Why You Can Trust CNET Thomas Pynchon wading into Silicon Alley with new book
Slated for release September 17, "Bleeding Edge" is set in 2001 in New York's Silicon Alley and deals with the time between the dot-com bubble bursting and 9/11.
The elusive Thomas Pynchon has written award-winning books set in world wars, the Mason-Dixon line, and California in the '60s and '80s. Now the 75-year-old, potential Nobel prize candidate is tackling the dot-com world in a new book, "Bleeding Edge."
Slated for release September 17, the book is set in 2001 in New York's Silicon Alley and deals with the "lull between the collapse of the dot-com boom and the terrible events of September 11," as described by publisher Penguin in a release announcing its 2012 results.
Pynchon's take on the post-bubble tech world could be a challenging read for the attention-deficit prone twitterati. Pynchon's 2006 book "Against the Day," for example, is more than 1,000 pages. Fans of the author acknowledge the element of patience required for consuming his work.
Pynchon's most recently published book, "Inherent Vice," a mere 384 pages, dives into the world of 1970s California counterculture. A reader describes the thrust of Pynchon's writing in a review of "Inherent Vice" on Amazon:
Cloaked as a detective thriller, Inherent Vice contains the snappy dialog, complicated plot, and criminal underworld types typical of the genre. Don't be fooled by the packaging, though. This novel is pure everything-including-the-kitchen-sink Pynchon with satirical song lyrics, paranoia, drugs, pop culture, lawyers, sex, politics, zombies, more drugs, and a side-trip to Vegas. The neat resolution of a convoluted plot is not really the point. Instead, let go of your need for closure and join Pynchon for a buoyant romp through the psychedelic haze that was L.A. in the late 1960s.
Substitute New York's tech scene in 2001 for Los Angeles in the later 1960s and you might get a glimpse of what's to come. Pynchon will make it worth the effort to pause from the daily, continuous stream of tweets, likes, scans, and snippets to become immersed in his vision of the tumultuous and more apocalyptic times at the turn of the century.
Via Sarah Weinman of Publishers Marketplace who first tweeted the news of Pynchon's new book.