'Too paranoid for you?': Suspicion, Trust, and (Post/Meta?)Modern Money in Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge

This chapter examines Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge (2013), which has been recognised by scholars both for its engagement with the digital world and its post-postmodernism, and considers the novel’s preoccupation with trust and community in relation to money, on the one hand, and the internet, on the other. Paranoia, pastiche, scepticism, irony, and insincerity: these quintessentially postmodernist traits might be regarded as the textual properties most likely to challenge, complicate, and frustrate the trust that literary texts demand of readers. Can a discomforting, disruptive, suspicious, and paranoid literary experience also be one that fosters readerly trust? And do Bleeding Edge’s post-postmodernist figurations of money and the digital world make it a less paranoid, less sceptical, and thus more trusting/trustworthy novel than Pynchon’s earlier, more overtly postmodernist works? From the vantage point of the ‘public money paradigm’ advanced by the Money on the Left (MotL) editorial collective, I argue that Bleeding Edge interrogates, complicates, and yet ultimately affirms trust, especially in its expressions of suspicion and uncertainty about – as well as its openness towards and engagements with – money and the internet.