Oblikovanje stvarnosti u digitalnom dobu u Probnoj fazi Thomasa Pynchona
Shaping Reality in the Digital Age in Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon

Summary/Abstract: The primary aim of this paper is to show how Maxine Tarnow, an in vestigator of financial and corporate frauds and the main protagonist of Thomas Pynchon’s 2013 novel Bleeding Edge, uncovers a new technological paradigm embodied in the form of the Internet. Although she attempts a rational recon struction of the Internet as a phenomenon, she fails, as traditional tools cannot adequately describe new realities. Pynchon, by ironically subverting the classical detective approach, portrays the early 21st century world as a space where indi vidual voices are lost in a cacophony of media, while economic elites operate be yond the reach of ordinary people like Maxine. Through her work on the “Gabriel Ice” case, the novel raises questions about which information can be trusted and how a coherent sense of reality can be constructed from fragmented data. This paper argues that the novel adopts an epistemological approach to character de velopment, prompting inquiries into the sources Maxine trusts and how she uses them to construct her understanding of reality. Unlike traditional detective stories that promise truth and resolution, Pynchon subverts expectations, gradually di verting the narrative from its initial goal. The analysis is based on a critical ex amination of the Cartesian epistemological framework (Descartes) through the lens of post representationalist thought from Wittgenstein, Rorty, and Derrida, interpreting Maxine’s investigation as an illustration of the limitations of rational ist models in the context of digital modernity.

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