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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...]
Slate has a rather tedious essay up at the moment explaining The Matrix's appeal to geeks. (Nerd becomes hero; it's like a computer game; other obvious points.) A more pertinent question is why it did so well with non-geeks. I saw the movie in a packed Times Square theatre and can attest that the kung fu-cheering audience came from all walks of life--not just Silicon Alley. Salon critic Andrew O'Hehir had an observation three years ago that now seems almost nostalgic:
The Matrix was the first movie of '99 to tap into the deepening unease surrounding the info-consumption economy. Its vision of the human race as isolated prisoners being forcefed an electronic false reality is, after all, pretty much true.I say almost nostalgic because while the context has changed from Clinton bubble to Bush endless-terror-war, the "electronic false reality" still remains in place. Even though I saw the World Trade Center fall with my own eyes, the image became intermixed almost immediately with the mediated version on TV, which had camera angles and freeze frame capability and running commentary unavailable to my bare senses. As Slovenian theorist Slavoj Zizek points out (thanks, Bruno), the twin towers' destruction was exactly the type of Hollywood blockbuster explosion America had been feeding itself as entertainment in the years preceding 9/11 (think Independence Day). In his essay written a few days after the WTC-toppling, Zizek somewhat touchingly wondered if the event would open our country's eyes to its own filtered, Truman Show reality. As if! From the slime tanks where we serve as human batteries, we've now seen two Matrix-like wars won with sheer technology. I didn't witness it, but read many media accounts of Pres. Bush's photo-op jet landing on an aircraft carrier after he "whipped Saddam's ass." The newscasters were gushing about how good he looked in a flight jacket. Maybe for the next war he can wear a long black coat.