Pattern Recognition
by William Gibson
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Book Summary Information
Author: William GibsonEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-02-01
ISBN: 0425198685
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Berkley
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780425198681
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Pattern Recognition
Book Review: Interesting, but not his best
Summary: 4 Stars
Overall an interesting read, but Gibson continues to be a writer you read for ideas, not prose.
**spoiler alert** On page 130, Gibson has a hotel clerk "imprinting the Blue Ant card" at the Park Hyatt Tokyo. I don't know about you guys, but the last time I saw someone imprint a credit card I was just old enough to barely understood that the plastic card was some sort of replacement for cash. This book is supposed to be current (turn of the century). It was published in 2003, so I presume 2000 is as good as any for last-edits. Can anyone remember if anyone still imprinted credit cards in 2000, much less a five star hotel like the Park Hyatt Tokyo? Moral of the story: everyone makes mistakes, and so always read as if doing so with a fine-toothed comb? I mean, it was probably meant as a throwaway line (yet I've never thought of Gibson as a writer who did throwaways), and yet it's obviously incongruous enough that I'm obsessing over this.
When I bought the book I had no idea there was going to be an extensive portion set in Tokyo. I keep comparing Gibson's descriptions with those I would use, and at the same time, admiring his facility. His character is so sensitive to brands she constantly uses the words when thinking. Not only that--having the ubiquitous Burberry plaid pointed out just makes one blink and go, "... yes, I noticed that." Yet he noticed, enough to use it in his writing. I need to stop interrupting myself and just read this properly, dammit. Knee-socks are passé now. Wonder if they were passé in 2000.
Dammit, I am stopping constantly to remark at the new-and-not-new world painted in this book. Gibson has only to mention the word Shibuya, and immediately I see the Hachiko exit, the mural and pedestrian scramble, half of the green train carriage, no Hachiko (usually too small to see, considering the HUGE crowd around it all the time), the 109-1 and 109-2 buildings, the Starbucks with the video/bookstore/cinema, the street with all the people walking by the big drugstore, shoestore, up to the McDonalds ... dammit, this is what all those words bring up instantly. Why couldn't I have imagined another exit, on the other side? Like, you know, the one with that huge overhead pedestrian bridge (so big calling it a bridge is akin to calling Central Park a garden), leading to the Malaysian embassy, or to the Shibuya Animate? Why is it ALWAYS there?
I quote, "Every man there has obviously been staring, but immediately looks down or away." *clears throat* No. Tokyoites are actually a lot more practiced about staring at you. Saying _every_ man has been staring had the unfortunate effect of making me immediately dislike Cayce VERY much. And you were doing so well, Gibson, with the talk of soul-delay that every traveller recognizes as a beautiful way to present jetlag. Now you went and ruined everything with one sentence. ARGH.
The constant referencing of brand names gets a little tiring after a while. *sigh* I keep wandering off. I guess this is the mid-book slump people talk about. If nothing else, reading all these books is teaching me a lot about how to structure a book.
I liked the ending; though in some sense it felt a little too hurried, in another sense it was the right pace. Once the mid-book slump was over, the ending rushed up so quickly it's now 5pm and I have no idea where the time went. In the end, Gibson pulled through, and that was the important thing.
Summary of Pattern Recognition
The accolades and acclaim are endless for William Gibson's coast-to-coast bestseller. Set in the post-9/11 present, Pattern Recognition is the story of one woman's never-ending search for the now.
The first of William Gibson's usually futuristic novels to be set in the present, Pattern Recognition is a masterful snapshot of modern consumer culture and hipster esoterica. Set in London, Tokyo, and Moscow, Pattern Recognition takes the reader on a tour of a global village inhabited by power-hungry marketeers, industrial saboteurs, high-end hackers, Russian mob bosses, Internet fan-boys, techno archeologists, washed-out spies, cultural documentarians, and our heroine Cayce Pollard--a soothsaying "cool hunter" with an allergy to brand names.
Pollard is among a cult-like group of Internet obsessives that strives to find meaning and patterns within a mysterious collection of video moments, merely called "the footage," let loose onto the Internet by an unknown source. Her hobby and work collide when a megalomaniac client hires her to track down whoever is behind the footage. Cayce's quest will take her in and out of harm's way in a high-stakes game that ultimately coincides with her desire to reconcile her father?s disappearance during the September 11 attacks in New York.
Although he forgoes his usual future-think tactics, this is very much a William Gibson novel, more so for fans who realize that Gibson's brilliance lies not in constructing new futures but in using astute observations of present-day cultural flotsam to create those futures. With Pattern Recognition, Gibson skips the extrapolation and focuses his acumen on our confusing contemporary world, using the precocious Pollard to personify and humanize the uncertain anxiety, optimistic hope, and downright fear many feel when looking to the future. The novel is filled with Gibson's lyric descriptions and astute observations of modern life, making it worth the read for both cool hunters and their prey. --Jeremy Pugh
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