I've recently read William Gibson's new novel Pattern Recognition, reread his "Virtual Light trilogy" (Virtual Light, Idoru, and All Tomorrow's Parties), and have been following his weblog, and am now jotting down a few thoughts. First, Gibson has really mellowed over the years. As he himself says, he no longer does "deep fried anomie" or even cyberpunk. Pattern Recognition is his first attempt at a mainstream novel with tech (as opposed to sci fi) elements. I have to say it's less satisfying because it limits his imagination. His gift for extrapolating/exaggerating current trends into pungent satire hasn't disappeared but it's severely circumscribed. Also, it's a weird book because the writing of it clearly straddled 9/11. The "hunt for the perfect pair of sneakers" he started at the go-go turn of the millennium acquired a melancholy 9/11 subplot which skews (and actually comes to dominate) the tone. I realize that many of us went through a similar thought process but Gibson's unabashed consumerism (reverent descriptions of clothes and gear) makes the transition to a meaner, leaner consciousness even bumpier.
One thing PR shares with all the books that preceded it is a weak plot. The Virtual Light novels each relied on what Alfred Hitchcock calls a "McGuffin"--some object that drives the story but turns out not to be terribly important (respectively virtual sunglasses, a nanotech generator, and a kind of fax teleporter, the last being the most significant of the three). I won't spoil PR but the thing the main characters are focused on feels like another McGuffin. And once again an artist is a supernatural hero figure--I sometimes think WG was born to be an art critic [update: more on this here], even though I don't entirely trust his eye (Cornell? Noritoshi Hirakawa?). What Gibson does best is make cutting social observations in gemlike prose, e.g., his travelogue through a one-step-removed Japan in Idoru, his thoughts on reality TV (Slitscan, Cops in Trouble), and in the new book, bleeding-edge trendspotting or "cool hunting." Which brings me to my main point: why do these things have to be in a novel?
I was somewhat let down when I found out his weblog was a kind of promotional stunt, timed to coincide with the PR book tour and then to end. I actually thought for a moment that he might be an old media guy that wrote about new media and one day started living it. At this stage of his career a weblog seemed like a better vehicle for his dry observations than his novels, which are becoming lackluster, as novels. It seems silly to be killing a bunch of trees and providing grist for the book-publishing hype cycle when he could be communicating directly, and semi-interactively, with his core readership. I briefly, naively imagined him living on the royalties from his rather lucrative back-catalogue and just blogging. Oh well, not everyone is made for the potlatch economy. I'm not sure I am either, so I'm sorry for projecting. To be honest, I worry about being sucked wholly into the blogosphere, like Colin Laney disappearing through a "nodal point" into pure data, and was hoping for a prominent guinea pig. *pities self*
Postscript: After I wrote this I visited Gibson's blog to get its hyperlink and found this stuffy piece on "writing vs blogging." I guess as he prepares to start work on that next book after being a pretend-blogger for a few months (he says the two activities are mutually exclusive), he's decided to go out with a bitchslap, by declaring bookwriting more important than blogwriting. As for the supposed ease of weblog writing, I can only say speak for yourself.
[Update, July 2005: Gosh, this post is harsh. Gibson did restart his blog a year after the "stunt" and kept it going for a few months, but it has trailed off again. With two years hindsight I have only to add, not everyone has the need or personality for regular blogging. I'm not sure I always will. Blogging is right for me because I like to post sound and pictures (as opposed to say, a novel, where I would constantly be having to suppress and channel other senses through a linear stream of words), but that's me. Different strokes and all that...]
I went to a conference called The Future of War this weekend, and with that in mind, wanted to respond to your quote from Andrew O'Hehir about The Matrix. During the Friday night session Tom Keena was making a point about how our culture had slowly changed its relationship with surveillance. He based his thesis by contrasting Apple's 1984 big brother ad, and two recent movies Enemy of the State and Panic Room. His idea was that, while there is a certain resistance to surveillance in both these films, there is a love and acceptance for the technology also demonstrated (especially in Panic Room) as much by the camera work, as it was by its politics. Contrasting these movies to the apple's ads' simplistic "anit-establishment at all costs" message that created such a phenomenon at the time. Saying, I think, that our culture has adopted a thick skin in the last 20 years to a certain amount of surveillance because, even our movies that condemn it, are also really reveling in it. At the time of the conference I had a "yes, but" but couldn't put a finger on it till now. Those movies were mediocre draws at best. The Matrix, whose politics about a surveillant society are more complex and well thought out, was a massive draw. I don't think Tom Keena's thesis is wrong, but it would be more interested if he'd been able to use The Matrix as his example.
Of course that would have made his talk 20 minutes longer, and it was a long day already.
A side note. I was in Radio shack the other day and saw a wireless camera detector for 20 bucks. first time i'd seen something like this sold as a consumer item. Can't decide if it's good or bad, probably both.
A scene in the near future (20X6): Two friends meet on the street, pass wrist-detectors in front of each other's bodies, and begin a conversation...
I replied (sort of) to your previous comment here.
