Barrel Magic

more on William Gibson's Pattern Recognition Mark Flanagan interview with WG "It was unnerving, the prospect of picking up the telephone and actually dialing William Gibson's number. I sat there, just looking at the phone for several minutes, trying to remind myself that the man I was calling was just a guy... just a guy like me. Or like that guy over there. This is difficult to do when the person you're calling is a personal icon of sorts - your favorite author, artist, musician, whatever." bookofjoe on PR "William Gibson showed, in his latest - and I think most readable and best - novel, 'Pattern Recognition,' that it's much cheaper to pay one person to do this kind of future forecasting stuff. His story centers around one Cayce Pollard, 'coolhunter extraordinaire.' I've believed since college that by the time something appears on the cover of Business Week, Fortune, Time, or Newsweek, heralded as the 'next big thing,' the smart money has already been there and left quietly with huge profits, leaving a few crumbs behind for us, 'the great unwashed.' So I have an even better offer for you: save your money and read bookofjoe." Nick Krewen review "Gibson's gift for in-the-moment narrative ('Pupils contracted painfully against sun-bright halogen, she squints into an actual mirror, canted against a gray wall, awaiting hanging, wherein she sees a black-legged, disjointed puppet, sleep-hair poking up like a toilet brush') outweighs the book's rather convoluted plot. But perhaps it's supposed to, as Pollard is always wrapped in a fog of uncertainty, often led by blind intuition and dumb luck rather than clear-cut evidence. Gibson curiously plunks his heroine in a world where communication is constant and somewhat effortless, but the information exchanged is less than forthcoming." Pearson Penguin Canada interview WG: I think most of us have a love-hate relationship with branding, though certainly not as visceral as Cayce's. If branding is about selling the consumer a narrative, a story about what a given brand means, and what that brand might mean in the context of the consumer's life-narrative, then branding is awfully close to "being our culture." And I take it for granted that, anthropologically speaking, none of us ever really step outside of our own culture. The extremity of Cayce's sensitivity gave me a way to explore that, a way to look for the "edges." Nicholas Thomas says "Gibson leads you into the very small, somewhat secure world of Cayce and lets you linger just long enough to get comfortable before he rips you out and pushes you into her new, breakneck environment. This intense environment of breathtaking technology and secrecy is possibly the best part of the novel because it gives the story some edge. At times, though, it is hard to figure out which question Gibson would rather resolve in the end: the mystery behind the video clips or Cayce's father's disappearance. Things run out of steam in the finale, and the reader is confronted with both resolutions, neither of which is all that satisfying." Simone Silas says "While searing in its display of the barrenness of corporate culture, 'Pattern Recognition' reserves its sharpest barbs for gratuitous attacks on the former Soviet Union and socialism. Here the reader is treated to the usual clichés about the gray drabness of Soviet life and the clumsiness of its efforts at art and architecture. The socialist experiment, a decade after its collapse and in the middle of the ravages of Russian gangster capitalism, is treated as an aberration and affront. In one telling phrase, Lenin is said to have told the absolute truth about capitalism and an absolute lie about Communism. Thus, unfortunately one sees in 'Pattern Recognition's crude, stereotypical and unnuanced portrayals of socialist life and in its plague-on-both-your-houses condemnations, the same old bourgeois pattern." J.W. Hastings says "Though it follows the pattern of Gibson's sci-fi novels, 'Pattern Recognition' is also his version of Thomas Pynchon's 'The Crying of Lot 49.' The parallels jump right out. Both Cayce and Oedipa Maas are driven by their curiosity to follow the trail of a secret conspiracy. Pierce Iverarity appears in 'Pattern Recognition' as Hugh Bigend, an advertising mogul for the 21st Century. Both center around the question of how are we to make sense of the patterns in the world around us. Yet, where 'Lot 49' is playful, 'Pattern Recognition' is dour. Gibson shares his humorlessness with Don DeLillo, another Pynchon disciple. (DeLillo often tries to be funny, but the jokes in something like 'White Noise' are more theoretical than real.) And 'Pattern Recognition' shares 'Underworld's interest in post-Cold War Russia, urban legends, and the alienation of globalization. Though there are passages in 'Underworld,' a Very Important Novel, where DeLillo's writing is on par with Pynchon's or Saul Bellow's, for the most part the book is not as satisfying as 'Pattern Recognition,' which is merely a thriller that wishes it was a Very Important Novel. After reading DeLillo and Gibson, not to mention those writers of lesser talent who have also appropriated Pynchon for their own purposes, I think it's time to call a moratorium on novels inspired by 'Lot 49.' As much as I like that book, it seems that (1) it already said everything it needed to say and (2) it is simply too easy to rewrite it by dressing it up in contemporary drag, replacing Tristero with a mysterious Hotmail competitor." Dennis Kennedy says "In a way, we all see the patterns we want to see, but it struck me that the book touched on the blogging phenomenon in a fundamental way, without ever mentioning them. There is a current dance between art and expression and commerce and marketing that plays out in the book as well on the streets of the Internet these days." Karlin Lillington interview with William Gibson "'Bits of it are for a certain techie person. Bits of Pattern Recognition are almost. . . pornographic. Actually, they're