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more thoughts on william gibson's pattern recognition
Genevieve Williams review
"Geography becomes a major concern in Pattern Recognition, for Cayce isn't just a 'cool hunter' -- a person who researches what kids on the street are wearing and then purveys the information to marketers -- she also seeks out the source of these trends. Cayce tracks down the first person to, say, wear pants so loose they're in danger of falling off his hips, and pushes to franchise him. She's like the sociologist in Connie Willis' Bellwether, only not so benign."
John Clute says
"Most of the great moments of apercu illuminate—seem almost physically to make tremble—the first half of the book, as brand names and logos bathe Cayce like haikus; but even the second half, which knits inexorably towards neatness, does present the working out of a metaphor of the making of the world that, almost more than the tracing of Cayce herself, marks Pattern Recognition as a novel impacted with greatness."
Jake Sutton says
"Embarassingly, I have to admit this is my first Gibson book."
postmodernism generator
"The genre, and some would say the paradigm, of the dialectic paradigm
of narrative intrinsic to Gibson's Neuromancer emerges again in Count
Zero. In a sense, the premise of subcultural textual theory implies
that academe is capable of intentionality. Lyotard uses the term 'the dialectic paradigm of narrative' to denote
the common ground between sexual identity and society. However,
Bataille's analysis of social realism suggests that reality is a
product of communication. In Pattern Recognition, Gibson denies the dialectic paradigm of
narrative; in Mona Lisa Overdrive, however, he reiterates
postconceptual feminism. Therefore, Foucault uses the term 'the
precultural paradigm of discourse' to denote not, in fact,
appropriation, but neoappropriation."
Eric S. Elkins interview with Gibson
"I suspect that the bohemias' function may have been reborn in the world of bloggers," Gibson continued. "Those rings of individually connected blogs - those are actually places. I actually know for sure that there are scenes on the Internet that nobody knows about and nobody cares about, and within those milieus, very specialized sensibilities are evolving. And I don't know whether any of them are liable to be the next big thing, but I think they serve, somewhat, the same function. I hope they do, because I have a soft spot for the products of bohemias."
Thoughts on Jameson's NLR piece by Brandon Keim
"Gibson's latest protagonist, Cayce Pollard,
is a trend-hunter, an identifier of what is about to be cool, who points
companies -- the commodifiers -- at what has yet to be commodified. At the
same time, Pollard abhors the product of her efforts. Her fastidious
attention to her every article of clothing -- Gibson's descriptions of which
Jameson accurately characterizes as a discrete style, composed of brand
name-dropping and intelligible only to the initiated consumer -- is coupled
with a rigid insistence on scouring them of all labels and logos. In her
love of craftsmanship and scorn of the derived, Pollard in her personal life
has transcended the system of branding which is the defining feature of
consumerism -- yet she remains a very active part of that system."
New School speech by Ann-Louise Shapiro
"As a writer of science fiction, Gibson has been preoccupied by some of the themes and issues addressed directly by the curriculum of the programs from which you are graduating: the impact of media and technology on our lives, the flow of information and capital across global circuits, the commodification of art and creativity, the possibility of losing one's soul in the speed and greed of the moment."
Professor Shaviro on PR
"Is there any hope of beauty amidst the pre-programmed banality, and the treachery and paranoia, of our post-everything world? Adorno notoriously said that it was barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz. You might say that the ironic fulfillment of Adorno's warning is precisely our current state of affairs in which everything is poetry--by which I mean that everything is 'culture,' and that culture is increasingly indistinguishable from advertising, or from product design (as Andy Warhol was the first person to clearly understand). But Gibson suggests, however waverlingly, that it is precisely, and only, in this void that an aesthetics could possibly be reinvented."
Professor Shaviro on Lost in Translation
"The movie suggests - as William Gibson does in a very different way in Pattern Recognition - that jet lag is the quintessential postmodern condition, and it makes a strange and beautiful poetry of the consequent dislocation of its protagonists."
Sonic Youth Ages With Edge--by Shawn Conner
"In Pattern Recognition, Vancouver author William Gibson set his sights on corporate branding and 'cool-hunting,' a business practice where consultants sniff out trends in their most embryonic forms. The idea struck enough of a chord with Sonic Youth that the New York band opens its latest album with an urgent rocker named after the 2003 novel."
Alt-rock pioneers offer good medicine--by Jennifer Cho Salaff
 "The album -- a musical paradox (symphonic and melodic, yet note-clashing and choppy at the same time) -- features songs about troubled female pop icons ('Kim Gordon and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream'), anti-war sentiments ('Peace Attack') and the band's enthusiasm for author William Gibson ('Pattern Recognition'). Released just six weeks ago, Sonic Nurse has already garnered rave reviews from music critics. According to VH-1.com, 'Sonic Nurse is one of (Sonic Youth's) best, fueled by outrage and feedback.' The New York Times declared, 'Neil Young, the closest this rock band has to an artistic ancestor, should be proud.'"
Matthew Cheney review
"I found the last pages satisfying, in some ways even comforting. Certainly, I would have preferred a few looser ends, but the final effect is one which is appropriate to the characters and situations Gibson has created. It's a tidy ending, but not a dishonest one."
