IMO Gibson ain't Pynchon by a long shot

[Joe Allonby]

Neuromancer invented the internet as we now know it within Gibson's imagination.



On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 10:02 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> I do agree that these details have a  tremendous place in P's work adding texture, riff material from the comic to the sublime, and are simply integrated into his world view and style  in a fascinating way.  I personally like the way several writers use this kind of material- Margaret Atwood for example.  For Gibson my own sense was an obsession with status regarding pop culture and fashion. It didn't grab or engage me as anything other than a decent yarn.
>
>
> On Sep 26, 2013, at 9:22 AM, Monte Davis wrote:
>
>> What you said. Pynchon's songs and movies and comix and advertising snatches
>> --- say "rich, chocolaty, goodness," everybody! -- are no less central to
>> what he's doing than his acknowledged Big Themes ---
>> imperialism/colonialism, routinization of charisma, technology and its
>> discontents, usw.
>>
>> Take Crutchfield and his little pard Whappo, the Norwegian mulatto lad. We
>> hanker to parse them neatly into "this part is a towering moral critique of
>> the theft of a continent" and "this part is pop-culture scrapings from a
>> thousand penny-dreadful Buffalo Bill tales and Howard Hawks Westerns." But
>> he won't let us.
>>
>> "Not 'archetypical' westwardman, but _the only_. Understand, there was only
>> one. There was only one Indian who ever fought him. Only one fight, one
>> victory, one loss. And only one president, and one assassin, and one
>> election. True. One of each of everything. You had thought of solipsism, and
>> imagined the structure to be populated-on your level-by only, terribly, one.
>> No count on any other levels. But it proves to be not quite that lonely.
>> Sparse, yes, but a good deal better than solitary."
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: John Bailey [mailto:sundayjb at gmail.com]
>> Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2013 7:50 AM
>> To: Monte Davis
>> Cc: Joseph Tracy; P-list List
>> Subject: Re: IMO Gibson ain't Pynchon by a long shot
>>
>> Terrific post, Monte.
>>
>> Reminded me of an old thought walk I'd forgotten having taken, sometime
>> around the BE era. For some reason I was reading Vineland at the same time
>> as two novels by Bret Easton Ellis and Murakami, no idea which ones and I do
>> recall they weren't very impressive. What struck me was how all three kept
>> constantly dropping brand names, and I wondered why. It wasn't for
>> historical authenticity - they weren't trying to build up a plausible
>> reality by slipping in historically specific references. And I couldn't
>> quite buy the opposite; the ol'
>> pomo argument about the replacement of the Real by the simulation, or
>> consumerism as the impoverished substitute for whatever religion etc once
>> promised.
>>
>> Still not sure where that led me in the end, but I think BE continues a line
>> of thinking that I first found in VL. The (not really a
>> spoiler) party late-ish in the novel seems to offer a hint. Nostalgia for
>> that which isn't yet gone, or the sense that the present is already a past,
>> and vice versa. I'd say more but will wait until we're done with the read,
>> perhaps.
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 8:12 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:
>>> JT> [Gibson is] overly obsessed with fashion to the point of seeing
>>> JT> fashion
>>> sense as a kind of moral force and profound insight.
>>>
>>> The same mental and social processes of emulation, alignment,
>>> evaluation --
>>>
>>> "What are those around me doing?"
>>> "What confers approval and status, what is deprecated?"
>>> "What explains the discrepancies between the 'is' I see and the
>>> 'ought' I'm taught?"
>>>
>>> are at work in the oldest Deep Moral Forces and the most transient
>> fashion.
>>> To say "religion, philosophy and psychology are about eternal
>>> verities; marketing and advertising are about market-driven trivia" is
>>> to blind oneself with idealism -- and in my experience, to make
>>> oneself more rather than less easily manipulated by the latter.
>>>
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
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