Silly, Silly, Silly

Caleb Neelon

As I see it, there are two parts to writing something. The first part is the idea, that which one wants to express. The second is the voice, the style, the text - whatever one wishes to call it. A unique, well-wrought, and personal style opens up the p ossibility for the written idea to be communicated well. Reading Neuromancer, I was reminded of what happens when a writer has the first part down but not the second.

William Gibson has a great imagination and opens up very interesting questions of what the future of science and computers and so on wil l bring. Yet I think he damns his own thinking with a writing style which is just silly. At his best, his writing style is a poorly imaged mimic of William Burroughs; at his worst, it gets more original.

This indicates to me just how vital good writing will be for the advancement of this computer age. Gibson's ideas are valid and strong, but presented in such a way that this particular reader could not help but laugh at him. If Gibs on and so forth are really the literary voices of the computer age, it has a long way to go.