Pattern Recognition - William Gibson

Pattern Recognition (Blue Ant #1)

by William Gibson

Hardcover, 356 pages

Published February 3rd 2003 by Putnam Adult (first published 2003)

ISBN 0399149864 (ISBN13: 9780399149863)

Edition language:  English

Series:  Blue Ant #1

Characters:  Hubertus Bigend

Literary Awards:  Locus Award Nominee for Best Science Fiction Novel (2004), Arthur C. Clarke Award Nominee (2004), British Science Fiction Association Award Nominee for Best Novel (2004)

Pattern Recognition's major theme considers humans' tendency to see order out of chaos, patterns when there are none.  Other themes include branding, marketing, and consumerism, among others.  The multiple themes that require abstractions on top of abstractions left me cold and not invested.   I am empathetic to the dangers of consumerism, branding, and the post-modern marketing conceit wherein you are designated as "cool" and being a rebel for using a certain product.  Of course, if you use that product, you are possibly succumbing to the marketing and not cool or a rebel.  David Foster Wallace discussed this in his essay "E Unibus Pluram:  Television and U.S. Fiction."  DFW cites the (now almost forgotten) Sprite campaign "Image is Nothing!  Thirst is Everything!"  From the essay:  "Above all, of course, the audience is not supposed to recognize the absurdity of products being billed as distinguishing individuals from crowds in order to sell to huge crowds."  I am also simpatico with the main theme that our advanced primate evolution doesn't get us beyond seeing Mother Mary on the surface of a squash.  That's a crude way to put it - in other words, humans want order and organization in their lives and sometimes events, people, etc., simply can't be ascribed order and that's a source of anxiety.  We then find order out of randomness to help dispel this anxiety.

It's a coincidence (is it?  Or is Gibson reading my mind?!  Ahem.) that just today Gibson tweeted an article from Psychology Today about apophenia - the tendency of humans to see patterns in randomness.  After reading this, I probably shouldn't wax flippant about our advanced primate evolution - it's far better (from an evolutionary standpoint) to find patterns when there are none vs. not finding a pattern when there IS one.

Despite my affinity for these themes, I simply don't think Gibson's combination and explication of them makes a good story.  All of the underlying themes are quite interesting, but I learn more from the non-fiction material concerning these concepts and therefore find the non-fiction material also more engaging.

His prose is always very good, but I also must admit that it felt too... precious(?) at times - "The spent match makes a tiny ceramic sound when he drops it into the ashtray. "

Perhaps the book is too smart for me and I just don't "get" it.  In any event, moving on, and debating whether or not I want to read the other books in the "Blue Ant" or "Bigend" series.

A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan

I'm already conflicted by this book, so I'm taking the lazy way out and merely listing my reactions as I posted them on Goodreads:

"This seems too clever for its own good. I kind of hate it so far. I'm sticking with it, but find the encapsulation of a subject's life in a single paragraph annoying. Is this just one stream of consciousness intertwining characters together in what amounts to short stories? Fine, if it resonates." 05/28 page 85

"And just that quickly... I've been horn-swaggled into thinking this might be without merit. The "X's and O's" chapter - a (the?) Scotty chapter - is amazing. Jonathan Franzen said (or wrote - don't have the original source) that a writer should write in the third person unless a distinctive first-person voice offers itself. I hoped that these short stories intertwined would resonate and Scotty's first-person narration of meeting an old friend, his isolation, etc., certainly has resonated with me."

This is a deeply-flawed work of genius. I rank Egan in a club with Paul Thomas Anderson, David Foster Wallace, and Lev Grossman (to name a few).

In all of these, my admittedly amateur critique sees brilliance in prose indelibly marred by something else- too clever technique (Wallace, Egan), overlong (Anderson) or derivative (Grossman).

All of these artists have equally indelible gifts, all of them having the prose and insight to quickly establish a human condition.

I'm so confused I don't know whether to rate this a 1 star or 5 star. So, 3.

Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace - D.T. Max

D.T. Max has written a level-headed biography of DFW. The navel-gazing into the theory and meaning of DFW's works vis-à-vis his mental state strikes me as pretentious. However, I admit to being something of a simpleton when it comes to literary theory. It's probably just over my head.

Taken as a whole, Max's writing is compelling and highlights include snippets of DFW's correspondence with Don DeLillo and Jonathan Franzen.

Max's neutral approach and mostly straightforward writing failed him at probably the most crucial part - the end. In fact, the last paragraph and last sentence specifically, pisses me off:

"The story of 'David Wallace' was now first. In his final hours, he had tidied up the manuscript so that his wife could find it. Below it, around it, inside his two computers, on old floppy disks in his drawers were hundreds of other pages— drafts, character sketches, notes to himself, fragments that had evaded his attempt to integrate them into the novel over the past decade. This was his effort to show the world what it was to be 'a fucking human being.' He had never completed it to his satisfaction. This was not an ending anyone would have wanted for him, but it was the one he had chosen."

For fuck's sake, man. You couldn't pass on that last sentence when it popped in your head? The sentiment is fine, but you couldn't pass on that little trick of a phrase after spending a significant amount of time discussing Wallace's wish for genuine, "single-entendre" writing?

Read this, anyhow.