From: kevin.calder@onetel.net   
      
   Hello no one.   
      
   I finally got around to reading Pattern Recognition, and I thought I'd   
   share my thoughts on it with you, the mysterious semi-present population   
   of alt.cp.   
      
   [spoilers, imho, ymmv e.t.c. y'all know I'm a pomowhore and don't even   
   really believe books can be good\bad e.t.c.]   
      
   To be honest I didn't particularly enjoy it, but I didn't loathe it   
   either, and on both counts I think this is because the whole book is   
   just so damn neutral.  The main character, who's particular mutant super   
   powers and endless open questions make her seem like an unlively joke   
   from sex in the city, just seems like such a dead end.  Actually she   
   embodies nothing as sudden, dramatic or extreme as death.  She is more   
   like a sleep end. Gibson insists on emphasizing 300 times per chapter   
   just how terribly, terribly tired she is and on top of that expends a   
   surprising amount of verbiage detailing her going to bed at every   
   possible opportunity.  This is certainly realistic, but its just not   
   that interesting and if you set her sitc-mutant power aside, it's the   
   second most remarkable thing about her. Which is a shame.  I mean, a   
   simple "The next day Casey blah blah blah..."  would have sufficed for   
   9/10 bed times.   
      
   While Gibson lavishes almost unbearable detail on her sleep and   
   sleepyness, disappointingly he also consistently manages to dodge   
   detailing anything more interesting.  There don't seem to be any   
   interesting ideas in this book at all; rich marketing yuppies drinking   
   lattes in starbucks reading their hotmail on their ibooks and getting   
   hilariously mixed up in a big misunderstanding with the Russian mob over   
   some incredibly dubious plan to distribute some kind of dubious 'high   
   art' version of LonelyGirl, it just seemed very bland to me.   
      
   But its nicely written.  WG has certainly worked on his prose, and its   
   slick and spare and economical and all that, but I think this is part of   
   the problem.  I am pretty sure WG is the kind of author who researches   
   ideas for his novels, but once he filters this information through his   
   now very tightly focused Gibsonian 'lens-o-cool-detachedness' everything   
   get stripped down so much that all you get is a few vague (though I   
   expect he hopes profound or sublime) evocations, that he only seems   
   slightly interested in, and even then only in passing.   
      
   I know you don't read Gibson for the exposition, but in the absence of   
   exploration of interesting ideas, I'd really like the novel in question   
   to be something of a page-turner.   
      
   In this respect PR reminds me of the Da Vinci Code, though sadly more   
   like the film than the book, i.e. trivial yet dull, rather than   
   (allegedly) trivial yet compelling.  Actually I didn't read the book,   
   but you've all heard about it so you get the idea.  Why is PR so damn   
   slow, and why in all that slowness does nothing very much happen?  I   
   think Gibson has become too cool to write anything exciting.  Getting   
   excited is pretty much the very opposite of cool detached indifference.   
   Maybe.   
      
   Anyone else feel the same, or totally different, or hate me and the   
   (dead)horse I rode in on, or none of the above, or just plain wish   
   *they* were dead?   
      
      
   WG:  Can you power up your eyemac and get someone to show you what   
   usenet is so that you can tell me when you are going to reprint a   
   version of Necromancer with no spelling mistakes in it??!?!??   
      
   [Ok, that was a cheapshot.  Please disreguard.]   
      
   [end rant]   
      
   Zip,   
      
   --   
   Kevin Calder   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)