Pattern Recognition - William Gibson (2003)

 

Rating: Admirable

Around the turn of the twenty first century William Gibson stated that any possible future that he could imagine would not be as weird as what was happening in the present. Accordingly, Pattern Recognition was the first of his novels to be set in the (then) present, so weirdly it is now set in the past. It has been a long time since I’ve read a Gibson novel, longer than the life of this blog. Pattern Recognition attracted me due to its fantastic premise, involving a female protagonist, Cayce Pollard, who displays allergic reactions to logos. Cayce makes a living as a marketing consultant, the worst her reaction is, the better the logo. Cayce is employed by the marketing company, Blue Ant, owned by the toothy Tom Cruise-like Hubertus Bigend (one of the best character names ever). In London to meet with the Blue Ant marketers, Cayce starts to experience a sequence of unsettling events, including being bullied by Blue Ant hard bitch, Dorotea Benedetti. In addition, Cayce, along with a world-wide coterie, is obsessed with very short arty film clips (referred to as ‘the footage’) that appear intermittently via the internet, and are created by an anonymous source, a source that Bigend wants to uncover, seeing it as a brilliant marketing art-form. Bigend, all toothy and hirsute, uses his persuasive powers, basically oozing cinematic charm, to hire a reluctant and paranoid Cacye to track down the creator.

Gibson, feeling weird in the (then) present

Pattern Recognition reveals a Gibson different to the one who produced significant novels such as Neuromancer (1984) and All Tomorrow’s Parties (1999). I always felt that although Gibson’s ideas were brilliant, technically his prose was slightly clunky. Not so with Pattern Recognition, in fact after only fifty pages I was comparing his prose style with that of DeLillo and Ballard, and I started to see the world differently while under the novel’s influence, something that happens rarely (but does with Ballard and DeLillo). Typically, Gibson displays a fine degree of cultural insight, tapping into the opaque signs and signifiers that lurk in our oversaturated media dominated world (as it already was back in 2003). Curiously, however, there are some quaint uses of technology; to watch segments of the ‘footage’ Bigend uses a potable DVD player! The novel was published six years before Smartphones became sophisticated and cheap enough to completely change our interactions with media, therefore DVD technology seems completely out of date as a portable medium now. Gibson produces some brilliant lines, and the novel is replete with visually expressive writing. The overall feel is very noirish, especially when Cayce ends up in Tokyo, perhaps the most natural environment for a Gibson novel. Despite an excellent start the novel begins to taper off about two thirds of the way through, particularly after several mysteries are cleared up. The novel’s denouement is melancholic (a good descriptor for the overall tone of the novel) and subdued, which was disappointing after such an intriguing beginning. Recently I read that short stories tend to be all middle, which is an appropriate descriptor for Pattern Recognition, as it doesn’t quite ignite. Overall, the novel is full of promise that doesn’t completely deliver, but I haven’t been put off and will read the second and third books in the trilogy, Spook Country (2007) and Zero History (2010).