Books: All Tomorrow's Parties, by William Gibson

I really must stop reading this terrible, trashy, contemporary novels. Isn't anyone writing anything of quality these days besides David Foster Wallace?

Gibson was another "mystery" recommendation (along with Bruce Wagner), probably picked up from some other book's review (e.g. "This book pales in comparison to contemporary masterpieces by William Gibson, Bruce Wagner, and their ilk."), likely from Slate (whose literary opinions can no longer be trusted). Like Wagner's, Gibson's book is all surface; unlike Wagner, Gibson isn't a skilled writer—in fact, he rather, well, sucks. He's lazy. His editor is lazy, too.

The plot has (unfortunately) nothing to do with that great Velvet Underground song. The book is set in the Bay Area, at some undisclosed moment in the future, which we eventually discover is at the brink of a new era's dawning. This new era will have something to do with the mysterious hologram pop star (no, not Jem) Rei Toi—who, by the way, is real, but simultaneously isn't, since she's a digital projection from a thermos-like projector that an ex-security guard finds himself toting around after he picks it up from a convenience-store FedEx-type spot (the store is called Lucky Dragon, and it's a chain. It sells such technological wonders as sunglasses that act as mobile phone and have interior screens with web-browsing, chemistry-set candy that you mix yourself, and self heating instant coffee and noodles.)

The new era will be precipitated by the arson of the Bay Bridge—which, by the way—hasn't had any motor vehicle traffic for years, and is now a thriving "zone" covered in make-shift housing (think Hooverville) where the police don't go, and where people eat such things as "bridge chickens." There are ten or twenty other characters, whose stories and histories intersect and reconnect, including a young woman running away from an abusive boyfriend whose girlfriend follows her around making a documentary with a flying video camera operated by a sensory glove (it's called God's Little Toy), and a terminally ill man living in a makeshift shelter (think Hooverville again) in the Tokyo subway, who can "see all the world's data" (?!) due to exposure to some mystery medication and therefore understands the ushering in of the new age (?!) and has something to do with the shipping of Rei Toi's projector to the man who picks it up at the Lucky Dragon store. If you think this is all very random and weird and disconnected, then I've given you a good sense of the book. None of the questions are ever solved; in fact, none of the questions are ever even asked, really.

The plot, though, is not the most aggravating aspect. The most aggravating aspect of All Tomorrow's Parties is that Gibson doesn't write in complete sentences. He fills his text with fragments that don't serve any aesthetic purpose. Like this. Except to confound. Or to enrage. This, I cannot forgive.