PR-Otaku
There is a writer called William Gibson. He is contemporary. He writes Sci‐Fi. He is notable because he writes speculative scientific fiction, not fantasy, not space opera (see, lost you already).
I am not a ’fan’ of William Gibson. ’Fan’ is a hyperbolic word. If I find a book by William Gibson, I will read a book by William Gibson. I enjoy reading them.
I work in a place where some people show exaggeratedly repeated behaviour. Like the Philip K. Dick joke. ”Echolalia, Bruce?” ”Echolalia,” said Bruce.
One of these guys is fixed on the idea that I read William Gibson. Rather than fully engage, the semi‐automatic swamps of my brain typed ”william gibson” into my phone, and the dyslexic area in my head started reading his Wikipedia entry.
An entry catches my eye. I’m still listening to ”Good writer, used to get his books from the newsagent when I was a kid.” J. G. Ballard would be interested—Mr. Gibson was not alive then.
Mr. Gibson often writes of this kind of web‐search. But, for him, it is a social observation, rarely a plot. Off the cuff, at least two people have gone further. Jorge Luis Borges wrote a short story I recall as “The man who knew everything”. And the music critic Lester Bangs fantasised about an endless catacomb containing every record ever made—hey, man, that’s called YouTube!
PR‐Otaku, the site mentioned above, is a series of annotations on the novel by William Gibson called “Pattern Recognition”. Ok, perhaps Mr. Gibson does build some of these ideas into plot, look again at the title.
It seems the site creator is alert enough to realise he is doing the kind of thing Mr. Gibson likes to talk about.
A critic on PR‐Otaku, quoted on Wikipedia, “…completely overhaul the way literary criticism is conducted.” Typical reviewer disguised‐advertiser in consumer‐push. I can smell it.
Maybe not. After all, J.G. Ballard wrote a revision of his book “The Atrocity Exhibition” with extended side‐notes. These make for a new novel, and amount to a layering of the artistic process to be observed in progress.
Then again, anyone who claims novelty—that word ‘overhaul’—is usually suspect of populism. Writers were better at this years ago. Ambrose Bierce, for example, and his Devil’s Dictionary, “Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify”.
It’s very easy to be snippy when you type little notes like this. Harder to be pithy.
The PR‐Otaku blog starts at the top. With some warm comments on Gibson’s ability to build personal drama into fashion hip, and his populist technological language.
By the way, I have zero personal interest in reading about authors. I don’t recognise them as an access point, don’t rate them as brand‐guarantee. I’m English old‐school. Yes, the text is enough. I’m only thinking about this because I’m now listening to how Star Trek was written by Gene Roddenberry (it wasn’t).
Not far down, P.R. Otaku is complaining, “There’s that blasted comma already.” The quote,
The plugs on appliances are huge, triple‐pronged, for a species of current that only powers electric chairs, in America.
(Mr. Gibson’s heroine is in London, and suffering jet‐lag) Yes, that final comma is unnecessary. Current thinking suggests writing should be punctuated for sense, not for vocal annotation. Still, do you recognise this kind of criticism? You’ll find it on the web, “Thirteen gaffs in legendary Hollywood movies”.
‘Pattern Recognition’ is one of my favourite books by Mr. Gibson. It has something very unusual, an original female protagonist who is recognisable and not stereotyped. Written by a man. Mr.Gibson doesn’t go to make her likable, he makes her real. This is a special feat.
The writer of this blog doesn’t get so mean, that is for sure. By the lowest posts, he is rambling on some personal theme creation. This is something professional critics avoid. Joe Clark, writer of P. R. Otaku, is pretty good. Blog clips keep him tidy. Though not as funny as J.G. Ballard, who used all criticism as an excuse to ramble on the mindset of the creator.
If this, for one critic, is a new form, what does it mean? That all professional critics know they are compromised, so want to kill themselves? Because aspiring to this encourages the endless catacombs, this case being criticism, YouTubed?
The guy who lives downstairs from me has passed three days ingesting every form of drug I can conceive of in every way possible. Tabs, pills, powders, resins, smoke, alcohol distillation… An hour ago he collapsed outside the house, in front of the handyman and the landlord’s agent. An ambulance came to take him away. I’m not sure quite how this ties together, some kind of nebulous or gassy refraction, but here seems the moment to finish.