Well, that was a rather satisfying read. I tried to stretch it out as best I could, but the story just wouldn’t wait. And now that I’m done, I think I want to talk about it. And then when I go somewhere to do just that – exclaim over the presence of Humbertus Bigend, or despair over the ultimate end of Pattern Recognition‘s footage – I realize that maybe it’s best to just let it percolate in my own space for a while. Maybe take some time to go back and pick out my favorite passages, like this one:
The maids, she discovered, had actually saved and folded the bubble wrap that had come in the box from Blue Ant. It was on the shelf in the closet. Instant tip-upgrade. She put the wrapping, the box, and the helmet on the tall kitchenette table.
Doing this, she noticed the Blue Ant figurine that had come with it, standing on one of the coffee tables. She’d leave that, of course. She looked back at it, and knew she couldn’t. This was some part of her that had never grown up, she felt. A grown-up would not be compelled to take this anthropomorphic piece of molded vinyl along when she left the room, but she knew she would. And she didn’t even like things like that. She wouldn’t leave it, though. She walked over and picked it up. She’d take it along and give it to someone, preferably a child. Less because she had any feeling for the thing, which was after all only a piece of marketing plastic, than because she herself wouldn’t have wanted to be left behind in a hotel room.
Perfect, really.
I’ve occasionally tried to explain my love for Pattern Recognition, Gibson’s book before this, as due in part to the fact that it did such a spot-on job of describing the world that my aspirationally cooler, more clever self inhabited. In Spook Country, however, it seemed as if Gibson had actually been following me around the past few years, weaving the story through (an absolutely perfect portrayal of) my favorite Union Square hotel lounge, the Beaux-Arts grandiosity of my local train station, and into my forays through the shipping lanes off Vancouver’s Stanley Park.
And Gibson did all this with a story that I’ve looked for, but not yet found anywhere.  Very, very satisfying. The only downside, now, is that I suppose I’ll have to wait another four or five years for something new.
