One of my all time favorite books, William Gibson’s Neuromancer, turns 25 today. Thanks to PC/Mac/Whatever-world for reminding me.
Thinking about what the The Road and Neuromancer have in common, brilliant dialog is central to their power. Gibson developed a whole new language of technology based cultural cool. His dialog imbued seriously nerdy elements with a hipster chic. McCarthy pared down conversations between a father and son, discarding even the quotation marks, to match the bleakness and despair of their situation. The duds I’ve read recently all had weak, tepid dialog.
Maybe I’ve become a dialog connoisseur, which might explain the obsession with Tarantino films.
I’m putting the complete Sprawl trilogy on this year’s to read list.