In Bleeding Edge, Thomas Pynchon takes on technology, 9-11 and so much more

【转帖自USA TODAY: Don Oldenburg, Special for USA TODAY 6:06 a.m. EDT September 14, 2013】

by Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon’s latest period piece, Bleeding Edge (4 stars out of 4) takes place in Manhattan’s “Silicon Alley” in the spring of 2001, during the calm between the dotcom collapse on Wall Street and the terrorist atrocities of 9/11.

Who better to fictionally address that surreal time than the author who, 40 years ago, in his masterpiece Gravity’s Rainbow, penned the opening line, “A screaming comes across the sky….”

Pynchon’s latest detective caper revolves around the picaresque adventures of Maxine Tarnow, young Jewish Upper West Side mother of two elementary-school boys, sort of divorced from her ex. She is a wisecracking, fearless beauty who runs her own uncertified anti-fraud agency and carries a purse heavy with a Beretta.

Like Pynchon’s past gumshoes (Oedipa Maas in The Crying of Lot 49), Maxine is quite the character. Her clientele of low-stakes hustlers elevates quickly when she investigates a suspicious computer-security company called hashslingrz. Its insidious geek billionaire founder Gabriel Ice may be skimming millions to fund Arab terrorists. But why?

That mystery opens the floodgates for the kinds of offbeat characters Pynchon is known for: Russian mobsters, a foot-fetish hacker, a black-ops killer, a self-made Zen master, a sleazebag pornographer, a professional scent sniffer—all while Maxine is yearning to be Angela Lansbury “dealing with class tickets.”

Of course, there are Pynchonesque names—Eric Outfield, Nick Windust, Conkling Speedwell, Bernie Madoff (oh, right, he’s non-fiction, but in here briefly because, hmmm, what’s that Maxine investigates?).

The Internet is a core character, too, from the underground Deep Web where online criminals hang, to the brilliant DeepArcher (think “departure”) alternative-reality, to alpha hackers who think that destroying the Internet means saving humanity. In fact, Pynchon’s powerful reasoning concerning the Internet should be cauterized into warning labels for websites, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and all the rest of it.

But Pynchon is no troglodyte. While embedding the book with concerns about the proliferation of technology, violence, media-saturated consumer culture and omniscient bureaucracy, he also fills it with telling mass-cultural references — from Kenan and Kel, Jennifer Aniston’s “Friends”-circa hair and Dragonball Z to Ally McBeal, eight-megabyte flash drives and the Macarena. “Nostalgia lurks,” as Pynchon writes..

As he often does, the author targets a grim, dark zeitgeist like some truth-seeking Stinger missile. He remarkably handles that disturbing day of Sept. 11, tilting the story and everyone in it, stunning the reader into an alternative strange-times reality where Pynchon comfortably dwells. Yet he spends no more than a couple of pages on the actual attacks, reflecting instead on its effect on his characters.

The truth is, Pynchon writes like no one else. He somehow injects love and humanity as the antidote to the dehumanization he fears and obsesses about.

He convincingly warp-speeds from one setting and characters to another within the same sentence. Even in his hyper-narrative ways, he remains the master of phrasing — cool, hip, explosive narrative fragments overstuffed with meaning.

Readers scarred by Gravity’s Rainbow, still muttering “incomprehensible,” will find this lucid dream far more accessible. This is not a start-and-then-put-down novel. It’s an exceptional literary novel that’s nonetheless a linear, joyous read set in extraordinary times.

Look, either you buy into Pynchon or you don’t.

If you’re willing to enter this bleeding-edge (def: more advanced and riskier than cutting-edge) novel, figure to come out the back page a different reader, probably better off.

At the end of the book’s advance proof sent to reviewers, the “About The Author” page is blank except for “TK.” That’s newsroom and printers’ lingo for “to come,” as in, “more content coming.” For Pynchon fans, it’s what you hope for — more heights of literary experience TK.

