William Gibson - Spook Country

Don't call me a hater. I've been on board the William Gibson train since I read Neuromancer in high school in 1985. But man this book was slow. Atmosphere counts for a lot but it can't be everything, surely. Spook Country reminded me of a quote by Katherine Mansfield about EM Forster:

E. M. Forster never gets any further than warming the teapot. He's a rare fine hand at that. Feel this teapot. Is it not beautifully warm? Yes, but there ain't going to be no tea.

Gibson waits a long time to give us any tea and then its an under brewed chamomile. Of course there was some good techy-geeky stuff along the way and one really funny quote about a club in Hollywood that wasn't as trendy as it thought it was: "If a cruise missile hit the bar, there would be no great need to change the cover of the next People." Heh.

Edward Hopper at the Whitney

I flew back to NYC last night to get my mum safely on the Aer Lingus back to Dublin. This morning I was lying in bed at the New Yorker hotel reading the book I got for the flight William Gibson's Spook Country when to my surprise I found that two of the protagonists in the novel were also staying in the New Yorker. They woke up early and went to Gray's Papaya to get the "two hot dog and juice special" for breakfast. I couldn't help myself so I also went a couple of blocks north to Gray's Papaya and got the same breakfast. And it wasn't a half bad way to spend two bucks. 
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After breakfast I walked up to the Neue Gallerie on 86th Street to see the Klimt collection there and then I walked down Madison to the Whitney where I was just in time to get the tour of the new Edward Hopper exhibition. I'm not sure I agree with all the strained interpretations our guide put on Hopper's paintings, but I do think that he is the master of twentieth century ennui and isolation. At the beginning of the century EM Forster urged us to "only connect!" with our fellow human beings. Hopper shows us that these connections are very difficult if not impossible. Nobody knows what's going on in someone's else head no matter how psychologically astute they are. People rub against one another in unpredictable ways. Leonard Cohen has said that the years he spent in a Buddhist monastery were among the most stressful of his life. Hopper's bleakly beautiful landscapes and interiors highlight this grim truth about human beings: we seek out company and company makes us crazy.  
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A little further down from the Whitney I popped into the Frick where they were hosting an exhibition of Spanish drawings. I'm a big Goya fan and I loved the intimacy of this little gallery.
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Flying back to Florida tomorrow unless the incoming snow storm keeps me here for another couple of days in which case I'll take a deep breath and hit the Met. 

Steam Punk Chic

The first Steam Punk novel I read was The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. It was an early classic of the genre and envisaged a world in which Charles Babbage had got his Difference Engine beyond the theoretical stage: Victorian London sees the world's first steam powered mechanical computer and there's lots of fun and games with Lady Lovelace, Byron's daughter, Mary Shelley etc. Steam Punk is basically cyberpunk but set in an imagined technological past. Neal Stephenson writes a lot of these books and one of my favourites is Alan Moore's comic The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol I and II (especially II). What I didn't know until today was the fact that you can buy Steam Punk clothing for men and women from The Steampunk Emporium , but of course it makes sense. If they sell Star Trek uniforms why not techno Victoriana? (I particularly liked the Emporium's gear for "Dewey Oldfield, the autoist" and "Barnaby Clifton the intrepid motorist.")
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When I was at Oxford I remember there was a lecturer who rode around on an old fashioned bicycle and dressed in Edwardian clothing. He was an amiable nut, but as we saw with the costumes of Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman in the film version of The Golden Compass, Steam Punk kit is much, much cooler for tootling around the city of dreaming spires, tootling around anywhere in fact. BTW, I have no idea who the people are in the above pic but it's nice to see the sheilas getting into the spirit of the thing too.