Monstrous Technology in Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge: The Internet as Terror and Transformation

ABSTRACT

This article argues that Pynchon’s portrayal of technology and the Internet in Bleeding Edge (2013) should be read as an example of the monstrous since it embodies its two key features: the ability to terrorize and transform. The paper shows that the Internet in Bleeding Edge is not only monstrous, as it can devour the life essence of its users, but also transformative, as it shocks them to such an extent that they can reassess their beliefs and can thus address new looming realities in productive ways. The paper shows this finding to be at odds with most research on the role of technology in Pynchon’s work and identifies a key benefit of Pynchon’s complex portrayal of the Internet in Bleeding Edge, which can enable better handling of the increasing presence of technology in the 21st century and making its presence and the accompanying transformations less terrifying.

Introduction

This article introduces an interesting paradox: while it at the same time claims that the Internet in Bleeding Edge should be read as the latest example of monstrosity and hence that it continues in the footsteps of Dracula and Frankenstein, albeit in a digital way, it at the same time claims that monstrous features of the Internet help humanity to better reconcile with the arrival of new technology and its (at times) terrifying effects. This paper shows this in three steps. First, it provides the necessary background by discussing Pynchon’s relationship with technology as shown in his novels, essays, and as discussed in contemporary research. Second, the paper briefly surveys the various definitions of monstrosity and emphasizes terror and transformation which are two key features of monstrosity that also carry out beneficial functions in societies. Third, the article provides a reading of the role of the Internet in Bleeding Edge from the perspective of its ability to terrorize and transform its users. Therefore, it shows that not only is Pynchon’s portrayal of technology significantly more complex than the research literature allows, but that it can also help to better understand the ever deeper intrusion of technology into everyday life.

Before we examine Pynchon’s complex relationship with technology, it is useful to briefly introduce Bleeding Edge (2013), which is narrated by Maxine Tarnow, a Jewish decertified fraud detective who investigates the irregular financial activities of a suspect billionaire who might or might not be supporting the terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks and the attacks themselves. Interestingly enough, at least in the context of contemporary novels written in English after 2000, Bleeding Edge and much of the detective investigation take place in cyberspace: either on the surface levels of the Internet, where its users are bombarded by advertising and spied upon by government agencies, or in much less accessible and completely unregulated corner of the Internet, which the novel punningly calls Deep Archer, thus suggesting that this online space departs from the usual practices of the mainstream Internet.

The key such departure, which enables all the others, is presented by the fact that Deep Archer is built on proprietary code which, in essence, grants its users complete anonymity to pursue whatever interests (legal or not) they might wish. Deep Archer is thus the price that many have their eyes on. That includes terrorists, who would use it to cover their threatening activities, corporate billionaires, who would use it to increase their profits, and ordinary users too, who would like to keep using it as a sanctuary free of the commerce and noise of the surface Web and as a creative space for actions that have significant transformative effect. As the later pages show, Bleeding Edge shows the superficial surface Internet to be a tool for terror in the hands of the US government and various corporations. In contrast, Deep Archer is shown to be a tool for transformation that its more refined visitors use to transform, heal, and not to lose hope.

Much of the detective investigation that drives the plot of Bleeding Edge relies on this contrast between the superficial surface Internet, which surveils its users and makes them into passive consumers, and the less accessible Deep Archer, which provides its users with space for transformation that allows them to process the rapid intrusion of new technologies (and the Internet itself as the novel takes place in 2001) and the reality of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

This is an important finding which the next section shows to be at odds with most contemporary research on the role of technology in Pynchon’s novels. When describing the Internet, then both the current research on Pynchon and other novels focusing on the Internet written at the same time offer a portrayal of monstrous technology gifted at surveilling and terrorizing, but devoid of the transformative features that Deep Archer has, and which enable healing. This paper argues that such a view is not a complete one, and hence the next section introduces the necessary context before discussing the examples which affirm the transformative side of technology, which has been overlooked by both the scholarship and novelistic practice.

