A Brief Look at Two Themes of William Gibson's 'Pattern Recognition'

Internet and the prospects of online social networks:

The author seems to have a lot to say about the internet.

The Internet’s use in Pattern Recognition is more or less what it is today: an aggregation of data (implied) and a meeting ground for various internet forums. Even the protagonist’s own internet clique, Fetish:Footish:Forum is more or less a meeting grounds for like-minded people.

Continuing on the use of the internet, is the heavy use of email within the plot. Perhaps, as some social commentary, it is significant that the amount of email text is large and the spoken dialogue small. While possibly not true, and only appearing that way for the conservation of detail, it at least suggests that significant information is increasingly transmitted via email.

Amd moreover, the author clearly brings up some of the darker sides of the internet, albeit in an unusual way. The protagonist and her team of internet friends, in order to achieve a goal related to (up to at least page 184) the book’s unobtanium, I mean macguffins, create a false persona to lure a real person to meet them. The same tactic used by child predators, but in reverse (considering the false persona’s ambiguous age).

Meeting generic expectations of science fiction:

The novel simply doesn’t meet the generic expectations of scifi. If it were to be considered science fiction at all, it would be certainly expressive of a shift of the genre. The biggest problem with claiming the story to be science fiction is like claiming an older western novel (if one were to exist) featuring a train heist where the robbers cut the telegraph cables. It’s not so much science fiction, because it uses everyday, conventional objects that, even at the time it was written, were common and everyday. Science fiction in the generic sense is supposed to majorly use new, emerging, and usually, if not almost always, futuristic (be that a progressive or regressive future) technology in order to come to terms with the issues those technologies create. Perhaps if it fails at science fiction, it’s because it provides the reader with very little new things to think about. It could easily serve for historians looking back to understand the era it was written in. But in the meantime, just read The Stranger for the existentialist angst, along with the camera-like narrator, and any Sherlock Homes novel for the who-dunnit plot.

Author's Note: Pattern Recognition is a book by William Gibson, whose title should have been italicized (or underlined, at least) in the post title, but was not due to formatting issues.

A Change in View of "A Rose for Emily"

In Faulkner's poem "A Rose for Emily," a shift in point of view from the ‘we’ of the townspeople to the ‘I’ of Emily’s caretaker, creates a drastic change in the story. The events of the townspeople need not be lost and more insight would be gained.
By viewing the events of the story through the eyes of the caretaker, the reader would necessarily be exposed to what must have been an immense internal struggle within him. He must have suspected something was amiss with Emily, and not simply that which had occurred to Homer. One can speculate that he may have wrestled with outrage at Homer’s murder by Emily, and conflicting feelings of pity or caring for the aging woman, explaining why he would choose to stay loyal up to her death.
In a way, his abrupt departure after her death is suggestive that he knew. He left not only to escape any possible retribution a black man in the Old South might face (justice being irrelevant), but because his conscience could not allow him to remain involved in any foul deed when his only pretext for lingering, Miss Emily, is dead.
This change in point of view not only brings up different thematic elements, but changes the involvement of the reader. In the changed viewpoint, the reader empathizes with the caretaker, and becomes involved in his struggle due to empathy. In the author’s original viewpoint, the reader is not only exposed to the full extent of Emily’s nature until the end, and so misses out on the the caretaker's emotional strain, but also empathizes with the group mentality, and the declination of responsibility associated with it. The reader simply need not be involved: it is simply gossip.

My Criticism of Brautigan's "All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace": or A Practical Demonstration on How to Bias a Review

Richard Brautigan's poem "All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace" can easily be viewed to be in either a pro- or anti-technological stance.

As evidence for the poem's pro-technological undertones, the poem seems very much willing to incorporate computers and technology into an ecological fabric, using images such as a "cybernetic meadow" and those of where mammals and computers coexist in harmony. The author even seems to make that relationship sound natural, likening it to “pure water touching clear sky”. He juxtaposes images of deer and computers, not so much for the contrast as much as to say ‘yup. deer and computers. what of it?’. And what should seem a nail in the coffin is the maternalistic attributes given to machines, where the machines’ existence means less work (“free from our labors”), more one-ness with mother nature (“returned to our mammal brothers and sisters”), and finally, that we are “watched  over by machines of loving grace.”

Or anyways, that’s how the poem might appear if we were to ignore the evidence that might lead to the contrary conclusion. In each of the three strophes, Brautigan includes parenthetical text as part of the poem. Each reads like an internally-thought interjection on the text that they are respectively commenting on. These interjections are “and the sooner the better”, “right now, please!”, and “it has to be!”. The effect of these interjections is to cast doubt (or at least express a narrator’s doubt) on the apparent likelihood of the ideas expressed in each strophe actually coming about. It’s like someone saying “Sure, it’ll all work out fine!” only to mutter (for the audience’s sake, of course) their internal misgivings by saying “good god, i sure hope it does.”

Perhaps the more convincing view on the poem’s stance is the latter one. Yes, the poem is open to interpretation. And yes, the latter view (as I’ve so far expressed it, anyways) is a little deficient. It fails to reconcile all of the positive images presented with a negative attitude towards machines. But while the images are positive, they almost seem saccharine: strained. Interestingly enough, they also seem like the entirely-too-happy ramblings of the resident stoner of “That 70’s Show.” But the effect is that, to this blogger, anyways, that there is a sinister underside to the poem that sneers at its light-hearted facade.