Quote:
…I think I’d probably tell you that it’s easier to desire and pursue the attention of tens of millions of total strangers than it is to accept the love and loyalty of the people closest to us.
There is an odd surface tension here; some readers may approach Idoru from the wrong bias, through the lens of Neuromancer and the Sprawl trilogy. Those readers will expect the traditional cyberpunk romp of amphetamine-fueled Yakuza battles and twisted violent sex in coffin hotels; those readers will be disappointed and may not be able to penetrate the skin of this charged, deeply emotional book. Idoru is William Gibson’s Through the Looking Glass. Read the rest of this entry »
Walken cast as Fox;
it almost works but misses.
Still beats Mnemonic.
SPOILER WARNING: Honestly, [tag]New Rose Hotel[/tag] would have been truly great but only if [tag]Abel Ferrara[/tag] had had the presence of mind to keep it as a 30-45 minute short film. Instead, he tells the story twice: first as a really effective (and at times quite clever) to-film adaptation of [tag]William Gibson[/tag]’s short story and the second as a truer-to-the-written-version frenetic and vaguely psychedelic flashback freak-out. To Ferrara’s credit, Gibson’s short story gives you enough material to want to make a film out of it but not enough to make a feature length adaptation of it. When we popped this in, I was really expecting something much more similar to his film The Funeral; the tone is close, the style is definitely his, but it just doesn’t all pull together with the same cohesion. The really sad part is that it would be almost too easy to blame it on Christopher Walken for giving too much life to Fox and taking away from Dafoe’s portrayal of the narrator - - but maybe that’s just it, Gibson really does give us little more than an empty shell in that character, a vessel that Fox steers into Sandii and which Sandii steers straight into oblivion.
*sigh*
Still waiting for someone to adapt “[tag]Hinterlands[/tag]“. (At least Ferrara’s adaptation had a sly reference to it. Nicely done.)
currently playing: Max & Harvey “Big Amoeba Sound”
I’ve arrived by parachute at this structure that appears to be a scaled-down version of the tenements from The Kung Fu Hustle - - except that it’s an animal shelter. And I’ve been brought in to re-write their brochures and pamphlets and other literature. It’s a challenging task because the words won’t sit still - - the words crawl around and sentences delete themselves before I can put the period or the question mark on the page. While I’m working on this, I come to discover that this animal shelter is for cyborg dogs, transgenic cats, alien-rabbit hybrids, “rat things”, and other creatures made flesh from science fiction stories. And William Gibson has set up this Humane-Society-for-cyborg-pets and then hired me to re-write the literature.
It’s been a while since I’ve commented on books that have gone through the eye-hole. And given my recent in-take, I’d say it’s about time to make with the commentary…
David Foster Wallace’s
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again - - a worthy read on more levels than we have fingers and toes to offer. I’ve been a tremendous fan of Wallace’s fiction (”found drama” duh!) now for about five years and was more or less commanded by a good friend to check out this collection of essays. Several of them floored me. A few others I was “eh” about. His humor shines through in damn near all of these essays and in ways that are both easy to appreciate if you’re literate. “Getting Away from Already Pretty Much Away from It All” (for example) shows us his rare gift of being able to take a group of people and totally illuminate their follies and flaws without going about it in a way that is insulting or degrading; he saves that for his self deprecating remarks re: rich desserts. Then there’s “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction” which is probably the first and only time I’ve seen him use footnotes in a way that I “expected”; oh, and this is pretty much required follow-up reading for anyone who just finished
Infinite Jest. “Greatly Exaggerated” is a true gem - - a subtle jab at how literature/critical theory is so often so far up its own ass - - and making that jab as only an insider looking in as an outsider can do. But it’s the essay whose title is shared with the collection that makes it all worthwhile.
Huntington’s
The H.G. Wells Reader - - got this one as a birthday gift. And what a gift it was. Modern sci-fi owes a lot to Wells. His substance and style (while indicative of his time period) set an important tone for the genre as a whole. His thoughtful prose illuminates how humanity is wrapped up in science and how science can’t escape its legacy of humanity. These excerpts and short stories are brilliant, plain and simple. (Only criticism is on their typesetter - - lines are too long with typefaces too small there, pal!)
Emmanuel Carrere’s biography of Philip K. Dick:
I Am Alive And You Are Dead - - a scintillating, fun and yet twisted take on the life, times, and writings of the author that many consider to be the most important name in American sci-fi. Carrere’s take on Dick’s life has a sensitivity born of curiosity and a skepticism born of professional respect. I felt like this biography illuminated the most important events and foci in Dick’s life and (all things considered) explained a lot of his writings’ themes. That said, it’s made me glad to hold
Ubik in such high esteem but made me a bit irritated with myself that I had yet to pick up and read
The Man In The High Castle.
(Finally?) William Gibson’s latest:
Pattern Recognition - - an interesting slant out of his usual sci-fi w/o losing that distinct Gibsonian sci-fi edge. (The future is now?) I just finished this one and it’s definitely going to take some time to wrap my mind around all that happened in between those covers. Maybe a missed a crucial moment or else something subtle slipped by me the first time around. That said, I was amused and intrigued by the Case/Cayce reprisal and the return(?) of the Russians. I have a sneaking suspicion that Gibson shares my sick
Cold War nostalgia…
