Pattern Recognition
"The sky above the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel." With this great line began the literary career of William Gibson, a prophet 10 minutes ahead of his time and one of the most important authors of the last years of the 20th century. In person, the Great Man resembles Icabod Crane, and he reads with the enthusiasm of William Burroughs after a big night out with the Wild Boys. The author's own oddly-compelling anti-charisma notwithstanding, his new novel Pattern Recognition seems to find him in fine form (I'll report back in about a week with the complete lowdown). It is a departure for Gibson in several ways - most notably because it is set in the here-and-now, since the shape of our technology and society appears to have now completely filled the ugly mold that cyberpunk dug for it in the 1980s. It also features a linear narrative from a single character's point of view, a welcome innovation in my opinion since Gibson's trademark multi-camera storytelling techniques had grown a bit stale in his last several outings.
Gibson read to a packed house (90% male) at the University of Washington's Kane Hall auditorium, where he plowed laconically through the first several pages of his latest book and delphically orated in response - more or less - to questions from the audience. The organizers of the event then had the supreme bad judgment to allow someone to interview Gibson as he was signing for the (very long) line of people who had plunked down their $24 for the hot-off-the-presses new hardcover. As a result, most people were cheated out of that brief but personal moment of interaction with the author, who becomes basically a piece of equipment programmed to replicate his signature. (Sorry - in my blog, I get to vent).
9:35:42 PM 
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