In 1966, when The Crying of Lot 49 was published, Pynchon’s “all-ecompassing paranoiac vision of history” seemed “so kooky” and “far-fetched.”
Fast forward to 2013, and Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge, a novel focused on events before, during, and after 9/11 “becomes not just an ideal but a compulsory subject for a late Pynchon novel,” as Michael Chabon writes in his review for The New York Review of Books.
It appears history has caught up with this American prophet’s dark vision.