A Few Good Memes

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!

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Ok, I don’t read much. When I do, it’s typically computer science books. But I’ve been a big fan of William Gibson for a long time. His highly descriptive style and rapid-fire delivery are great for both ends of my ADD-ridden brain.

I needed to “use up” a subscription at audible.com where I’d converted my monthly subscription for This American Life, the best hour of radio anywhere, to an annual subscription. I looked for Gibson and Stephenson to get my “free” book and all they had in terms of full length, unabridged books was Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. It’s set in the present, so I was somewhat skeptical at first, but I have to say, this book is outstanding in every way. Rumor has it Gibson spent weeks rewriting a single sentence earlier in his career and the care and meticulousness of Pattern Recognition shows this.

The title of this entry comes from a mantra used by Cayce Pollard, the protagonist of the story. “He took a duck in the face at 250 knots” - an account of a pilot (a friend of Cayce’s father, I believe) who had a duck crash through the windshield of the plane he was piloting and who continued to fly with shards of glass in his eye. It’s a phrase she utters to calm her nerves when in acutely stressful situations. I’d love to stumble across a mantra like that.

Cayce is also biologically allergic to various logotypes, Tommy Hilfiger and the Michelin Man being particularly toxic to her. I really identify with this, though not to such an extreme. Allergy is the perfect description of this condition. When one has an allergy, one can often crave the allergen itself. When I drive the Kennedy expressway in Chicago, I play a game where I try not to look at any of the billboards. It’s nearly impossible. I crave them. I also try to wear nondescript logo-free clothing like Cayce does. The exception is the shirts Anna got me with the Marketnet logo on them. I suppose I’d rather have them logo-free too, but they’re nice shirts otherwise and Anna thought I’d like to go around with Marketnet’s logo on me. I do feel a sense of connection and pride in my father’s company, but I think my allergy comes from being raised by someone in advertising and synaptic hyperlinks to associated family funkiness.

The plot is engaging and the characters deep and compelling. The audiobook was read by Shelly Frasier. Her voice and accents are so outstanding that I’m inclined to listen to other books she’s narrated just for the sensual (not sexual) enjoyment of it.

As a sometimes-artist, I often approach art, especially music, from a “I could have written/played that” approach. Gibson’s work is so superlative that this circuit gets shut down early in the novel and I can just sit back and enjoy it. Not unlike listening to Soul Coughing or looking at Robert Mapplethorpe’s images.

I’m thinking of reading (listening to) it again it was so good. It’s only about 9 hours.