Last week, I ordered two books from Amazon with my latest gift certificate, The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick and Spook Country by William Gibson. I read the PKD book first, since I have had trouble piercing a lot of Gibson's books in the past, ever since I read the sequels to Neuromancer. It was good -- interesting at least, though it ends very abruptly and is as indecipherable as anything written by Dick. A good effort at world building though, with a lot of interesting philosophical questions, something that I have pretty much come to expect from Dick's writing.
I started Spook Country this morning, and wow. I haven't read anything by Gibson since I tried starting Virtual Light a long time ago and never managed to finish it. I keep meaning to go back and reread Neuromancer again, but I haven't had the chance (and I can't find my copy -- I think I might have loaned it to someone). However, just reading the first two chapters of Spook Country I remembered why I think he's such an amazing writer. He has such a skill with metaphor, such an attention to detail and description, that it blows my mind just to think about. When he describes something, he talks about it in a way that you would never think to describe it, but you can instantly picture what he means. If he is able to do this reflexively, if that is how things just come to him, than I am supremely envious. To me, it seems like each paragraph is perfectly crafted, like delicate etched glass, painstakingly designed and cut for hours or days.
Gibson's writing can be dense and sometimes impenetrable; like I said, I tried reading Virtual Light and I haven't managed to do so successfully yet. His plots are sometimes so labyrinthine that you have to reread them a half dozen times before you really understand what's going on and his characters can sometimes be complete enigmas. Even so, there is no question, at least to me, that he is one of the best writers I have ever read. Regardless of what you may say about him, you can't deny that every book he writes feels real, like he's just describing a scene that he is watching, one with infinite resolution -- you could read the fine print on every warning label, feel the ridges and cracks in every piece of grubby plastic, taste the ozone in every breath of air. I almost feel like his current books, which are set in more or less the present day, are almost a waste of his talent. I want to read about something new and different, completely separated from what I know and yet intimately familiar. For me, as a writer, that is the ultimate challenge, and when someone can pull it off with such apparent ease, I have to simply sit back in awe.
I started Spook Country this morning, and wow. I haven't read anything by Gibson since I tried starting Virtual Light a long time ago and never managed to finish it. I keep meaning to go back and reread Neuromancer again, but I haven't had the chance (and I can't find my copy -- I think I might have loaned it to someone). However, just reading the first two chapters of Spook Country I remembered why I think he's such an amazing writer. He has such a skill with metaphor, such an attention to detail and description, that it blows my mind just to think about. When he describes something, he talks about it in a way that you would never think to describe it, but you can instantly picture what he means. If he is able to do this reflexively, if that is how things just come to him, than I am supremely envious. To me, it seems like each paragraph is perfectly crafted, like delicate etched glass, painstakingly designed and cut for hours or days.
Gibson's writing can be dense and sometimes impenetrable; like I said, I tried reading Virtual Light and I haven't managed to do so successfully yet. His plots are sometimes so labyrinthine that you have to reread them a half dozen times before you really understand what's going on and his characters can sometimes be complete enigmas. Even so, there is no question, at least to me, that he is one of the best writers I have ever read. Regardless of what you may say about him, you can't deny that every book he writes feels real, like he's just describing a scene that he is watching, one with infinite resolution -- you could read the fine print on every warning label, feel the ridges and cracks in every piece of grubby plastic, taste the ozone in every breath of air. I almost feel like his current books, which are set in more or less the present day, are almost a waste of his talent. I want to read about something new and different, completely separated from what I know and yet intimately familiar. For me, as a writer, that is the ultimate challenge, and when someone can pull it off with such apparent ease, I have to simply sit back in awe.
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