Pattern Recognition

Gibson evokes the eerie liminal state of the world Post 9-11, which at the time seemed so monumental and strange and epochal and which now seems impossibly distant and remote. Case Pollard with her allergy to brands and sensitivity to corporate logos that allows her to perceive whether they will succeed or not is hired by a marketing magnate to track down the maker of a series of strangely compelling film fragments appearing online. There follows a strange trek through Camden markets and Tokyo dives and run-down caravans on an abandoned military base, all the while dogged by break-ins and surveillance and a creepy bit of curated psychological warfare. Case, haunted by the disappearance of her father on 9-11, pursues the maker of the show more film, of which she is an obsessive fan despite misgivings about her employer, not in the hope of anything as un-post 9-11ish as catharsis or closure, but seeking some sort of connection and understanding. show less

Very impressive. It still feels like a Gibson novel, but he’s evolved as a writer, and it’s a fascinating rethinking of his themes and concerns, and how he goes about telling a story. Initially, the constant brand talk reminded me of American Psycho, but obviously his goals for doing that are completely different. It also reminds me of compatriot writer Bruce Sterling’s Islands in the Net, but this is more interested in culture and art than that novel. The final thing it reminds me a bit of is Lem’s Chain of Chance, in how it deals with coincidence and how we can miss it when evaluating events, and instead search for non existent connections and conspiracies.
I was going to go for another Gibson novel right away, but I don’t show more want to spoil the vibe. The novel might have satisfied my Gibson needs for the moment. Highly recommended. show less

Cayce Pollard is a cool expert. She is hired by companies to tell them if their advertising will work. She is also a footage follower. Small video clips have been appearing randomly on the web and followers have been analyzing it and trying to determine who has made the footage. When the owner of a UK public relations firm hires her to find the person or people responsible for the footage it seems like a dream job. But it also puts Cayce in danger. And Cayce has another ongoing quest. Her father, Win, was in New York on the morning of 9/11 and was never heard from again. Did he die or is he in hiding or did his enemies from his spy days catch up to him? These questions haunt Cayce.

This book was published in 2003. Eight years is a long show more time in computer terms but nothing in this book seems outdated. The mystery kept me intrigued and I loved all the details about trademarks and fashion that Gibson throws in. It was not as groundbreaking as Neuromancer but then you can probably only expect that once in a writer's lifetime. show less

And so, finally, the real world catches up with William Gibson. In 'Pattern recognition', he was written a typical Bill Gibson novel, but in this case it is unrecognisable as science fiction because his imagination now depicts the world we are living in.

His principal character, Cayce Pollard, makes a living from her acute sensitivity to logos, coupled with a semiotic equivalent to perfect pitch - she can instantly tell whether a logo or house style will work, will 'click' with its intended market and the zeitgeist. If there are no such people at large in the world today, if there is no real-life Cayce Pollard, then there ought to be, because design is so embedded in our modern market-oriented world that it needs to be got right for the show more benefit of companies and the sanity of the rest of us. There have been enough tales of marketing disasters for any acute company to understand the need for such a talent (the one example which comes close to this is the late Woolworth company marketing a range of bedroom furniture for young girls under the name "Lolita"); and such a person with such a talent would probably find other, more ordinary, jobs either unfulfilling or even physically impossible.

The MacGuffin of the novel (though it is essential to the plot) is some found video footage that keeps emerging on the Internet; Pollard is a fan of the footage and contributes to ongoing Internet forums on its origin, background and meaning. Gibson weaves this plot strand into a corporate thriller that spans the globe.

Throughout, Gibson displays a great sensitivity of place. The sections set in North London had the bite of authenticity for me; I accurately predicted where he had stayed and who had put him up, based on those parts of the novel! On that basis, he is probably familiar with the other places in the book.

The plot would have been total science fiction if the book had been written no more than ten years before; the world has changed in that time so fundamentally that a modern reader could never visualise it as such. Looking back to the writing of the book in 2002 from the perspective of nearly ten years later, it hasn't dated, just become more relevant. Indeed, about the one item that might have seemed vaguely science fictional - "a project to build a new kind of visually-based search engine" (p.273 in my edition) - has come to pass. Also: this is the first Gibson novel that I've read that has a lot of humour in it, including a running joke about a major character's name...

In short, the Zeitgeisty novel of our times. show less

Normally I read the kind of literary fiction where pages go by without anyone so much as thinking of doing something, let alone actually leaving the house. I'm not allergic to action, but there has to be something in there to engage the brain as well as the adrenal glands. I'm glad to say I was totally taken in by this novel. The plot was perfectly paced for my tastes, it asks interesting questions and the protagonist is totally engaging from very early on. I wanted CayceP to succeed, although it wasn't always clear what that might entail. Most of the other characters were well drawn, although Dorotea, and Hubertus Bigend (!), were a bit overdone. Because Cayce is so interesting I actually wanted to look up the cultural and design show more references I wasn't familiar with, whereas I normally consider that stuff just to be authorial posturing and skim over it. What's more, I found those references did help to flesh out her character, since her aesthetic is such an important part of who she is.

