I had to buy a dictionary for this one, an Oxford American with additional thesaurus features.
I didn’t know if I’d make it through this book in a reasonable amount of time. The premise is intelligent, captivating, but the language is dense with lesser known words and product references and the sentences are constructed so oddly that I was sure this was going to be one of those books that looks and feels fantastic but you-as-reader are never able to sink below the surface with. The kind of book that makes you feel inadequate, stupid even, as both a writer and a reader. The kind of book that’s just too much for you.
Like David Foster Wallace, or Pynchon, or DeLillo, all of whom I have unread works of sitting on my shelf, just waiting for me to attempt to take them on. Tomorrow, I tell myself, or next week, or next month, I’ll give them a whirl. But right now I’m reading for pleasure, damn it, not to tax my brain or grant me some kind of temporary bragging rights that will last until the next epic work shows itself to me. Not right now.
And, of course, those days have yet to come. Even The House of Leaves is still waiting for me, I’m sad to say.
However, things didn’t turn out the way I’d expected them to. Pattern Recognition takes a while to pull you into its orbit, and even longer to achieve rhythmic balance between mind and prose, but once you’re in you’re golden.
Just make sure you have your dictionary beside you and a browser open to Google, should you need them.
At the heart of this story lies Cayce Pollard, an uber-nerd living and working in the heart of chic as a “cool-hunter” for advertising agencies. In her spare time, she posts on an Internet forum devoted to a series of nameless, unidentifiable bits of film footage that emerge in random on different websites, seemingly out of sequential order. Who creates the footage, why, and how? She cannot figure it out, despite lengthy debates with her online friends, and eventually her online and real world realities blend together when she is hired by one of her current clients to begin a new job, actually a partnership, of finding the footage’s creator.
On top of this, Cayce has a severe allergy to several well-known corporate insignias, a mix of physical and neurotic reactions that leave her nearly unable to function at the mere sight of them. Didn’t know the name of the Michelin Man was actually Bibendum? You will after reading this. You’ll know what a Curta calculator is as well, but only after looking it up so you can picture it as it’s described on the page. Prada, Tommy Hilfiger, Apple and several dozen other recognizable logos make appearances here, either as severe allergens or harmless artworks.
Considering what Gibson is best known for (cyberpunk), this felt oddly mainstream, too close to real, actual life. Pollard’s father has gone missing in the 9/11 tragedy, and her mother’s coping mechanism includes going to live in a hippy commune with people who analyze recorded audio for ghost whispers. Between the constant references to pop culture, current (or very recent) events and corporate giants, this could be one of those “ripped from the headlines” type of stories, or even a cheap cyber-thriller. It is both of these, and yet it is neither as well.
What it really is, at its core, is an explanation to the rest of the world, the people who don’t understand the duality of Internet enthusiasts, of how people can live and befriend online, and how eventually the digital world spills out into the real.
4/5
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