Saturday, February 16, 2013

Covetable Copy

Sometimes I come across a piece of writing I wish were mine! A recent Facebook wall exchange with a friend reminded me of this brief meditation on branding from William Gibson's Pattern Recognition (2003): 
"simulacra of simulacra of simulacra. A dilute tincture of Ralph Lauren, who had himself diluted the glory days of Brooks Brothers, who themselves had stepped on the product of Jermyn Street and Savile Row ... There must be some Tommy Hilfiger event horizon, beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative, more removed from the source, more devoid of soul."

Speculative fiction novelist William Gibson is best known for his often eerily prophetic cyberpunk works. Pattern Recognition (2003), together with Spook Country (2007) and Zero History (2010)
make up what is now considered to his Blue Ant Trilogy and, unlike much of his other fiction, looks no further than the day after tomorrow. In these three books, Gibson looks no further than the day after tomorrow, which he views through a prism of present hindsight that enables him to provide an almost retrospective examination of the first Public Generation.