IMO Gibson ain't Pynchon by a long shot

[John Bailey]

>From William Gibson (via the much-reviled medium):

[Asked if he had ever tried to meet Pynchon]

Of course not.

I did once meet someone who (I believe) had washed dishes with "Tom"
at a party. Was told, much later, that that had been Pynchon.

This person had been doing a doctorate in town planing at the time.
Said "Tom" "knew more about town planning than anyone I've ever met".

On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 8:30 AM, Joe Allonby <joeallonby at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l