品钦王国的另一面

托马斯•品钦(Thomas Pynchon)的《性本恶》(Inherent Vice)就像是一部庞大的时间机器,带着我们回到早期的20世纪70年代的加利福尼亚。那个时候的加利福尼亚是冲浪的俊男靓女们的天堂;随处可见骑着自行车的少男少女;大街上游走着嬉皮士、异端、和道貌岸然的瘾君子。那个时候,人们渴望得到阿卡普尔科金色大麻和巴拿马红色大麻,吃比萨饼和Hostess Twinkies;姑娘们喜欢留长发、穿短裙,小伙子们喜欢穿佩斯利花纹尼和皮装;人们总是不停地调控着他们的偏执程度,时刻提防着缉毒警察、刑警、和联邦调查局的官员。

和他的《万有引力之虹》(Gravity’s Rainbow)、《V》(V)或者《梅森和迪克逊》(Mason & Dixon)相比,品钦的这部小说要简朴清新很多。那些早期作品叙述风格都如迷宫一般,百转千回,极尽错综复杂之能事;总是充斥着那些他所谓的“穷混混”与来自“一个新出现的、对其本身还缺乏掌控的技术政治体制”下使者之间奇妙莫测的冲突摩擦。而《性本恶》却是一部简单冗长的侦探故事,插科打诨地嘲弄讽刺了洛杉矶警署及其特工人员。在这部作品中,偏执狂更主要的体现为一种吸食过多大麻的副产品,而谈不上什么政治意识,或者意识形态。

《性本恶》一方面让我们有机会认识到上个世纪6、70年代对品钦先生的影响是多么的巨大;另一方面,这部作品也消减了品钦作品风格的神秘性,强调了其叙述风格的相似性。笼统地说,品钦的叙述风格就是一个大杂烩——上流文化与下层文化的杂烩、愚蠢低俗的恶作剧与精辟的历史考证的杂烩、顽皮的双关语与超现实的梦境般的事件以及搞笑的荒诞的杂烩。他的作品风格与鲍勃•迪伦(Bob Dylon)、金•凯西(Ken Kesey)、杰克•凯鲁亚克(Jack Kerouac)等人的作品颇多共同之处;甚至与理查德•布劳提艮(Richard Brautigan)的作品也颇为相似。

和他的另一部献给反文化时代的颂歌《葡萄园》(Vineland)一样,这部《性本恶》也鼓捣出一个神秘兮兮的加利福尼亚——在这里,人们使用的都是一种“大麻”语言,描述的是那种乖僻、古怪、慵懒但却又常常令人飘飘欲仙的生活状态。这令人想起托马斯•伍尔夫(Thomas Wolfe)笔下的加利福尼亚——一个与美国其他任何一个地方都不一样的加利福尼亚。在品钦的意愿中,这样的一个加利福尼亚会在里根执政期间的1980年代到来。《性本恶》的主人公担心迷幻的60年代终将结束,所有前变革时期的梦想也注定会终结,因为这个没有信仰、唯利是图的世界控制了一切。

如果说《葡萄园》读起来的感觉就像一部对《第49号叫卖》(The Crying of Lot 49)的阅读指南的话,那么这部《性本恶》就像一位女性作者对《葡萄园》的即兴改编。因为推动情节向前发展的又是寻找一位失踪的女人:一位陪伴着拙劣的资本主义权力网络代表的前嬉皮士;然后又是那些权力利用自身的优势去改造、收买、甚至扼杀那些嬉皮士和瘾君子们。

品钦的这部新作中也有不少对其早期作品的自我指涉——有点遮遮掩掩、欲说还休式的卖弄吧。比如其中“邮件弹射发送系统”令人回忆起《第49号的叫卖》中的一种类似的邮递系统;还有天空飘荡着的一种疯狂而又和谐的神秘笑声也能让人们想到《万有引力之虹》的开篇描述。

这部作品中的人们,毫无疑问,都不够立体化。都有点像形象单一的玩偶。也许只有主人公算是略有例外。不像《梅森和迪克逊》中的人物那样是有血有肉的。但是和品钦早期作品中的人物倒是更为接近:这些人物的出现只是为了满足作者品钦的需要,招之即来、挥之即去,想在哪里安插这么一个就安插这么一个。缺乏人物的真实感。谁知道呢?也许这就是品钦世界里的“人”的真实的生存状态吧?!

尽管《本性恶》与品钦的上一部作品有着内在的一致,但是它更像是一部品钦小说的经典搞笑版,而不是一部自成一体的作品。它消解了《万有引力之虹》和《V》所具有的醒目华贵的复杂效果,呈现出来的是卡通人物式的简单直接。毫无疑问,品钦的读者们会大受鼓舞。至少不会沮丧而又无奈地说“我还是读不懂品钦”了。

【此文系根据这篇文章编译整理而成】