Cosmic Accidents

"Time for me to get back to my day job, which means that it’s time for me to stop blogging."
      --William Gibson     Friday, September 12, 2003

One thing leads to another. While searching for a screenplay, I discover hundreds of downloadable scripts and among them, several unproduced screenplays including a few of my favorite novels.

I wrote about finding an abandoned script for A Scanner Darkly. About that same time, I found another unproduced screenplay that caught my eye: "Neuromancer," from the seminal William Gibson sci-fi novel of 1984 that arguably ushered in cyberpunk.

Alas, like the Charlie Kaufman screenplay for A Scanner Darkly, the alleged Neuromancer script also remains a work of questionable authenticity. Although his name appears on the title page, Gibson denies authorship and the script remains in circulation, but quickly loses its appeal once one learns that Gibson disavows any authorial relationship to it.

But all is not lost. It was while researching the authenticity of the Neuromancer screenplay that I was lead to the official William Gibson web site. And it was there that I discovered the artifacts of his nine month experiment in blogging from a year ago.

I’ve found blogging to be a low-impact activity, mildly narcotic and mostly quite convivial, but the thing I’ve most enjoyed about it is how it never fails to underline the fact that if I’m doing this I’m definitely not writing a novel – that is, if I’m still blogging, I’m definitely still on vacation. I’ve always known, somehow, that it would get in the way of writing fiction, and that I wouldn’t want to be trying to do both at once. The image that comes most readily to mind is that of a kettle failing to boil because the lid’s been left off.

This has already proven to be a terrific discovery. Among the tidbits I've already gleaned:

• He disavows the Neuromancer script (crediting Chuck Russell instead...and discrediting the "shabby Dickensian script-floggers" who forged his name to it).
  
• He claims not to have been influenced by Philip K. Dick; in fact he admits to having read only The Man in the High Castle.
  
• On the other hand, he readily admits to having been influenced by Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Pynchon, William S. Burroughs, Timothy Leary and Dashiell Hammett (but not Raymond Chandler).  --How reassuring that all but Leary claim shelf space in my library.
  
• He enjoyed The Matrix; expected to dislike it, was dragged to it by a friend, enjoyed it, and went back to see it again.
  
• He mentions a shoe store, Huf, in San Francisco that Cayce, the brand-allergic heroine of Pattern Recognition would love.
  
• There are countless great quotes, including several that follow.

Re the compulsion to blog:

In spite of (or perhaps because of) my reputation as a reclusive quasi-Pynchonian luddite shunning the net (or word-processors, depending on what you Google) I hope to be here on a more or less daily basis.

Re the perfect book:

The Borgesian meta-library contains a copy of every book ever written, but my dream-artifact is already, and always, every book every written (sic), on demand -- yet feels, looks, and even smells exactly like an ordinary hardcover book. Only the content is protean. That simple. The end of the world as we know it, and a good read every single night.

Metaphysics:

But I regard my being me, ultimately, as a sort of cosmic accident.

Re Timothy Leary's funeral:

His very last call consisted of him inviting me to his wake, and assuring me that I’d be “on the A-list”. I told him I’d be there, though I knew I wouldn’t. I had an abscessed tooth, was scheduled for a root canal, and, besides, I knew he wasn’t going to be there. He wouldn’t miss me, and I didn’t want to go all the way down there just to miss him even more.

All of which has yet again whet my appetite for things Gibson. Thankfully I have both his nine month blog experiment to peruse and, thanks to my brother, a DVD of No Maps for These Territories, a documentary about Gibson's life, work and influences.