Survey of Research on Pynchon’s Relationship to Technology: A Terrifying Tool in the Hands of Capitalism

This section of the paper provides an overview of the existing research literature on Pynchon’s portrayal of technology in Bleeding Edge. It argues that while Pynchon’s own approach to technology demonstrated in his novels and short stories is reserved, it is nonetheless more complex than most research literature acknowledges, as their findings typically emphasize the dystopian effects of technology and do not consider its non-threatening features. Since this paper argues that such features are prominent in Bleeding Edge, the following literature review thus serves as a background for the final section of the paper, which highlights the transformative aspects of technology that are a vital part of Bleeding Edge.

Ever since the novelistic career of Thomas Pynchon started in the 1960s, technology has been one of the key themes of his work. As Susan Strehle points out there are “more general discussions of relativity theory and quantum mechanics in the criticism of Thomas Pynchon’s fiction than anywhere else in the literature section of the library” (24). Since his novels use the portrayal of technology as a means of commenting on society, Pynchon has employed various subfields of technology to comment on American society: for example, Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) invokes ballistics, chemistry, and geology, Mason & Dixon (1997) astronomy, and Against the Day (2006) mathematics, geometry and physics (Dalsgaard, “Science and Technology” 157). Naturally, computer-related technology has also been included, even though many of Pynchon’s novels predate computing, the World Wide Web and the Internet. However, as Dalsgaard notes, Pynchon’s oeuvre still features computer hardware (“Minstrel Island”), the binary idea behind machine language (V), and the notion of coding and decoding (“Real Estate and the Internet” 166).

Despite the common recurrence of technology in Pynchon’s work, many researchers believe that this relationship is not amicable and that Pynchon’s approach to technology is distrustful, reserved and sometimes even paranoid. For example, Dalsgaard, a seminar scholar of Pynchon’s relationship to technology, notes in a fittingly named paper, Terrifying Technology, that Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) reveals the dangers associated with technological processes, its artifacts and heroes (94) showing that they should not be read as benevolent or positive as they so often are. In a different study, Dalsgaard argues that technology and reason in Pynchon’s novels “become a handmaiden of the capitalist potentials” and warns that “any technological process may enable or permit – and even constitute – new levels of exploitation” (“Science and technology” 163). In fact, when Dalsgaard writes elsewhere that some scholars “embrace a paranoid reading of communication and Internet technology as handmaidens of capitalism and control” (“Real Estate and the Internet” 167), she aptly summarizes the spirit of much research on Pynchon’s relationship with technology.

Other researchers also emphasize the potential of the Internet to be a tool of terror. For instance, recent studies have shown that topics of novels that examine the effects of the Internet on society warn of the vanishing boundaries between the physical world and that of the Internet (Collado-Rodríguez 2016; Czerwiński 2017; Dalsgaard 2019b; Malewitz 2015; Ludwigs 2015), the Internet’s ability to promote surveillance to increased and unexpected levels (Wasihun 2018; Willmetts 2018; Gouck 2018), and even of its ability to destabilize democracies (Bullen 2018; Darlington 2016; Johansen 2014; Rutledge 2020). In this sense, the Internet is often portrayed as a digital monster which devours the life essence of its users and societies, in much the same way as Count Dracula diminishes the life of Jonathan Harker.

Such a finding is also replicated and confirmed by studies that research solely the role of technology in Bleeding Edge. And while there are some research studies that do not see the portrayal of the Internet in Bleeding Edge as a completely terrifying technology – for example, Collado-Rodrigues sees its hidden part, Deep Archer, as a space that can avoid “the traps of binary thinking” (2016: 37), most of the research literature sees it as a tool for terror. Even the less superficial version of the Internet, Deep Archer, has been read as a space in which “conspiracies to sabotage society in all its aspects are hatched” (Wallhead 2019: 101), which entraps and enslaves people (Collado-Rodríguez 2016: 240), empowers a new model of slavery based on web-addiction (Collado-Rodriquez 237), and which is directly connected to 9/11 trauma (Wallhead 2019: 101), or military surveillance (Darlington 2016: 248–50). Hence, much of the available research recognizes in the portrayal of the Internet in Bleeding Edge its ability to terrorize its users and the inhabitants of New York. Nonetheless, Tabbi is correct when he writes that when we think of technology in Pynchon’s works, “we are ultimately contemplating ourselves” (28). Since both Pynchon’s and humanity’s relationship to technology is a complex one, arguably more complex than most research on Pynchon’s relationship to technology affirms, the next section of this paper discusses the beneficial aspects of the Internet in Bleeding Edge.

