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183 of 198 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb, thought-provoking novel, May 11, 2003
I feel I should start of by stating that this is my first William Gibson novel, so if you're looking for an evaluation of "Pattern Recognition" within the context of his other books, there's no point in reading further. That said, I found "Pattern Recognition" to be a remarkable, moving novel that was a joy to read. Specifically, 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.
However, it is when Cayce is asked by her enigmatic and enormously influential colleague to track the footage to the source that things get weird. It would be impossible to recount the plot here without spoiling it, but the dualities mentioned above, art and pop-culture, past and future, act, react and interact in fascinating ways. Gibson argues eloquently that the future is informed by the past, but not determined by it. Moreover, he seems to be arguing that there is no such thing as consumer-culture or art, but rather that they are all part of one increasingly global CULTURE. This blurring of the lines is neither good nor bad, but instead a consequence of the Information Age. As such, the definitions and boundaries of art are shifting.
I could go on, but I suspect that this is the type of novel that allows (and encourages) a multitude of conclusions. So I will finish by saying that on top of the fascinating, puzzling plot, and the interesting thematic elements, this is also a very cathartic book to read. While 9/11 plays a relatively small role in terms of lines of text, the horror of that day saturates Cayce, and the themes of the book. At it's conclusion, however, "Pattern Recognition" points the way to a release of those emotions, or more accurately of a way to place them within a personal historical context. Thus, this remarkable novel points to a chance for hope in our troubled brave new world.
Jake Mohlman
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35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Lesser writers have failed to mature as nicely., March 23, 2003
After I read Neuromancer the first time (yes, I read it more than once), I joked that Gibson wrote it once and then removed about half the words. In Pattern Recognition, he recaptures that hard-edged, terse, yet gorily descriptive prose. It is, as Neil Gaiman says on the back cover, Gibson's best book since his great moment in science fiction history (I still think Neuromancer is the best science fiction book I've ever read). The interesting thing here is that PR is not science fiction, and I believe that is because, unsurprisingly, Gibson, despite the sparkling sentences, is not the same man he was twenty years ago. He has matured and his view of the world, while certainly still dark and paranoid, has changed. Some will probably say that PR is science fiction. Without doubt, there is much in the book that smacks of the genre, especially the sub-genre Gibson is famous for creating. Technology and it's accouterment are ubiquitous: cell-phones, laptops, software, the internet, chatrooms, servers--all the usual suspects of a Gibson environment. Lights either hurt the eyes or barely exist. Surfaces are hard and shiny, clothing dark, edges lethal, and people all of the above. The lines between corporate executives, crime bosses, and government leaders are blurry, at best. And, as in all Gibson's work, the super-rich are above it all, somehow both less and more human than ordinary people. However, this book is set squarely in the barely-past-September 11 present. Further, the technology all exists already. There is no prediction and no more speculation than any novel that invents institutions and locales. The hard affect and cynical view of our geo-political-social world are only science fiction out of habit; in fact, this is just Gibson describing part of the world that he sees around him. Even more to the point is that Gibson reverses science fiction's priorities. No matter what the writers of science fiction say, the genre is first and foremost about science, about thinking of cool possibilities in the near (or not so near) future. People are basically methods of talking about the ideas. Yeah, the best science fiction uses the cover of the science to also talk about important ideas or trends in contemporary life, but if the science isn't there, most of even the best books in the genre fall flat on their computer screens (alas, this is probably true of even Neuromancer). PR puts people first. The main character (Cayce Pollard, in a nod to Neuromancer's Case) is free-lance marketing consultant with a phobia for trademarks and logos, haunted by the mystery of her father's disappearance in New York on September 11. Her "tame pathologies"--a variation of another standard device for Gibson--make her a legend in the marketing world. Partly because she's dealing with the probable loss of her father, she's become obsessed with a series of small video clips disseminated anonymously over the web. The segments are beautiful and enigmatic in a way that attracts a cult following which meets virtually at "Fetish:Footage:Forum". Cayce's emotional pain, psychological distress, and passion for the unknown footage take her on a wild ride around the world looking for "the maker"--the creator or creators of these clips. We watch as she struggles to put the clues and, more importantly, her psyche back together. There is plenty of action, but ultimately this is a novel of interiority. And Cayce's interiority is not the only important one here. There are real side characters with developed personalities and relationships built on talking and intimacy. Parkaboy, one of the "F:F:F" regulars, goes on impassioned tirades against other posters and Cayce spends hours responding to him both on the forum and through private email. Cayce and her friend Damien, a documentary film maker, have a long relationship full of communication about their fears and aspirations. All of them care deeply about what they are doing and work very hard at it. In fact, caring about what you do enough to put yourself on the line is what separates the good guys from the bad in the PR. Artists, waitresses, computer geeks, corporate execs, and even Russian mafia bosses are okay as long as they are doing something they believe in. Bad guys are those for whom "it's all actually about money." Fortunately, the moral scale is not quite as stark as this. The "good guys" are still complicated and there's usually some good things about the "bad guys," too. There's plenty of sexual attraction and more than a share of glitzy, pretty people and things. But, there are also some grim realities and fully engaged people doing things they care about. This story affirms human relationships and the importance of doing that which you care about passionately. It is also a criticism of the importance of money in our culture, of what Charles Taylor calls our society's focus on "instrumental reason." The overt moralism and the centrality of human relationships are things I think Gibson is trying on as an author for the first time; his tentativeness is borne out by the fact that this is his simplest book, structurally, since Neuromancer. While I don't think he's duplicated the original genius of that book, Pattern Recognition is still a good book, and that despite our ability to see his lack of certainty. After twenty years, a marriage, children, probably a mortgage --the whole Catastrophe--Gibson has tired of creating only young, hard-edged, self-destructive characters and stories. He has discovered that all of life is not hard drugs, fast women, and faster guns. He's trying to write himself a new definition. Many writers in this situation have failed to mature as well.
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Delayed Impact, February 18, 2004
My wife and I have been reading Gibson aloud to each other for years now. His prose is so, well, poetic, it really tolerates vocalization quite nicely. After "All Tomorrow's Parties" (the most beautifully written SF novel and one of the most interesting I have read recently), we were quite excited by the advent of "Pattern Recognition" and sprang for the hardcover. We read it aloud on a long drive together, an hour or so at a time. The "mystery" of the plot and the oblique excitement to know what happens next that it engenders kept us looking forward to each reading session. At the end, however, we finished the novel with a vague feeling of disappointment, of loose-ends being tied up too neatly, of the resolution being essentially too banal for the detail and complexity that lead up to it. Perhaps that was Mr. Gibson's point. Dunno. However, I must say, that in the months since, points of view about current world culture that are expressed (both implicitly and explicitly) in the novel have kept returning to our casual conversation. I conclude that much of the book is profound in some subtle sense that may not effect you right away, but which will have a long lasting influence on each reader's consciousness of popular trends and their expression in media and merchandise. A warning: as with most of William Gibson's books, there are layers here. If you are a pop and internet culture enthusiast (not to mention technologically "aware"), that is, if you are "hip" you'll "get" almost all of the book. If not, well, you may not "catch" enough of the (many) cultural references or enough of the interplay between ideas, character, and plot to make it worth your read.
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