drcpunk

I just finished Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. I understand, sort of, why it's an important work, that it's sf without any overt sf elements, but because of the way the story is told. I'm sure I'm missing a lot of nuances about what's going on. The line at the end about the protagonist weeping for her century, not knowing if it's the one past or the one to come, resonated.

All that said, I don't really like the book. I think this has to do with the protagonist vibing to me as a victim, despite her not being a wet noodle in scenes where most of us would be. Or, as

jlighton put it about the final Harry Potter book, the protagonist fails to protagonize. Rightly or wrongly, I'm fed up with a certain kind of protagonist batted around by vast forces and not having the spine to walk away from it all.

This didn't seem to bug me in American Gods, and something similar to it did bug me in Anansi Boys, which is interesting.

Next: to figure out which book in the stack to grab now.

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Date: 2008-12-24 12:41 pm (UTC)

From:

brianrogers.livejournal.com

no subject

Hrm. I'm not sure that I would categorize it as SF, and suspect it is only placed there because of its author. I see it as a personal quest novel, a search for meaning in her own life by searching for something else. I think I expected it to be something other than that made it resonate so strongly with me, and why I've not read it three times. And in no way did I find Case to be a wet noodle - she was just on a different quest then everyone else was, as the rest of the characters were searching for advantage or money and she was looking for meaning.

But to each their own.

Date: 2008-12-25 07:40 am (UTC)

drcpunk.livejournal.com

The problem for me is not that Casey was on a different quest. It's all the bits of "Oh, I don't want to do this, and anyone with spine would walk away, and, oh, sigh, I'm being overwhelmed by forces beyond my control, and I'm going to do this thing I don't want to do." Bleah. She also vibed as a victim too much. When she's being physically threatened, she's very competent, but otherwise, she's being psychologically bullied, and is totally manipulated.

As for the SF part, basically, it isn't SF in terms of plot or technology. If it is classified as SF, which I am willing to accept, it's because of how the story is told.

bigscary said it wasn't SF, just very good, and recommended it when I asked for something outside my usual range of reading. As such, it was what I asked for, and it did not waste my time. I just didn't like it.

Charles Brown considered it SF in the Denvention panel "20 Essential SF Novels From the Last 20 Years". The moderator, Cheryl Morgan, explained, that for the purposes of the panel, the ground rule was: We aren't dicking around with definitions. If you've put it on your list, it is SF and a novel. Also, for the numerically challenged, it's okay if the list doesn't have exactly 20 works. Charles Brown had 17, I think, and explained that he could do 5, 10, 15, 25, 50 -- but somehow, not 20.

Pattern Recognition, regardless of my tastes, is important because it showed how SF is a way of telling a story, he explained, and I'm willing to accept that. It read quickly. I'm currently reading two rpgs, Witch Hunter and Cthulhu Tech, both of which are fun, but neither of which is especially convincing qua story or world building.

Date: 2008-12-24 12:54 pm (UTC)

osewalrus.livejournal.com

This didn't seem to bug me in American Gods, and something similar to it did bug me in Anansi Boys, which is interesting.

When did you read American Gods? It may be that your tolerance for this sort of thing has simply been exceeded. I know mine has.

I disagree with you on Harry Potter, tho. Seems to me he does step up and take action.

Date: 2008-12-24 07:06 pm (UTC)

jl8e

Eventually, but he spends huge portions of the book failing to.

Date: 2008-12-25 07:31 am (UTC)

For HP7, the basic problem I had wasn't actually that he didn't protagonize, but the 200 page Camping Trip From Hell. Rowling's usual sloppiness was annoying, sure, but no more so than usual.

It's not, I think, that I read American Gods before my tolerance was exceeded. I think my tolerance was exceeded long before. I think it's flavor. So, in AG, Shadow is actually fairly active, and what's happening to him is strange and bizarre in ways I find interesting, and, despite a truly horrid situation, he doesn't whine. I hate whining in my fictional characters. Oh, I didn't mind the first few times Harry did it in HP5 -- it actually made a good change -- but around the fourth or fifth time he did it in the book, I was tired of it.

In Pattern Recognition, even though the heroine is not helpless, there's too much of "Oh, I don't really want to do X, and I shouldn't, and everything tells me I shouldn't, and a person with spine would walk away now, and... Oh, well, I'm just going to do X anyway, even though I don't want to." Ick.

In Anansi Boys, the main character was a schlub for much of the book, which I don't like, and then he grew, which I could see coming. It wouldn't have bugged me that I could see it coming if it hadn't been for the schlub factor. Also, to be fair, if I were listening to Gaiman read the whole book, even though I'd still have the same base reaction, it would bother me a lot less, because he's really good at performing.

I remember talking with folks on the YA Mythcon Awards committee. The actual young adults on the committee don't like a) kid characters who are really grown ups in kid clothing, but they also don't like b) whining, because there's too much of that in real life. One reason one of them liked Nancy Springer's Dusssie, which I'd put on the list, is that, even though the heroine is having a horrid time, she's not whining -- she's being proactive, doing research about her unusual problem, and so on. Similarly, in Skullduggery Pleasant, the heroine is delightfully plucky in the right ways. One bit I loved (not a spoiler) is that she's thinking about how her mother jokes that men are necessary for fixing engines and reaching high shelves. (It is a joke -- the mother clearly loves the husband, which I also like.) The heroine vows to herself that she will learn about engines, thank you very much. High shelves, she decides, she isn't much worried about. Proactive and has a sense of priorities. Wonderful girl. Not perfect -- the sequel shows this, and does something quite different than the original book.

Anyway, I also detested the remake of Cape Fear and the sort-of-remake of Double Indemnity, which was Body Heat, because, in both cases, the protagonist had been changed from a competent-but-interestingly-flawed-man in the original to an utter schlub in the remake. Yuck.