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I've recently read William Gibson's new novel Pattern Recognition, reread his "Virtual Light trilogy" (Virtual Light, Idoru, and All Tomorrow's Parties), and have been following his weblog, and am now jotting down a few thoughts. First, Gibson has really mellowed over the years. As he himself says, he no longer does "deep fried anomie" or even cyberpunk. Pattern Recognition is his first attempt at a mainstream novel with tech (as opposed to sci fi) elements. I have to say it's less satisfying because it limits his imagination. His gift for extrapolating/exaggerating current trends into pungent satire hasn't disappeared but it's severely circumscribed. Also, it's a weird book because the writing of it clearly straddled 9/11. The "hunt for the perfect pair of sneakers" he started at the go-go turn of the millennium acquired a melancholy 9/11 subplot which skews (and actually comes to dominate) the tone. I realize that many of us went through a similar thought process but Gibson's unabashed consumerism (reverent descriptions of clothes and gear) makes the transition to a meaner, leaner consciousness even bumpier.
One thing PR shares with all the books that preceded it is a weak plot. The Virtual Light novels each relied on what Alfred Hitchcock calls a "McGuffin"--some object that drives the story but turns out not to be terribly important (respectively virtual sunglasses, a nanotech generator, and a kind of fax teleporter, the last being the most significant of the three). I won't spoil PR but the thing the main characters are focused on feels like another McGuffin. And once again an artist is a supernatural hero figure--I sometimes think WG was born to be an art critic [update: more on this here], even though I don't entirely trust his eye (Cornell? Noritoshi Hirakawa?). What Gibson does best is make cutting social observations in gemlike prose, e.g., his travelogue through a one-step-removed Japan in Idoru, his thoughts on reality TV (Slitscan, Cops in Trouble), and in the new book, bleeding-edge trendspotting or "cool hunting." Which brings me to my main point: why do these things have to be in a novel?
I was somewhat let down when I found out his weblog was a kind of promotional stunt, timed to coincide with the PR book tour and then to end. I actually thought for a moment that he might be an old media guy that wrote about new media and one day started living it. At this stage of his career a weblog seemed like a better vehicle for his dry observations than his novels, which are becoming lackluster, as novels. It seems silly to be killing a bunch of trees and providing grist for the book-publishing hype cycle when he could be communicating directly, and semi-interactively, with his core readership. I briefly, naively imagined him living on the royalties from his rather lucrative back-catalogue and just blogging. Oh well, not everyone is made for the potlatch economy. I'm not sure I am either, so I'm sorry for projecting. To be honest, I worry about being sucked wholly into the blogosphere, like Colin Laney disappearing through a "nodal point" into pure data, and was hoping for a prominent guinea pig. *pities self*
Postscript: After I wrote this I visited Gibson's blog to get its hyperlink and found this stuffy piece on "writing vs blogging." I guess as he prepares to start work on that next book after being a pretend-blogger for a few months (he says the two activities are mutually exclusive), he's decided to go out with a bitchslap, by declaring bookwriting more important than blogwriting. As for the supposed ease of weblog writing, I can only say speak for yourself.
[Update, July 2005: Gosh, this post is harsh. Gibson did restart his blog a year after the "stunt" and kept it going for a few months, but it has trailed off again. With two years hindsight I have only to add, not everyone has the need or personality for regular blogging. I'm not sure I always will. Blogging is right for me because I like to post sound and pictures (as opposed to say, a novel, where I would constantly be having to suppress and channel other senses through a linear stream of words), but that's me. Different strokes and all that...]
- tom moody 5-03-2003 11:44 pm
I went to a conference called The Future of War this weekend, and with that in mind, wanted to respond to your quote from Andrew O'Hehir about The Matrix. During the Friday night session Tom Keena was making a point about how our culture had slowly changed its relationship with surveillance. He based his thesis by contrasting Apple's 1984 big brother ad, and two recent movies Enemy of the State and Panic Room. His idea was that, while there is a certain resistance to surveillance in both these films, there is a love and acceptance for the technology also demonstrated (especially in Panic Room) as much by the camera work, as it was by its politics. Contrasting these movies to the apple's ads' simplistic "anit-establishment at all costs" message that created such a phenomenon at the time. Saying, I think, that our culture has adopted a thick skin in the last 20 years to a certain amount of surveillance because, even our movies that condemn it, are also really reveling in it. At the time of the conference I had a "yes, but" but couldn't put a finger on it till now. Those movies were mediocre draws at best. The Matrix, whose politics about a surveillant society are more complex and well thought out, was a massive draw. I don't think Tom Keena's thesis is wrong, but it would be more interested if he'd been able to use The Matrix as his example.
Of course that would have made his talk 20 minutes longer, and it was a long day already.
- Joester (guest) 5-04-2003 6:44 am
A side note. I was in Radio shack the other day and saw a wireless camera detector for 20 bucks. first time i'd seen something like this sold as a consumer item. Can't decide if it's good or bad, probably both.
- Joester 5-05-2003 8:34 pm
A scene in the near future (20X6): Two friends meet on the street, pass wrist-detectors in front of each other's bodies, and begin a conversation...
I replied (sort of) to your previous comment here.
- tom moody 5-05-2003 8:48 pm