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William Gibson on Blogging
The Ape With No Name writes "With Pattern Recognition now out, Gibson talks to the Guardian about blogging, which ones he's looking at and why he may have to quit blogging himself. He's quoted as saying '...if I'm ever going to write another book, I'm going to have to quit doing my blog as I have a hunch it interferes with the ecology of being a novelist.'"
Honestly, I could not finish reading Neuromancer. It just got too bogged down in manufactored terms "...he jammed the simstick down as he entered..." and I just got totally disinterested. There was manufactured term after term used without explanation and the context didn't help much.
His most recent novel (Pattern Recognition) was MUCH more readable but it took such a goofy and unexpected turn at the end, I again lost interest. The first 5/6 of the book was good though.
Here's a summary, stripped of the verbiage:
Is there an art to blogging?
A vague question and I'll give you an equally vague answer with a lot of buzzwords thrown in. And oh, while I'm at it, I think I'll say something about my book. "interferes with the ecology of being a novelist".
Yeah right. Whatever.
What constitutes a good blog?
No idea. When the war broke out blogging became popular.
What a relevant answer!
Do you follow many weblogs?
Just one, the agonist.
I guess it suits his style because, as he admits, it is content-free, being just the headlines of major news sites.
Is brevity the key to good internet communication? :-(
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My parser core-dumped when I tried to understand the answer
So is Google officially a verb now?
In my book "Pattern recogntion", I used google as a verb. Inserts totally pointless link to wiktionary.
Yeah, I was wondering how he'd let three whole questions pass without referring to his book.
Has it usurped all other search engines for you?
Actually it has and I hadn't really thought about that.
Any other favourite sites?
CNN, BBC, eBay.
Wow, I've got to check these out. How come I'd never heard of them before?
Do you see the net as becoming more corporate?
I'm totally jealous about people using the net as a medium to share information, with no strings attached! Everybody should me trying their damnedest to make as much money of the 'net as possible, like me!
And I personally don't rate Gibson as a writer, no matter what the nerds say. I think nerds should get out and read some real writing, not just Gibson, Stephenson etc. They don't say anything very much, and you`d be missing out on some classics.
m l
This story, by the way, was mentioned on the amusing (for all the wrong reasons) Register site in the UK, with predictably hilarious results!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30403.ht
Such as:
"He's an artist, which means he collects and refines ideas over time"
Ah - so THAT's what an artist does!
"Put another way, he chooses his words carefully, and he chooses the contexts in which they will have most impact."
He's a consummate professional, isn't he?
"Gibson also has great fun with signs, with semiotics, and the synthetic nature of reality - again, strangers to most webloggers, who favor the banality of consensus"
Yeah, they're not like US, we're smart!
"As a writer, Gibson has no obligation to us to reveal his "processes" to us: but he might feel some obligation, we guess, as one of the treasures of the literary world, to continue delivering great novels. Or not. But having forsaken his "blog", we feel much more confident he will be able to preserve his mind, and be in better shape to do so."
He's a treasure, alright - and so is whoever wrote this pretention piece of arslikan.
"The guy has absorbed a lot of signals, in this case from designer culture, and chosen the best. It's a delight be to be transported by such a skillful writer, and there isn't a page which isn't illuminated by wit, observation and invention.
So who can fill the void left by William Gibson?"
Really, really funny stuff!
Must go - I have some third rate science fiction to read.
If you're not writing in your free time, you're not a writer.