Pattern Recognition

Over the years, I keep trying to enjoy William Gibson's writing. So many people cite him as an influence, he's relatively prolific and he has so many cool ideas, I just keep hoping I'll enjoy his work. I think, “Maybe I've matured enough,” or “perhaps I will ‘get' him now”; but it turns out, I just don't dig his writing enough to enjoy his books much.

Pattern Recognition has one central idea that is really cool–the main character, Cayce, can intuit whether or not a logo will be successful or not, in part because she has visceral reactions to such patterns (seeing the Michelin man makes her physically ill). This is a fantastic idea. There's also the sci-fi-that's-not-futuristic aspect of this book, which is kind of fun. It's interesting to see how dated this book is, which I'd guess was purposeful on Gibson's part (everybody uses hotmail; and a character “pulls out his Palm” at one point).

...and, that's about it, as far as I can tell. Yeah, there's a soooper-dooper-mysterious set of film clips being released, and Italians trying to kill her, or something. But I've no emotional investment in Cayce, or anyone else in the book, because the minimal character development doesn't give me any reason to. And the mystery-clip plot just didn't draw me in.

I...didn't get it. Honestly, that might be all there is to say. There were a lot of moving parts and a lot of evocative language, but ultimately, it didn't go anywhere to me. I felt like the pacing was so odd, there were topics that Gibson really perseverated on, like: someone broke into Damien's apartment! The apartment was broken into! Was the apartment broken into? We think someone broke into Damien's apartment! All of a sudden, it just occurred to me that the apartment might have been broke into and I need to process it because we've never discussed it before!
The pacing with characters was even stranger: Bigend's ex-girlfriend - who was never introduced on-screen, but was supposedly Cayce's best friend, who would spontaneously send e-mails and I had to remind myself who she was every single time. A lot of characters (like Magda and her brother, Ngemi and Hobbs) appeared from nowhere but somehow were implicitly trustworthy and part of the party?

Also, pilates. So much pilates. And yes, I really side-eye books where the male author spends a lot of time discussion the female protagonist's clothes and workout habits. Also, seriously, what is the obsession of male authors with destroying female character's clothing? This seems to be a trope of male action authors and it's dumb. How does Cayce manage to destroy two priceless jackets, one of which she's had for years in the course of a couple of weeks?

But my biggest problem is that it never went anywhere: the footage, Cayce's surreal logo allergy, her father-the-spy's mysterious disappearance: all of these gorgeous starting pieces didn't grew thematically, didn't grow together and ultimately never felt satisfying on a plot level, metaphysical level or thematic level.

This story had me experiencing nostalgia for a time before YouTube was corporate and censoring. I also felt the traumatic emotional memories being an adult who witnessed 9/11/01.

Pattern Recognition had a surprising historical fiction feel for something that's science fiction. That's probably because I'm reading this nearly 20 years too late.

I did learn a new word, “Apophenia: the tendency to mistakenly perceive connections and meaning between unrelated things.”

I also like this:

“Paranoia, he said, was fundamentally egocentric, and every conspiracy theory served in some way to aggrandize the believer.”

I ran across an abandoned copy of “Pattern Recognition” at one of my favorite coffee haunts. After determining that it indeed was an orphan, I adopted it and brought it home. It has become one of my all time favorite novels and I have been passing it around to all of my friends. Even those who don't necessarily read SciFi have enjoyed the novel.

Gibson's writing, for me, is compelling...but I always feel like I am intuitively “missing” something. It hovers right there at the edge of my consciousness, but I can never quite grasp it. Sort of how I felt about calculus for a long time. I was fascinated by the complexity of the subject, but always felt my understanding of it was VERY superficial. Finally, during the third time I took the class, understanding hit me like a bolt of lightning. I want to read “Pattern Recognition” two or three more times so I can come to that sort of comprehension with it.

Excellent read. I left my laptop at home accidentally during a trip to the Sierras and bought this for something to do when not hiking around or eating. So glad I did. Cayce has become one of my favorite characters of all time. The central mystery was compelling and kept me going. Gibson does good as usual.

Cayce Pollard has an acute sensitivity to logos and advertising. She uses her sensitivity as a consultant who can determine the effectiveness of corporate logos and advertising. After a business meeting she is hired by her contractor to seek out the origin of something called the footage, a mysterious film that is being released piecemeal in random sequence on the internet. Case, who has been avidly following the footage and the attendant speculation of its origins and meaning agrees to the task.

When I read William Gibson I sometimes feel like I've been dropped in a dark alley and I'm following Gibson's footsteps with the hope that if I catch up I can grasp all that is going on in the story. I say this not as a criticism because Gibson creates such a vivid world that the reader (or at least this reader) intuits the story from context. Definitely worth a read.