'Pattern Recognition': The Coolhunter

[Paul Mackin]

Gibson still likes Pynchon.

P


http://nytimes.com/2003/01/19/books/review/19ZEIDNET.html
As an ode to paranoia, ''Pattern Recognition'' resembles not that
 Pynchonian bible, ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' but ''The Crying of Lot 49.''
 In fact, it can almost be read as a tribute or, as Hollywood would say,
 a remake. After all, when Pynchon explored entropy, counterculture and
 the postal monopoly in 1966, there was no Internet.
 But does our technology really produce a cataclysmic shift, or is human
 nature immutable? That has always been Gibson's über-issue. As Pynchon
 has taught us, the right answer isn't necessarily either/or. It may well
 be both/and. (Even the paranoid can be followed.) When Cayce bumps up
 against the Russian mafia, a Gibson staple, she muses, ''Turns out there
 are some very not-nice people, out here.'' Money also makes cyberspace
 go round. Despite itself, however, this mafia is thrust into new
 territory when it must contend with the Net.