Monstrosity as terrifying and transforming internet in bleeding edge

It might appear as a challenge, at least at first, to argue that the Internet can be considered the latest example of monstrosity. It does not share many of the features traditionally associated with monstrosity: namely size, physical deformity, and malice toward the human race (Waterhouse 28–9). Unlike Godzilla or King Kong, the Internet is not large in the observable sense of the world. Nor is it deformed, like Frankenstein, or inherently evil, nor does it devour people. It does not have a set of very sharp teeth such as the many dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park, not the gigantic shark in Jaws. Therefore, should the monstrosity of the Internet be measured through the consensual indicators of “eating a human being… bigness, physical grotesqueness, and malice” (Gilmore 21), some could not consider the Internet a monster at all. Nonetheless, that would be a mistake as the Internet is a monster which shares at least two key features of monstrosity: the ability to terrorize and the ability to transform, both of which can help humanity recognize that some of its behavior carries risk. The following section first introduces each key feature of monstrosity and then illustrates it with examples from Bleeding Edge.

The internet as a tool of terror

This section shows that the Internet can be considered the latest embodiment of the monstrous by first demonstrating its ability to be a tool of terror, which is one of many commonly accepted markers of monstrosity such as “eating human beings… bigness, physical grotesqueness, and malice” (Gilmore 21). At first glance, the Internet may not appear monstrous at all: It does not devour any actual human beings (like the Alien monster would), it is not large in the observable sense of the world (like Godzilla), and it is not deformed (like Frankenstein’s monster). Nevertheless, the following pages argue that even though it does leave its victims intact, it still can terrorize and scare those who encounter it. If Andriano claims that a key criterion of monstrosity is to arouse “the primal fear of being eaten” (91), then the Internet in Bleeding Edge meets this criterion with a twist of the 21st century: Instead of devouring limbs, it terrorizes its victims by devouring their energy and willpower.

This is achieved through the multitude of options to lose one’s time that the Internet introduced, increased, and multiplied. From Pynchon’s perspective, such options are far from benign. As he voices through one of the characters: “keyboards and screens” are “portals to Web sites for what the Management wants everybody addicted to, shopping, gaming, jerking off, streaming endless garbage” (432). Pynchon thus claims that the Internet is doubly dangerous: not only does it devour the precious time of its users on the Earth, it also does so in a way that is difficult to discern and so the affected do not know that they are deprived of something vital, nor can they defend themselves against it. As the character goes on to proclaim: “the slaves don’t even know that’s what they are” (432). It could be argued that this life-devouring quality only concerns the superficial Internet which in the novel promotes capitalism and commerce above all other values. Nevertheless, the same applies to its less accessible and less corrupt version, the Deep Archer, too.

Even though Deep Archer is supposed to be a better alternative to the surface Internet since it is much closer to the original hacker ethic of unsupervised freedom, it is nonetheless painted with similarly bleak colors. It is a place “down in the Deep Web” (57), situated at the same time “Way down” (78) and at “the edge of the world” (to be added later) which is a “dark archive” (58) that probably contains “forces of destruction” (74). When Maxine journeys into this dark archive accompanied by a hacker, the novel shows them to be “slowly descending from wee-hours Manhattan into teeming darkness” and eventually reaching a place which includes content “deemed too violent, or offensive or intensely beautiful for the market as currently defined” (240). This bleak description is also coupled with a life-energy devouring aspect: even though Maxine claims she is not addicted to mindless online browsing, she herself realizes that she “can’t stay out of Deep Archer” (426) and is compelled to return. During one such instance, she realizes that there are “three and a half hours she can’t account for” (426). With no results to show for her time investment and portion of her life gone, the above examples show that like the count of Dracula, who harmed the Victorians of London by sucking their blood, the Internet in Bleeding Edge terrorizes its victims by sucking the life energy and time of its New Yorker users, the blood of the 21st century.