The prose is perfectly judged as well; it's not a genre that is likely to be bogged down by lyricism, but there is wit, precise action and moments of beauty beautifully described. I'll probably return to my usual world of literary fiction for a while, but next time I want a rollicking good story I'll probably turn again to William Gibson. show less

Aaargh! I read this because Scott Hawkins, the author if the amazing The Library at Mount Char, called it “criminally underappreciated.” Luckily I didn’t purchase it; I got it from the library, but still! (I also tried to read something by Jonathan Franzen because Lev Grossman recommended it, and I thought, “Anything recommended by the author of The Magicians must be awesome.” Ah, no. Weaponized boredom; didn’t get two pages in. Note to self: LITERARY TASTE IS NOT TRANSITIVE.)

Anyway, my thoughts. I will make no attempt to avoid “spoilers,” since you can’t “spoil” a boring slab of what-the-fuck-was-the-point-of-that.

The main character is Cayce, a specialized freelancer in marketing whose talent is evaluating logos show more for marketing oomph. She is weirdly sensitive to branding:

What people take for relentless minimalism is a side effect of too much exposure to the reactor-cores of fashion. This has resulted in a remoreseless pairing-down of what she can and will wear. She is, literally, allergic to fashion. She can only tolerate things that could have been worn, to a general lack of comment, during any year between 1945 and 2000. She’s a design-free zone, a one-woman school of anti whose very austerity periodically threatens to spawn its own cult.

In a mall:

Tommy Hilfiger does it every time... A glance to the right and the avalanche lets go. A mountainside of Tommy coming down on her head.

My God, don’t they know? This stuff is simulacra of simulacra of simulacra. A diluted tincture of Ralph Lauren, who had himself diluted the glory days of Brooks Brothers, who themselves had stepped on the product of Jermyn Street and Savile Row, flavoring their ready-to-wear with liberal lashings of polo knit and regimental stripes. But Tommy surely is the null point, the black hole. There must be some Tommy Hilfiger event horizon, beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative, more removed from the source, more devoid of soul. Or so she hopes, and doesn’t know, but suspects in her heart that this in fact is what accounts for his long ubiquity.

Cayce is particularly sensitive to the original version of the Michelin Man, a mascot known as Bibendum (“We drink.”). Her corporate enemy finds this out and uses it against her:

Dorotea takes her time unfastening the envelope. She reaches inside. Pulls out a square of art board the size of the last one. On it is the Michelin Man, in one of his earliest, most stomach-churningly creepy manifestations, not the inflated-maggot de-shelled Ninja Turtle of the present day, but that weird, jaded, cigar-smoking elder creature suggesting a mummy with elephantiasis. “Bibendum,” says Dorotea, softly.

Bibendum is described as creepy, and he makes Cayce freak out, but really he’s just dorky. There’s a pic of him here. If you follow the link you’ll see he’s just the Michelin Man, portrayed as the old stereotypical image of the Capitalist Fat Cat. He even has a monocle; well actually it has two lenses so I guess it’s a ...bionicle? Whatever.

Oh, yeah, the plot: It would be nice if there were one. What happens is: Our Heroine is a devotee of mysterious film footage that’s being anonymously released in bits and pieces on the Net. (Perhaps this seemed like a whiz-bang idea when the novel was published in 2003.) It’s not possible to tell whether the segments of footage are parts of a coherent story because they’re apparently being released in random order. One reason Cayce likes the footage is that the people in it wear clothes that cannot be dated to any particular time in the last half century (as of the novel’s publication).

Eventually some corporate dude who is interested in advertising engages Cayce to find out who the film’s makers are, and gives her an infinite expense account so she can go galivanting all over the planet looking for him/her/them.

And the big surprise is... the maker is a Russian chick who has suffered brain damage in a gang warfare bombing. Making the footage is her only way of interacting with the world.

...Yeah, so? It’s all very pointless. It actually is as pointless as it sounds; I’m not leaving out anything important.

Also, annoying plot features: (1) A crucial bit of evidence is supplied by a guy whom Our Heroine literally happens to meet on a street. Plotting by coincidence, ugh. (2) The main bad guy, the woman who exposes Cayce to the Michelin Man of Dread, later on tells her to drink some water that she, the bad guy, has provided, and Cayce actually does so. For fuck’s sake! Of course it’s drugged, and Our Heroine has a brief stay in a Russian mental-hospital-cum-jail as a result. In reality no one would be that stupid, obviously.

How did this get published? show less

Cayce is a coolhunter – ultra sensitive to logos and able to track street trends for corporate usurpation. While on assignment in London, she receives an offer to partner with one of the world’s most powerful marketing gurus to find the anonymous maker of an Internet phenomenon – haunting snippets of film found in crevices of the net. He wants to find it because he considers it the greatest guerrilla marketing ever. She wants to find it simply because ever since her father disappeared on September 11th, she has been comforted and fascinated by these found images. Cayce’s treasure hunt takes her around the world in typical Gibson fashion, complete with requisite cyberpunk fantasy Tokyo shopping sprees, satisfying for this show more long-time Gibson reader (eat your heart out Danielle Steel). Pattern Recognition also ends in a typical Gibson wrap-up – feeling all too neat and swept together. show less