So according to my own blog, the last time I completed William Gibson’s Mona Lisa Overdrive was back in October of 2009 😱, over 15 years ago! Not sure that’s really the case, but I did finish the book again this past week. I revisited Count Zero at the end of last year and figured I’d change things up and not go direct to Neuromancer.
As that past missive indicated, Overdrive isn’t my favorite of Gibson’s oeuvre. Not really sure why. I will note that unlike most of his other books, it has four overlapping threads. Typically it’s three, occasionally two, if I have it right. Now there’s a research project. This leaves a bit less room for development of characters and themes.
There’s also the hazard of wrapping a trilogy, which has confounded many an author.
Other books, especially from the Blue Ant trilogy, and in particular Spook Country, have grown on me over time. I’m now restarting that journey, except going backwards from Zero History. I’m curious to see if there are any new subtleties that come to the surface.
On that research project note, it’s obvious that the text of Gibson’s chapter titles are derived from the actual chapter, usually verbatim. Here’s a research todo list
- Scrounge some electronic copies of the works, execute the information extraction task for collecting the titles. Then automate the calculation of the verbatim percentage. There’s always one or two chapter titles per book that confound me. Could a website based this idea be considered fair use?
- Investigate what motivated this part of Gibson’s style
- Identify other authors that follow the same practice
Apropos Elle Driver, love that word oeuvre. So rarely get to use it in a sentence.
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