suggestive, highly suggestive. But you never really know what's going on.' He is referring to the ways in which he teases the reader by planting bits of cyber-spy lore into the plot - for example, the washed-up crypto expert Hobbs Baranov who might, or might not, have been the main architect of Echelon, the once-mythic British-American internet surveillance system. The novel is curiously gentle, almost affectionate towards US espionage networks and organisations like the CIA and National Security Agency. His protagonist, Cayce Pollard (who is allergic to brand names and logos), is the daughter of a former spy and the plot is helped, rather than hindered, by illegal net surveillance. Maybe it's part of his pragmatic take on things, where his characters have to just deal with what is. His futures tend to be, if not outright dystopian, then bleak places in which faceless corporations and manipulative media organisations rule. His characters inhabit sprawling, melting-pot cities. Street culture is where it's happening; his protagonists always street-smart and slightly shopworn." paperjam "Personally I think the best thing Gibson has ever done (excepting Neuromancer) is Burning Chrome, the collection of his short stories. Pattern Recognition runs it a close second and it is especially worth getting hold of the hardback edition with the groovy London Map/CD cover." cinephiles "With 'Pattern Recognition,' Gibson not only tips his hat to Pynchon but also seems indebted to him by means of the book's structural content. Gibson's new book, and I mean no slight in saying this, feels like a contemporary re-working of Pynchon's classic 'The Crying of Lot 49.'" Jim Amos review "Gibson shows us a world we already know, and it is this which makes 'Pattern Recognition' his most accessible novel to date. With this book Gibson has potentially opened up his talents to a whole new audience who might otherwise have avoided what is generally perceived as science fiction literature." women sleuths "It is a fascinating look at the paranoia and hope of the post 9/11 world. Gibson deftly considers the difference between crass consumer culture and genuine art, and then swirls them together via our information saturated culture. As his protagonist, Gibson creates Cayce Pollard, something of a marketing prodigy whose claim to fame is that she can unerringly determine whether or not a brand logo will be successful on first sight. It is therefore intensely ironic that she has a phobia of all commercial branding that manifests itself through something that is akin to a cross between a panic attack and a migraine. Her revulsion to consumer culture is so intense, she goes so far as to remove labels from everything she owns, and dresses in the most stripped down manner possible. Wrapped inside this duality is the additional one that Cayce, despite her odd phobias, who seems to be an inherently trusting and positive person, is grappling with the death, or more accurately the disappearance of her father in the events surrounding 9/11. Thus her vision of the future is touched by the background, but pervasive, fear that seems to have become part and parcel to our new century. Cayce's escape from these twin phantoms is an oddly alluring film that is being released piece by piece on the internet (those familiar with Mark Danielewski's 'House of Leaves' may see an echo here). The 'footage,' as it is known, enjoys a grass roots fascination globally that borders on cultish, except that the reaction is overwhelmingly positive, and disconnected from pop culture. The footage is apparently being released out of sequence, and seems to take place out of time and in some undefined location. As chatroom battles rage over whether it is a work in progress or a completed film, there seems to be no argument that the footage is a thing of shocking, pure beauty, totally untainted by popular culture." drog's comment "In an interview with 'Toronto Globe & Mail,' science fiction author William Gibson told how on the morning of September 11, 2001, the future caught up with him and it was unlike anything he ever could have imagined." according to imdb "Chris Cunningham . . . has been signed to direct the feature film version of William Gibson's 'Neuromancer.'" James Bradley review "To call Gibson a writer of science fiction is to misunderstand him. Gibson's antecedents are more William S.Burroughs and Thomas Pynchon than Arthur C.Clarke - their strange, essentially poetic assemblages of image and echo designed to explore the inner textures of a culture that exists increasingly outside time and space. The effect is probably nearest to that of an intellectually rigorous brand of video-art: suggestive, unsettling and unresolved. Its meanings arise out of the play between elements, rather than residing in them." mirror world concretewerk homo ludens pattern hunting internet movie database entry for PR Number Five on Most-blogged books of 2003 Bennett Holzworth review "I read this book after reading Jessica Helfand’s Design Observer post on 'Cat Woman' and graphic designers being represented on the big screen. Jessica was hopeful that a designer would have a good portrayal when 'Pattern Recognition' was released in the theaters. While Cayce Pollard isn’t exactly a graphic designer, I am still anxious to see something related to graphic design represented in Hollywood." Ian Kaplan page "I have been to several of William Gibson's book signings and readings and I've watched 'No Maps for These Territories.' What amazes me is that Gibson talks in a style that is similar to the way that he writes (in contrast, this is not true of another great science fiction stylist, Ray Bradbury)." Brand Republic review by Justin Kirby Cult author William Gibson, of 'Neuromancer' fame, has written a new novel 'Pattern Recognition'. Justin Kirby, managing director of Digital Media Communications reviews the book in the context of its marketing-related themes.

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