Well, some us here check every week or so for new posts, but it's true
that this group is pretty quiet.
Re: Pattern Recognition, I have it on the top of my "to-be-read" pile
of fiction, but right now I'm reading a series a books on the history
of Apple Computer (Revolution in the Valley, iCon, iWoz, The perfect
thing) so it may be a week or two before I get around to it.
BTW, did you have any luck tracking down that French CP film? I can't
find it anywhere.
-B
On 2007-02-18 11:20:41 -0500, Kevin Calder <kevin.calder@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> said:
> 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 *** 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 op****tunity. 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,
|
