A puzzler from BusinessWeek

[Greg Montalbano]

On Tue, 23 Jan 1996 09:14:17 -0800 you said:
>
>The following lines were contained in a review in this week's BusinessWeek
>of two books about chasing down hacker Kevin Mitnick ("Manhunt on the
>Info Highway," BusinessWeek, January 29, 1996, p. 12):
>
>  Inadvertently, perhaps, both books describe an America worthy of
>  Thomas Pynchon.  As in that author's _Gravity's Rainbow_, Mitnick
>  and Shimomura live in a world that's chock-full of brand names,
>  rife with technology, flooded with electronic signals, and fraught
>  with paranoia.
>
>Huh?  You reckon reviewer John W. Verity has confused GR with, say,
>_Snow Crash_ or that repellent novel about the mass murderer with
>the penchant for designer menswear?  Paranoia, sure, but *brand names*?
>Moxie is about the only brand name I can recall from GR.
>
>(Someday, I am going to collect a list of books that have been
>compared to Pynchon's.  I bet it will surprise just about everybody.)
>
>Penny
I'm willing to bet he's thinking of William Gibson's NEUROMANCER.