Is it me or the author?
I'm reading Neuromancer again, and let me preface what I'm going to say with this: I love me some William Gibson. I do. Especially this book and Idoru.
Buuuuut.....
I just realized last night when I got to the Linda Lee death scene there is just some stuff he doesn't do well. Now, yes, I know. He's a visionary. The world would not be as we know it now if not for him. We read Neuromancer and if we weren't around when it came out, we think, "Yeah, he hit all the cliches, didn't he?" Um...only because he CREATED them....!
Setting this aside, and giving him credit for this being his breakout novel, I still have no fucking clue what's going on in that scene. And I don't understand Julie's role in it. And I had honestly forgotten that we know Molly for four or five pages before there is spontaneous post-surgical fucking. I'm going to reread the Linda Lee section again, but the point I'm making here is that you can be great, legendary even, and still not do some things well.
Stephen King said the Twilight lady (I've forgotten her name intentionally, so don't remind me, please) can sure tell stories, but can't write them (ouch). Now I'm not saying that about Gibson at all, because he definitely can. But there are times he either rushes the scene (no, seriously, what really happened in that death scene?) or crumbles at the end. (I gave that book to Jeff...what was it? Ah.) Pattern Recognition. Yes, I know it was the first in a trilogy, but so was Neuromancer and that ended satisfactorily, didn't it? PR did not. It fizzled.
When I was at Eastern, we talked in class about writing having different levels:
The literal level (usually applied to poetry, but it works for fiction, too): The word to word level, where things connect from point to point and make sense.
The line level: Sentences count. An ugly, clumsy sentence can kill a work. It really can. Or a beautiful one can elevate it above its story and metaphor.
The metaphorical level: What it all means symbolically, working on deep psychological levels. (We hope.)
There are more, but these are some of the more important ones. The thing I'm wrestling with here is the idea that a work doesn't have to hit the mark on all the levels to be great. It just has to hit some of them very well.
Hemingway (much as I hate the man) is especially great because he's astounding on the line level, he's note for note perfect on the literal level, and he's scary on the metaphorical level. But if you're not Hemingway, and can't kick ass on the line and literal levels, you can't be as spare. Hemingway's lines and stories were so well-constructed that every sentence made sense and everything was imaginable. His characters were often brutes, bastards, whores, madonnas or bitches, but you understood what was happening in every line. You never got lost and you knew what to think about what was happening without being told.
If you're not Hemingway-good on those levels, you can't be obscure. You can't withdraw yourself from the work and let the reader fill in the blanks, because the blanks will be too big.
I'm going on about this because this is something I have to learn in my own writing. This is something I was criticized for in class--that I leave too much out so that the reader sometimes doesn't know what's going on. I resented the criticism when I heard it, but now that I'm rereading this book, I'm understanding it. And agreeing.
This is something I really have to work on.
Buuuuut.....
I just realized last night when I got to the Linda Lee death scene there is just some stuff he doesn't do well. Now, yes, I know. He's a visionary. The world would not be as we know it now if not for him. We read Neuromancer and if we weren't around when it came out, we think, "Yeah, he hit all the cliches, didn't he?" Um...only because he CREATED them....!
Setting this aside, and giving him credit for this being his breakout novel, I still have no fucking clue what's going on in that scene. And I don't understand Julie's role in it. And I had honestly forgotten that we know Molly for four or five pages before there is spontaneous post-surgical fucking. I'm going to reread the Linda Lee section again, but the point I'm making here is that you can be great, legendary even, and still not do some things well.
Stephen King said the Twilight lady (I've forgotten her name intentionally, so don't remind me, please) can sure tell stories, but can't write them (ouch). Now I'm not saying that about Gibson at all, because he definitely can. But there are times he either rushes the scene (no, seriously, what really happened in that death scene?) or crumbles at the end. (I gave that book to Jeff...what was it? Ah.) Pattern Recognition. Yes, I know it was the first in a trilogy, but so was Neuromancer and that ended satisfactorily, didn't it? PR did not. It fizzled.
When I was at Eastern, we talked in class about writing having different levels:
The literal level (usually applied to poetry, but it works for fiction, too): The word to word level, where things connect from point to point and make sense.
The line level: Sentences count. An ugly, clumsy sentence can kill a work. It really can. Or a beautiful one can elevate it above its story and metaphor.
The metaphorical level: What it all means symbolically, working on deep psychological levels. (We hope.)
There are more, but these are some of the more important ones. The thing I'm wrestling with here is the idea that a work doesn't have to hit the mark on all the levels to be great. It just has to hit some of them very well.
Hemingway (much as I hate the man) is especially great because he's astounding on the line level, he's note for note perfect on the literal level, and he's scary on the metaphorical level. But if you're not Hemingway, and can't kick ass on the line and literal levels, you can't be as spare. Hemingway's lines and stories were so well-constructed that every sentence made sense and everything was imaginable. His characters were often brutes, bastards, whores, madonnas or bitches, but you understood what was happening in every line. You never got lost and you knew what to think about what was happening without being told.
If you're not Hemingway-good on those levels, you can't be obscure. You can't withdraw yourself from the work and let the reader fill in the blanks, because the blanks will be too big.
I'm going on about this because this is something I have to learn in my own writing. This is something I was criticized for in class--that I leave too much out so that the reader sometimes doesn't know what's going on. I resented the criticism when I heard it, but now that I'm rereading this book, I'm understanding it. And agreeing.
This is something I really have to work on.