Gibson may even be on top of his game, word-smith wise. Beautiful, balanced prose, though deceptively simple.
But it is one of the few books where I may give in and read a text version instead of the audio version, the reason being that it's less accessible than usual, he uses so many ten-dollar words. Within a couple of randomly selected pages these words appear: scrimshawed, scimitar, gutta-percha, cartouches, liminal, ferrule... I mean, sure he writes for a literate, perhaps even literary, audience, but geez...
So it turns out he was making a trilogy (wonder if he knew it), the "Blue Ant trilogy". The first one, Pattern Recognition, was one of my favorites ever. The second one I didn't care for too much, can't even recall the title now.
And the funny thing is that I can't explain, not even to myself, why my liking for them is so different, I can't point to any concrete differences which would cause it. It's just something in the whole tone or feel... very nebulous.
But i think it may have something to do with whether I like the characters. Whether they feel real, solid. Likeable. Interesting. Somebody I'd like to meet.
Scrimshawed kinda sounds like a word I know, and has an inference.
ReplyDeleteScimitar - nice car, also a fancy blade
Ferrule - Umbrella bit.
The others are reach for the dictionary things. Oh, Liminal as in sub-liminal.
scim·i·tar
ReplyDelete[sim-i-ter] Show IPA
–noun
a curved, single-edged sword of Oriental origin.
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Liminal means something like "near an edge". And I'm not sure I understand his use of it here, it refers to some watercolor paintings in a hotel hallway, their style is "too liminal"... Huh?
Merriam Webster Collegiate (on-line)
ReplyDeleteDefinition of LIMINAL
1: of or relating to a sensory threshold
2: barely perceptible
3: of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition : in-between, transitional
Scrimshaw is the art of carving on bone or tusk. Lovely work and what I have seen is mostly nautical in style.
ReplyDeleteFerrule is also a part of a fishing rod and I think a general term could be called a guide.
Gutta-percha was an early material used in golf balls.
The context he used the words in should make his meaning understandable. I like this sort of writing, as it pushes me to get an understanding of how rich the English language is.
Thank you for the link and I will be reading his work.
PS Working on a Mac you can hover the cursor ovr a word and press Control+Command+D (d) and the dictionary will bring up a definition.
Yes, it's lovely, but it only works in Apple's own apps. (Or perhaps in cocoa apps.)
ReplyDeleteLike when doing drag/drop, I have to remember when it's an Apple app, to wait a second. This is a feature, not a bug, in cocoa apps, to make sure you mean it, I guess.
Damn man, I am still struggling to get a handle on Safari, let alone trying other apps or browsers.
ReplyDeleteMy "Best if by" date expired a couple of years ago.
A ferrule is also the metal part of a painting brush, which holds the brush hair together.
ReplyDelete"ferrum" is the Latin word for "iron". So, I guess, "ferrule" is a composite word of "ferrum" and "capsule", like "ferroconcrete" is a composite of "ferrum" and "concrete" ... my English-German dictionary gives me some expressions leading to that suggestion.
ReplyDeleteOh, and my "Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English" says:
"metal ring or cap placed on the end of a stick (e.g. of an umbrella) or tube; band strentghening or forming a joint."
Zero History completes William Gibson's third trilogy! Neoromancer was part of the first trilogy, Virtual Light was part of the second one.
ReplyDeleteYes indeed.
ReplyDeleteIn both of those trilogies I liked them all, but liked the second and third books even better than the first ones.
(Not that I think this means anything. Particularly since they are all very readable.)