Title: Pattern Recognition
Author(s): William Gibson
Publisher: Putnam
Year: 2003
This is my favourite William Gibson novel by a wide margin, and I love everything he’s written (ok, maybe not his unmade Alien 3 script, or First Person Shooter, the lesser of his two X-Files episodes, but all the novels, at least). Although he’s best known as the progenitor of dystopian cyberpunk noir (and is consequently one of the unwitting and remorseful fathers of our current dystopian cyberpunk reality), for my money, it’s the trilogy of novels he wrote during the early years of this strange century where he really shines. Without casting any shade at all on Neuromancer, Snow Crash, Ghost in the Shell, The Matrix or any other beloved piece of cyberpunk media, I do feel that “gritty dystopia” can be quite easy - just take the most cynical view of the present, throw some dirt on it and call it “a prescient look into our possible future”. I think that’s a Neal Stephenson paraphrase, but I’m not going to look it up. This is a blog, not a term paper.
Anyway, Pattern Recognition is set in our normal world, in the year in which it was written. The shadow of 9/11 hangs over the narrative, and though it is ultimately a story of corporate espionage and encounters with the hidden hands that control the world, it’s extremely grounded. This is the book where I really came to love Gibson’s specific style of prose, where I realized that it’s the way he writes that’s so engaging, the poetry of it, not so much the wild sci-fi concepts or mirrorshades cool. The way he describes our actual world makes it feel alien, and makes me sense the deep alienation we all encounter every day as we try to live in this strange and hostile society.
The book is also largely about fashion, and branding, and has influenced how I dress and shop in a way that stultifying ideologues like Naomi Klein could only dream of. No Logo? No thank you! I’ve got Cayce Pollard and her debilitating allergy to the Michelin man, her divinatory hypersensitivity to the pollution of advertising, her otaku devotion to reading the meaning in a bolt of fabric, the history in a weave of Japanese denim.
Cayce’s inner monologue also put forth the concept of “soul jetlag”, the idea that flying halfway around the world separates your body from your soul, and that it takes some time for the two to reunite. As someone who spent much of his childhood and adolescence flying halfway around the world, this rings as true as anything could ever ring.
Gibson would round out the Cayce Pollard trilogy with Spook Country in 2007 and Zero History in 2010, both of which are fantastic and highly recommended, but nothing hits me like Pattern Recognition. The copy I have, shown in the photo to the left, is autographed, made out to someone named Bill, and I’ve hoped that one day, when I finally work up the nerve to approach Gibson outside the coffee shop or pilates studio, I’ll happen to have that book with me, and can ask him to simply cross out “Bill”, and write “Wyatt” instead.