IMO Gibson ain't Pynchon by a long shot + Rolling Assessment

[Joseph Tracy]

Good story about P and the dishes. Has the ring of truth.

Look, Gibson fans, I'm not trying to cut Gibson down to size n such. I'm not qualified. I 'm being honest. I wanted to like the damn book more.  Probably there is an element in active reading where you just gravitate to what speaks to you and is useful.  

So far my own reading of BE is such that I can understand the harsher critics and  the raves.  If this was my first, or an early Pynchon read It would be fresh enough to elicit more delight than annoyance. As it is, my feeling is it could use an editor. The glut of pop culture references seems very New York, but without satiric nuance or direction. . The sex seems barely to non- credible.  Still there is a lot going on here .   But I haven't finished and the plot thickens.

On Sep 26, 2013, at 10:38 PM, John Bailey wrote:

>> 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