This is the fun of reading Pynchon. There is even a sort of love story in this novel. In a way you wonder who these people are, Maxine and Horst and Heidi, they each carry their character around, it does not really fit them, the biography flaps around like a worn coat, their past is like a headache, their future is like a hangover to be had. You never feel free, you never feel at ease. So my question today: Is it all a test? Is this the sort of performative literature which functions more like an artwork and less like a book. It is your reaction that establishes the novel, you are the character that this book is about. James Salter unfolds a life in front of you as you move along. Thomas Pynchon folds this life back into something like a rubik*s cube made out of concrete as you get stuck, again and again. Until you start gliding again.