Kevin Wood Daily Yomiuri review
"Gibson has an impressive ability to create with a few deft phrases original characters like Cayce who, while seeming impossible, are eminently believable: Hubertus Bigend, the too-handsome and ultra-persuasive cutting-edge advertising whiz that his former lover, a friend of Cayce's, describes as a 'real Lombard--loads of money, but a real dickhead'; Boone Chu, a Chinese-American 'white hat hacker,' security consultant and failed dot.commer from Oklahoma; Hobbs-Baranov, an abrasive, alcoholic retired mathematician and code-breaker obsessed with an early mechanical computer/calculator created in a concentration camp."
Robert Todd Carroll, Peter Brugger, et al on apophenia
"In statistics, apophenia is called a Type I error, seeing patterns where none, in fact, exist. It is highly probable that the apparent significance of many unusual experiences and phenomena are due to apophenia, e.g., ghosts and hauntings, EVP, numerology, the Bible code, anomalous cognition, ganzfeld 'hits', most forms of divination, the prophecies of Nostradamus, remote viewing, and a host of other paranormal and supernatural experiences and phenomena."
Paul Broks' Out of Mind: Synchronicity
"Epiphany (a moment of realisation) has an obscure cousin in the lexicon of madness - apophany. It refers to the point at which an ordinary experience becomes the fountainhead of delusion. The newsreader says, 'Good evening,' and you know at once that he is Satan himself. Your neighbour's car catches the light and you realise that he and his fellow extraterrestrials are bent on destroying your brain with their deadly rays. ('Apophenia' is a theme of William Gibson's latest paranoia-flavoured novel, Pattern Recognition). People vary in their susceptibility to seeing connections between seemingly unrelated events and ideas and, to paraphrase Seneca, all imagination has a dash of madness. But weird coincidences can induce a psychotic wobble in the sanest of minds. You get that vertiginous sense of alienation from consensus reality, that there are more things in heaven and earth. It's no bad thing."
What are EVP?
"EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) are intelligent utterances upon sound recording media which are physically unexplainable."
SIDNEY MOODY review
"Gibson, a self-confessed fan of kook journalist Charles Fort, seems to be getting New Agey on us, with references to soul-retrieval, bilocation, and Electronic Voice Phenomena. Even Cayce's name is lifted from the noted clairvoyant Edgar Cayce. A certain ambiguity over the fate of Win Pollard indicates that Gibson will be cranking out a sequel to Pattern Recognition."
Thomas Luedtke review
"The plot here is intriguing, but so maddeningly akin to Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 that the twists that should hold your attention make you grimace for Gibson. Pattern Recognition's congruencies with Lot 49 seem flagrant, almost artless derivatives. Even more than Pynchon, though, Gibson is heavily indebted to the novels of Martin Amis, especially Money and London Fields."
Scarlett Thomas review
"Recent readers of David Mitchell's number9dream may spend some time thinking, 'OK, but she'll wake up in a minute, surely…?' If Cayce does, it is well after the end of this novel. For some reason, this book - with its insane coincidences and crazy plotting - reminded me more of Douglas Coupland's recent All Families are Psychotic than any other Gibson novel. Both books are a (not completely unpleasant) mess of Hollywood spy-thriller clichés, video-game style subplots and insanely happy, fairy-tale endings."
Matthew Whitaker review
"Over time William Gibson has acquired the reputation of being the 'Father of Cyberpunk', and while he wasn't alone in giving birth to the sub-genre, books like Neuromancer and Count Zero are certainly cornerstones of cyberfiction. In Pattern Recognition, Gibson pulls back from the advanced technology of humanity's future, swaps the Matrix for the Internet, and looks to the present world for his characters, locations and events."
Jack Mangan review
"Pattern Recognition is significant to Spiritually-minded readers because of its themes of devotion and the search for meaning within the context of our postmodern, interconnected, tech-integrated world. There is discussion of "meeting the maker" of the footage. Also of possible interest for postmodern spiritualists, Cayce is familiar as a person with numerous interpersonal connections, but all of them are remote. The themes of loneliness and isolation recur throughout. The person whom Cayce seems truly closest to is her dead father, who disappeared in New York City on September 11th, 2001. Reverent memories of his words come to her frequently when she’s under duress."
rawbrick review
" . . . a new revealing blood that prickles skin and optimizes nerve endings as it makes its way to my fingers and toes."
Liz Fraser review
"The title Pattern Recognition refers to the science intrinsic to computer technology and marketing analysis, which creates systems that analyses and recognises statistical patterns in data. The codes and patterns that are encrypted mysteriously into the segments of the Footage become vital in the plot as Cayce uncodes them to find the anonymous creator. But Pattern Recognition also questions the power of the individual versus the sheer numbers of the global market."
Comments about PR on All Consuming
Guardian Profile of Gibson by Steven Poole
Gibson talks about PR: "I ruled out jump-cuts, or whatever that's called in prose fiction," he explains. "It's a type of Dogme novel - you wake up with her [Cayce]; the chapters are more or less one take. And if it's broken then there's some structural reason for that. Once I started working that way, I realised I had no sense of timing," he laughs. "My sense of where the chapter ended somehow relied on how many jump-cuts or how many camera angles I'd featured, so it was scary ... Approaching the vehicle every day, I was never really sure that the audience were going to go along with it."
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