The Internet in Bleeding Edge is also a source of terror because it is connected with multiple ways in which it can end the known world, which start with a technological error and end with a technologically induced catastrophe. From the very first pages of Bleeding Edge, its characters fear the “dreaded Y2K” and that the “the world’s computers will fail to increment the year correctly and bring down the Apocalypse” (302). Clearly, the network of connected computers that embodies the Internet raises fear in those who use them as well as in those who do not, which illustrates how far reaching its ability to terrorize is. Nevertheless, the Internet is also dangerous to individual users: there is a political blogger whose writing online threatens the status quo to such an extent that the government reciprocally threatens her life (137). The Internet is also terrifying because its software building blocks are terrifying: one of the few discussed examples of software happens to be spyware which is described as “disturbing” (104) because it enables to “scavenge information” (104–5) from government computers and make it available to Russian mafia and Islamic terrorists. Given that the terrorist attack of 9/11 takes place during the later sections of the novel, the terror that the spyware software enables is significant. The Internet is also dangerous as a place on the whole that the novel’s characters notice, and hence, they compare parts of the Internet to labyrinthine mazes similar to those depicted in then just released monster film The Mummy (226). No matter whether the novel discusses the physical machines, individual software programs, or the network that connects the machines and software together, Bleeding Edge portrays them as a source of terror and hence a monstrous technology.

Finally, the Internet is also a source of terror because of its close affiliation with the American military, which in the novel is portrayed solely in dystopian colors. By delivering a history lesson on the origins of the Internet, Maxine’s father attempts to correct her opinion that the Internet is an “online paradise” (419). He first suggests that it was created to “assure survival of U. S. command,” and that because it was created to preserve military dominance of the U. S., it was “conceived in sin, the worst possible” and that it “never stopped carrying in its heart a bitter-cold death wish for the planet” (419). Finally, his lecture concludes with debunking the supposed peacefulness of the Eisenhower years, during whose presidential years the technology that enabled the Internet was conceived by saying that below the appearance of peace was “pure terror. Midnight forever” (419). When Maxine disagrees claiming that the invention empowers and liberates humanity, her father counter-argues by pointing to the ability of the Internet to always surveil people, a scenario he compares to “handcuffs of the future” (420). To reinforce the malevolence of the technology and the opinions of Maxine’s father, Bleeding Edge shows on more occasions that Maxine’s “every click, every cursor movement” is observed either by the government or by undercover government agents (407). This, in the words of one such agent is later rather charmingly described as “No keystroke left behind” (105). Bleeding Edge thus not only connects the physical hardware with terror, but also the inception of the technology and its daily usage too, which is yet another means for the novel to demonstrate the monstrous nature of the technology. Yet, as the next section shows, Bleeding Edge stands out in its portrayal of the Internet because it does not solely focus on its ability to terrorize but also on its ability to transform.

The Internet as a Tool of Transformation: Healing and Hope

In addition to their ability to terrorize, monsters also carry out a vital social role: they enable individuals and societies to change behavior that would result in harm and thus they prevent it. The shocking arrival of a monster rouses individuals and societies from their daily routines and reactions and creates an opening for a change. Research suggest that this self-correcting possibility has always been associated with the monstrous. According to Gilmore, the Latin roots of the word monstrum refer to “that which reveals, that which warns” (24). As he further adds, the term comes from “an admonition, monitus, because they point out something by signaling or symbolizing.” In this sense, Beal writes of “the politically and religiously conservative function of the monstrous” (207) claiming that “the monster is a warning or a portent of what to avoid” (207). It is this guiding ability of monsters that most of the available research affirms as a key feature of the monstrous, along with their propensity for terror. Therefore, monsters are not only and solely “extraordinary, alien, and abnormal” (Murgatroyd 222), but also carry out a vital social role: they bring messages of warning or advice that should be decoded and heeded. Such monstrous advice is also firmly rooted in its time and place. As Cohen writes, “the monstrous body is pure culture” (38) suggesting that what the monsters reveal is tailored to the anxieties of their cultures. In addition, Kearney points out that monsters do so with surprising accuracy, when he writes that monsters are actually “transposing our most secret phobias” (128).

