Pattern Recognition

"It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing. There is more than one way to conquer a country. . "
-Raymond Chandler


A lone man walks down dark city streets. He knows, intuitively, where the lines of power are, who "owns" the city, and how much corruption there is everywhere. Everyone is complicit; most struggle to be as human as possible. And the line between humanity and corruption, between honor and pragmatism, is never clear. Everyone blurs lines, but everyone hands their breaking points. Unlucky sobs stand for their convictions, for their women--and more often than not kill for it. But, walking in such a setting, that one man manages to make his way. "He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness."

The man, of course, is Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe. He wasn't the first detective, and he certainly has links back to Sherlock Holmes, the father of detectives. But Chandler was perhaps the first to capture the sense of alienation, of corruption and sin and evil codified into urban power structures. It is not a coincidence that the first collection of comic books in the series entitled Sin City was named for Chandler's last full-length novel (The Hard Goodbye, now, from The Long Goodbye.)

Which brings us to William Gibson, the founder of cyberpunk, and his contemporarily-set novel, Pattern Recognition.

Like Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles, the world of Pattern Recognition (our world, but seen through Gibson's eyes) is one where dehumanizing sin has been accepted as an integral part of the power structure. The primary indicator of this is the nature of "contentless advertising," a sort of worldwide house of mist built on the fact that, as Sprite puts it, "image is everything." And of course, all that is built solidly on the greed of men and companies who cannot be trusted, on the immense flow of information that leaves no secrets safe yet bewilders the mind, and on the process of "branding" that seeks to exploit, market and sell even our very identities.

The protagonist, then, is an ideal update of the hard-boild detective: a hyperspecialized woman who is simultaneously capable of detecting the marketability of logos at a glance and severely allergic to "contentless advertising." And of course, following the noir formula she is drawn into a web of deception and lies, but of the sort that reflect, rather than hiding, the fundamental impersonality of modern life. In this case, she is searching for the creator of an internet-released film unlike anything ever seen, under the employ of an untrustworthy employer and feeling herself using some rather unethical means. All in a world where, due to a pace of change so great as to exceed our ability to imagine it. "We have no future because our present is too volatile. We have only risk management. The spinning of a given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition."

But perhaps the brilliance of Gibson, like that of Chandler, is seen most in his use of style. I wouldn't have thought it when I read the first sentence ("Five hours' New York jet lag and Cayce Pollard wakes in Camden Town to the dire and ever-circling wolves of disruptd circadian rythm.") But somehow Gibson's agressively highbrow prose solidifies the more it is read, revealing a clarity and (surprisingly) a simplicity indicitive of a long and careful process of revision. I don't know that I will ever read a book that better captures the surreality inherent in a company credit card, or an internet-based friendship. Like Steinbeck, Gibson captures something of the tempo and rythm and poetry of modern life. It is certainly a different poetry than Steinbeck, a poetry specifically urbanite rather than rural, but it carries the same resonance of understanding and observant wisdom. For one thing, it is the first time I've seen an author successfully and beautifully deal with the World Trade Center bombings. For me, just that flashback scene in its poignancy, insecurity, and confusion is worth hundreds of dreary documentaries of the type that filled television on this year's September 11.

In any case, it is certainly as haunting and memorable book as I've read in some time. And that, for me, is one of the prime marks of good fiction--it sticks with you, like a good meal, and haunts your memory at the oddest times. And you realize you understand a bit more about the world, or at least see a bit more of its poetry and wonder.