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Distrust that Particular Flavor

by William Gibson

Best-selling author William Gibson’s first book of non-fiction is a career-spanning collection of essays, reviews, and other short pieces. The author, who is not exactly known for his non-fiction, admits to some ambivalence in the introduction. That ambivalence extends to the brief explanatory notes appended to each piece, which add nuance, and even a sense of intimacy, to the spectacle of a talented writer developing outside his wheelhouse. For hardcore fans of his novels, this collection affords the opportunity to witness Gibson turning over ideas as though they were dorodango (glossy balls of mud Japanese schoolchildren make, in part by literally turning them over and over again in their hands) – objects that are the focus of one of the essays in the book.

Standouts include “Disneyland with the Death Penalty,” an astonishing essay about Singapore that originally appeared in Wired and was the reason the magazine was banned there; “Any ’Mount of World,” a review of Steely Dan’s 2000 reunion album, which, despite its brevity, may be the deepest anyone has delved into that particular group’s music; and “Metrophagy: The Art and Science of Digesting Cities,” a review of Peter Ackroyd’s London: The Biography that distills everything remarkable about contemporary psychogeography into roughly three pages.

The only weak essay, “My Own Private Tokyo,” will be of interest to serious fans, but contains much that is covered elsewhere. Its worth here is almost solely for the author’s commentary, which candidly expresses his own disappointment with the piece.

Gibson has often been described as a visionary, but Distrust that Particular Flavor makes transparent what long-time fans and close readers of his fiction already knew: far from being eerily prescient, Gibson is simply very good at seeing the present and writing thoughtfully about the background noise of culture, the protean nature of celebrity, and the various ways we experience place in our world.

 

Reviewer: August C. Bourré

Publisher: Putnam/Penguin

DETAILS

Price: $28.5

Page Count: 272 pp

Format: Cloth

ISBN: 978-0-39915-843-8

Released: Jan.

Issue Date: 2012-1

Categories: Art, Music & Pop Culture