In this sense, the secret phobia addressed by Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge is the unparalleled intrusion of technology into western lives around the new millennium and more specifically Maxine’s fears about the development of her sons. While the previous part of this paper has covered why and how such an intrusion is terrifying, this section of the paper shows how the intrusion can also be used for transformation of the then common relationship to technology. This is enabled by the shock created by such an intrusion. As Asa Mittman writes, the arrival of the monstrous “creates [a] sense of vertigo, that which calls into question our (their, anyone’s) epistemological worldview” and invites us to “acknowledge the failures of our systems of categorization” (8). In a similar vein, Cohen notes that “the monster’s very existence is a rebuke to boundary and enclosure” (40) and Mitmann argues that “the monster is that which threatens understandings of the world” (8). In this sense, Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge creates vertigo by its complex portrayal of technology. Nonetheless, Bleeding Edge does not only portray technology as a menace and a tool of terror. It also enables it to create a space for positive transformation in the lives of individuals and societies, as the following pages show. The following pages thus argue for the existence of the therapeutic side of the digital/the Internet and build on the previous sections which argued that the monstrosity of technology shakes the core conceptions and viewpoints of the novel’s characters which enables them to change and grow. They show that exposure to technology helps Maxine transform from a hesitant luddite to a proficient user of the digital world, which in turn enables her to explore the therapeutic side of the Internet and alleviate some of her pressing fears. This beneficial side effect of monstrosity is first demonstrated on the main protagonist of the novel, Maxine, and then on her children, Ziggy and Otis, as they are the characters who interact the most with the Internet. As the following pages argue, technology in Bleeding Edge is thus not only monstrous but also therapeutic. Finally, the following paragraphs will show that ultimately Maxine becomes more confident that her sons will be better able to grow into moral citizens thanks to technology in general and DeepArcher in particular.

Maxine: From a hesitant luddite to proficient user

There is a clear linear progression throughout the entirety of Bleeding Edge in which Maxine changes from a person who at the beginning of the novel, like Thomas Pynchon of old, is suspicious of technology which she does not know much about nor can use proficiently. At the end of the novel, though, Maxine becomes a confident user of niche digital spaces where she also experiences a significant therapeutic experience that helps her recontextualise the fears that she has about the future of her sons. These pages will first address how the monstrosity of the Internet enables Maxine to learn to navigate the digital world and then experience its therapeutic side. They will argue that such a therapeutic change caused by the Internet would not be possible had Maxine not been exposed and transformed by the monstrous side of the Internet during the course of the novel.

At the beginning of her detective quest, she is reluctant to use technology in her case. She objects when it is suggested that the investigation should take place in the digital world and confirms that she does not have the necessary skills as she is not much “of an IT type” (10). When she realizes that much of the investigation will take place in the digital realms, she notes that her client is “dragging her uncomfortably toward” the digital world (41). The early chapters rather stereotypically affirm that Maxine prefers not to use technology when they show example after example of what Maxine does not know about it or what she needs to be explained by male characters, her sons included. Unlike almost every other character of the novel, Maxine does not know what Deep Web is (10) nor has she heard of DeepArcher (36). Her unfamiliarity with technology is so profound that Maxine is not even aware of the existence of flash disks (107).

This initial luddite portrayal of Maxine changes as she starts learning how to navigate the digital world. And even though the early chapters show that Maxine is often uncertain when exposed to technology, an element of approval is added since the novel acknowledges the difficulty of what Maxine has to learn: “it’s hacker stuff Maxine has trouble following” (78). Gradually, however, Maxine learns to navigate both the Deep Web and DeepArcher even in spite of the difficulty of the task – at this point in the novel, DeepArcher is described as a “maze, only invisible” (79). Yet, even though the passages connecting the maze are “vanishing and relocating” with each move and there is “no chance of retracing” one’s path (79), Maxine eventually learns to navigate the digital world confidently.

Soon, Maxine finds Deep Web “a nice secure place to meet” (83) and, in an original reversal of a cliche from the detective genre, actually prefers it as a meeting place instead of the subway. At this point in the novel, Maxine is already different from the other characters who admit that they have “no cojones” for such a “cannonball dive into strange depths” (58). And Maxine’s status as a more confident navigator of the digital is confirmed when the novel shows her hacking banking accounts (172) and “refereeing nerds disputes” (311). Although she “can’t understand a word,” it is clear that her technological skills have grown exponentially and her own transformation from a hesitant luddite to a proficient user opens the therapeutic potential of the digital world, as the next section shows.

