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Titles
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Don DeLillo's Falling Man: An Introduction
- Discussion Questions for the Novel
- Character Study: Florence Givens [vid]
- Character Study: Keith Neudecker [vid]
- Close Reading: Lianne’s Online Search for the Falling Man Artist
- Close Reading: Keith in the Casino [vid]
- Close Reading: Keith's Visual Activity
- Close Reading:: "In the Ruins of the Future"
- Interview with Katie Dryhurst [vid]
- Interview with Alexandra Blogier [vid]
- Travis Fine's The Space Between: An Introduction
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Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: An Introduction
- Discussion Questions for the Novel
- Character Study: Mr. Black [vid]
- Character Study: Oskar Schell [vid]
- Character Study: Thomas Schell [vid]
- Close Reading: Oskar in Bed and Flip Book [vid]
- Close Reading: Oskar's Appointment with Dr. Fein
- Interview with Michael Olmert [vid]
- Interview with Wendy Fowler-Conner [vid]
- Interview with Laura Foster [vid]
- Richard A. Grusin's Premediation: An Introduction
- Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist: An Introduction
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Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children: An Introduction
- Introduction: Part 2
- Discussion Questions for the Novel: First Half
- Discussion Questions for the Novel: Second Half
- Character Study: Annabel Thwaite
- Character Study: Frederick "Bootie" Tubb
- Character Study: Frederick "Bootie" Tubb [vid]
- Character Study: Julius Clarke [vid]
- Character Study: Danielle Minkoff
- Close Reading: Danielle Identifies Herself with the Victims of 9/11
- Close Reading: Murray's Manuscript
- Close Reading: The Morning of the Towers [vid]
- Close Reading: What Messud's Satire Achieves
- Close Reading: Analysis and Portent in "The Pope's End"
- Interview with Joan Cohen [vid]
- Joseph O'Neill's Netherland: An Introduction
- Thomas Pynchon's Bleeding Edge: An Introduction
- Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers: An Introduction
- David Wyatt's And Then the War Came: An Introduction
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Other Works
- Dylan Avery's Loose Change: An Introduction
- The September 11 Digital Archive: An Introduction
- Character Study: Charlie, Twilight of the Superheroes
- Character Study: Lucien, Twilight of the Superheroes
- Close Reading: Nathaniel's View From Mr. Matsumoto's Balcony, Twilight of the Superheroes
- Interview with Phil Mulliken on Basinski's The Disintegration Loops [vid]
- Interview with Oliver Gaycken on Basinski's Disintegration Loops [vid]
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Don DeLillo's Falling Man: An Introduction
- Mapping the Literature of 9/11
- Colophon
Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge Continued
A Quick Biography
- Born May 8th 1937 in Glenn Cove, Long Island NY, has 3 siblings
- 1953 studies engineering at Cornell, goes to the navy, then returns to Cornell for English
- 1974 National Book Award prize given where a comedian, Irwin Corey, accepts his award
- 1988 Named a MacArthur Fellow in
- 1990 Marries Melanie Jackson, Literary agent
- 1990 publishes novel Vineland
- 1991 Son Jackson born
- 1997 publishes novel Mason & Dixon
- 2006 publishes Against the Day
- 2009 publishes Inherent Vice
- 2013 publishes Bleeding Edge
Publication History: Since Bleeding Edge is a rather recent novel, it's publication history is pretty brief. There's only one edition, in 3 different mediums.
First Edition Published September 17, 2013 by Penguin Press HC
Kindle Version available September 17, 2013 Audio Cd Available September 17, 2013
Paperback will be available August 26, 2014 Reception History:
General Public Reviews: The general public rates Bleeding Edge as a 3.5 out of 5 stars. Of 166 reviews on Amazon the novel received an average of 3.5 out of 5 stars. Bleeding Edge averaged a 3.56 on Goodreads out of 2,708ratings. Here are a few of the reviews:
“Although I haven't finished reading this novel just yet, and am reading this along with Gravity's Rainbow simultaneously, I'm pleased with it. Pynchon's books don't scare me so I am planning to purchase all of his novels and read them all at once. I'm so glad I bought Bleeding Edge, the dust-jacket is so trippy, it changes colors in the light, and sort of has this 3-d illusion feel to it which I love.” Five Stars on Amazon, Assumedly read via Hardcover October 5, 2013
“I'm giving it a 5 mostly because of what I think Pynchon's done narratively - and it's epically, deliriously entertaining. He's a scop, like one of those Old English storytellers alternately sitting or standing before a totem of iconic figures, and he's unrolling to us a way to see the Grendel among us. His hero, however, is not of Beowulfian dimensions - in fact he's an ex-wife/mother-she, and not a warrior at all, but a de-licensed PI now sniffing out fraud. And everybody, to some degree, is bleeding fraudulence.” – Five Stars on Amazon, read via Kindle February 22, 2014
“I could not make it past the first CD. Jeannie's character voices were indistinguishable and colorless. This is the first time I've given up on an audio book.” – One Star on Amazon, read via audio book March 5, 2014
“This was my first experience with Thomas Pynchon and I think he writes for his own amusement and the reader be damned. I thought his internal dialogue annoying and exclusive to the reader and ultimately I wondered "what is the point" - the book left me cold. I realize I am in the minority and the world considers him one of the greats but I don't know why.” - Two stars on Amazon, read via Kindle March 9, 2014
Perhaps of notable importance, and irony, on Amazon, 23 of the 30 reviews that gave Bleeding Edge one star and 16 out of 23 that gave it two stars, were read using either an audio CD or Kindle. So Pynchon’s novel that is immersed in new age technology transfers terribly when actually used on new age technology.
Here are a few quotes from editorial reviews:
From Book Forum “Even as its plot grows ever more complex, Bleeding Edge is reliably entertaining as a sort of cracked Zagat’s, with entries ghostwritten by Ben Katchor.”
The New York Review of Books, “ The Crying of September 11” Michael Chabon. This review, however, is a bit of a cross over between a review and literary analysis.
“And a shrug, perhaps, from those who were born to irony like cavefish into darkness, too cool for pity, too young for rue, having always known that the world and books and Thomas Pynchon can never hope to be anything but copies of copies, parodies of parodies of themselves.”
“His broken plots expose the epistemological brokenness of paranoid systems, which are, after all, nothing but attempts, grander but no less doomed to failure than anyone’s, to make sense of a broken world.”
Here is a quote from one independent scholar Albert Rolls.
“ Bleeding Edge, then, is as much an inquiry into the mysteries of contemporary American life as it is into the mysteries of hashlingrz corporate activities” The novel touches on a larger concern of “ the loss of life’s depth, what Pynchon characterizes as the development of ‘ some stupefied consensus about what life has to be