The internet as a tool of therapy: Preserving innocence, alleviating fears

The key therapeutic benefit of the Internet in Bleeding Edge lies in the fact that it enables Maxine to process her fears about her sons’ future as she is worried that their idealistic and moral sons, who are still children, will become cynics when their realize that their believes are largely incompatible with the world and New York city. It is not surprising, but rather key to the argument that this paper makes that these fears and also their eventual reconceptualization are revealed and mediated in relation to technology. In the novel this is achieved in the scene where her father reveals the Internet to be monstrous and it is as a response to these arguments that Maxine reveals she is worried that her sons might grow into unfeeling amoral cynics because they might “start caring too much” about the world and its many injustices and seeing their hopes for a better world dashed, they can turn into “cynical smart-mouthed little bastards” (422).

Pynchon shows the key importance of Maxine’s fear by subtly referencing it in both the very first and the very last chapter, thus placing it at points of significant importance. The first chapter starts with Maxine accompanying the boys to their school, thus demonstrating that she cares about their safety, and the last chapter ends with Maxine observing them prepare to take a journey and wondering how they will fare, both on the journey and in life. The two scenes feature Maxine taking care of her son’s physical and mental well-being, which is a motive repeated throughout the novel, as the next section shows.

The first scene in the novel in which Maxine at length interacts with her sons shows all of them playing a videogame where they dispose of New Yorkers with machine guns. It might be tempting to argue that technology is only a negative influence in her son’s slide to cynicism and lost innocence. Though very much the opposite is true since Pynchon’s portrayal of technology is more complex. In fact, the boys are revealed to play the role of moral police in the game and they focus on New Yorkers that break codes of proper New York conduct: the first target is disposed of because she steals fruit in a store “without shame” (33), the next for screaming at his small child. The other perpetrators for being “zapping loudmouths on cellular phones” and the next for being “morally self-elevated bicycle riders” (34). In spite of her initial protests against the game, Maxine joins her sons in playing it too when she finds out that “No homeless people (…) kids, babies, dogs, old people” (34) are on the target list, thus finding a common point between herself and the sons. She even wonders that “maybe it’s a virtual and kid-scale way of getting into the antifraud business” (35). Although this first scene, which shows Maxine and her sons interacting with technology, does not feature the Internet, it introduces the blueprint for its use for the boys: for them all technology, and most specifically the Internet which they use most prominently in the novel, serves as a means to exercise their moral convictions. It provides them with a safe space where they can act on their beliefs without facing retribution for being moral in a city that sometimes is not.

Technology also gives Maxine an opportunity to engage with her sons on a level which she would not be able without it. She learns through it that her sons have not succumbed to cynicism and that their moral compass is intact and that their innocence is not lost. Observing her son’s behavior in the game enables her to witness something that she would not be able to see in the real world and might help her realize that her sons are well equipped to handle their maturation without losing their morals. Further, Maxine’s own participation in the game and her realization that it is “sort of fun” (35) suggest that in spite of her initial rejection of the game, she can accept the digital world in which her sons are growing up proficiently. And as she herself learns to navigate both the game (and later the digital world too), her fears about her sons growing up can become alleviated.

All other scenes in which technology is shown to address Maxine’s fears already involve the Internet. The first such example takes place when the boys voice their objection toward the existence of Santa Claus. This is countered by both Maxine and Horst, her partner, who raise the idea of “Santanet” to preserve the innocence of their sons a little longer and stave off premature descent to cynicism. When the boys raise that Santa’s elves nor Santa exist, Horst counters that they do and that “elves have gradually moved out of the workshop and into fulfillment and delivery, where they’re busy outsourcing and routing toy requests. Pretty much everything these days is transacted via Santanet” which, as he argues, is a “virtual private network for Santa’s business” whose existence should be accepted as logical since “Nobody has trouble believing in the Internet, which, really is magic” (398). Maxine and Horst base the concept of Santanet on the Internet and thus they attempt to explain the workings of Santa Claus in a way that aligns with the technological reality that their sons are growing up. They use the Internet to adapt the traditional story of Santa Claus for the digital age and thus make it more believable for their children. By doing so, they manage their children’s exposure to cynicism and also address their own fears about their development.

The most important evidence of the therapeutic side of the Internet takes place in DeepArcher toward the end of the novel, where the boys address the cynicism present in what they see is amoral development of New York and also the damage that New York suffers during the terrorist attack of 9/11. As Maxine develops her own ability to navigate the digital world, she accidentally finds out that the boys used their digital skills to recreate the damaged parts of New York in DeepArcher as there they can do what they have no chance of addressing in their real lives. By recreating the parts of the city which were destroyed by greedy development and the terrorist attacks, they preserve their innocence and reject the greed and destruction that affected the city. They clearly show their deep care for the city by participating in its digital reconstruction. They are thus able to maintain their emotional connection to a “city that can never be” anymore in the real world and have no reason to submit to cynicism, since DeepArcher gives them this possibility to preserve both the city, their moral convictions and their innocence.

It is only through DeepArcher that Maxine can witness this scene which helps her realize that her sons are more than capable to bear the advance of technology into their lives. Also, had Maxine not been changed by her exposure to the monstrous Internet, she would not have been able to access this part of the digital world and witness the profound scene. As she observes them in their “more merciful city” where they are “ambling around in this not-yet-corrupted screenscape, at home in it already” (429), Maxine can realize that her own fears are unfounded and the Internet also can help her sons to preserve their innocence. In this way, Pynchon uses the Internet not only as a monstrous presence but also as a tool of therapy which enables Maxine to recontextualize her fears for her sons safety and also connect with them on another level and on their terms which would not be possible without it.

Conclusion

There is a strong connection between monsters and crises in the sense that the presence of a monster enables humanity to get in touch with their pressing problems. Levinas and Diem-My point out that monsters “offer a space where society can safely represent and address anxieties of its time” (1). This leads them to observe that a marked increase in the presence of monsters in Western culture corresponds with the many ongoing crises that it suddenly needs to face.

Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge, which according to Kittler “is also a novel that reads our times” (212), addresses one of such new challenges: the increased intrusion of technology into everyday lives. With the increasing talk of robotization and with the increasing abilities of AI which is capable of achieving more and more each year, it is only natural that people can be afraid of technology. And paradoxically, this is the problem that Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge helps to solve, by presenting a technological monster, the Internet, which is terrifying to such an extent that the characters of the novel are shocked to reassess their values, positions, and opinions and thus transform their fears.

In this context, monstrosity has always enabled such a way of addressing new problems that society has had to face for the first time, as they offer a way of getting to know the issue on a deeper level. In this sense, Derrida even defines monsters as messengers of the new when he writes that a monster “shows itself in something that is not yet shown” and that it “frightens precisely because no anticipation had prepared one to identify this figure” (6). Consequently, for Derrida, the future itself is monstrous unless we get to know it first through monsters, which is a point raised by Hardt and Negri, who claim that “the new world of monsters is where humanity has to grasp its future” (2). That is essentially what we see happen in Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge, where the Internet is terrifying to such an extent that it helps the characters deal with the anxieties of their time.

Even if the Internet is presented as mostly a terrifying technology at the beginning of the novel, readers cannot hold this opinion long after they see how Maxine’s exposure to Deep Archer enables her to alleviate her fears about the development of her sons. This brings to mind Derrida’s idea that humans fear those things they do not know and label them as monstrous. However, having explored labyrinths, deserts, and witnessed resurrections and transformations, the readers can hardly accept the notion that the Internet is solely a medium for surveillance, as it was so common at the time of the publication of the novel.

When Asa Mittman writes that a monster “creates [a] sense of vertigo, that which calls into question our (their, anyone’s) epistemological worldview” and invites us to “acknowledge the failures of our systems of categorization” (8), one can notice this exact dynamic at play in Bleeding Edge: what once terrified can no longer be thought monstrous once it helped people in need of transformation. Hence, the value of the novel thus lies in the fact that it offers readers a unique space (in the context of other similar novels) in which they can safely approach their fears of technology and be reassured that the future is neither technophilic nor technophobic. And that if like Maxine’s children they do not give up agency, then they will be able to fruitfully use technology to their own humanistic ends.

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Jiří Šalamoun

Jiří Šalamoun teaches contemporary English and American literature at the Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Education, Masaryk University. His research focuses on the impact of the Internet on individuals and societies in contemporary fiction in English.