William Gibson's fragment of text published on his blog on New Year's Day mentions the character Inchmale from Spook Country

quote:

CABINET (HAPPY NEW YEAR) posted 12:09 AM

Inchmale’s club, in Portman Square, was called Cabinet. It was a peculiarly narrow place, apparently occupying half of the vertical volume of a townhouse whose expensively forgettable façade reminded her of a sleeping face.

[...]

There are other places called "Portman Square", but the one in London, at the south end of Baker Street, just north of Oxford Street, is the one which springs to my mind.

There does actually appear to be a posh new club (drinking , dining and schmoozing rather than a rock club) which opened in November 2008 behind the 18th Century listed building Adams facades façades of 20 to 21 Portman Square i.e. two whole town houses, rather than just half of one. (Number 19 is also part of the complex, but may not actually be interconnected).

Home House Club








Mona Lisa Overdrive described the home of the London ally of the Yakuza clan thus:

quote:

Swain's Notting Hill residence consisted of three interconnected Victorian townhouses situated somewhere in a snowy profusion of squares, crescents, and mews.

Has William Gibson predicted the future again, or did he pick up a rumour from his Hubertus Bigend like contacts in London ?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Memetic Engineer,

Coll!
(oyu are missing a cedilla in there...)

It seems that the Home House Club (presumably pronounced "hume", after the Scottish / Northumbrian Berwickshire Border clan chiefs and aristocrats) has an Anthony Blunt bedroom:

quote:

Anthony Blunt Bedroom

Named after a former resident of House No 20 who had an apartment here after the Second World War during his tenure as Master of the Queen's Art Collection.

This conveniently forgets to mention Anthony Blunt's espionage career as a KGB spook, linked to the notorious Philby, Maclean and Burgess spy scandals.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Memetic Engineer,

Great find, ME!

But what on Earth is this?

quote:

Originally posted by Gringo:
Great find, ME!

But what on Earth is this?

That is obviously a Gernbackian iron concept for the early 21st century.

I will never get you folks.

Bill posts a fragment from his new book and the first questions are about what gadget is in this picture or if the club is prescient of a real club or what.

I am trying to figure out who the pronoun "she" refers to and what said she is doing having to visit Inchamle in London and if that brings back in Damien or Hobbs or Voytek or....

Seriously, I will never understand you.

quote:

Originally posted by Gringo:
Great find, ME!

But what on Earth is this?

It is an architect designed bar:

quote:

House Bar

This iconic bar was designed by the world's most renowned female architect, Zaha Hadid and opened in a blaze of publicity in November 2008.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
I will never get you folks.

Bill posts a fragment from his new book and the first questions are about what gadget is in this picture or if the club is prescient of a real club or what.

Another question arises:

Does "Inchamale's club" imply his ownership of, or just membership of, the Cabinet club ?

I was wondering who she was too, and if Inchmale was going to be a protagonist.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
I will never get you folks.

Bill posts a fragment from his new book and the first questions are about what gadget is in this picture or if the club is prescient of a real club or what.

I am trying to figure out who the pronoun "she" refers to and what said she is doing having to visit Inchamle in London and if that brings back in Damien or Hobbs or Voytek or....

Seriously, I will never understand you.

Well, I'm not quite certain who you mean by "you folks" (Mimetic Engineer and me? Wigbers in general? Anyone here but you?) so I can only say that I like the fact that someone's able to find something interesting based on just these snippets, as in ME's post above. Especially something so Gibsonian. Hell, if that club's not in the novel then it should be.

Now, I realize you're something special, but if you could come up with an equally interesting theory about who the "she" is, I, for one, would be just as interested. Really.

@ME: A bar?! I thought it was a bobsleigh.

Half the vertical volume to me means half the height...I wonder who lives upstairs.

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@ME: A bar?! I thought it was a bobsleigh.

(I suck at Photoshop. And I'm even worse with the Gimp...)

quote:

Originally posted by ArkanGL:

quote:

@ME: A bar?! I thought it was a bobsleigh.

[...]

(I suck at Photoshop. And I'm even worse with the Gimp...)

Have a play with these other images of the bar then:

The Moment: Now Serving | Zaha Hadid’s Latest



The Bar



The lounge.



The reception desk.

quote:

Originally posted by theminx:
Half the vertical volume to me means half the height...I wonder who lives upstairs.

From the blog

It was a peculiarly narrow place, apparently occupying half of the vertical volume of a townhouse...

Narrow = tall and thin in this context I think. Suggests that they've done something odd with the stairs.

Do you think the narrator could be Cayce for reasons of symmetry?

I can imagine a pissed theatrical agent trying to lean against the bar and sliding off onto the sky-blue shag-pile.

quote:

Originally posted by BK/DK:

quote:

Originally posted by theminx:
Half the vertical volume to me means half the height...I wonder who lives upstairs.

From the blog

It was a peculiarly narrow place, apparently occupying half of the vertical volume of a townhouse...

Narrow = tall and thin in this context I think. Suggests that they've done something odd with the stairs.

I understand what he means, but he's said it a bit sideways; I think he means half the horizontal space, not vertical.

It's ambiguous...space is volume..there's really no such thing as vertical vs. horizontal volume - there is only height and width.

If we want to be nitpicking grammarians, (not implying you are Minx, but they can be found here) the grammaticaly and mathematically correct phrase would be "It was a peculiarly narrow place, apparently occupying half of the width of a townhouse..."

For me Gibson's phrase suggests a tall narrow space. By using the phrase "vertical volume" I think he means to imply that the space is higher than it is wide, thus making it a "vertical space" - when emphasizing on 2 narrow spaces.

One of the interesting things about Gibson's narrative is that when he's phrasing things in the 3rd person he's often using the POV of one of his characters, and not some omniscient narrator. So when he writes "reminded her of a sleeping face" the whole narrative is in the POV of the woman in the club. It doesn't matter if something is factually or grammatically wrong - Gibson views it as the knowledge that the character has, not his actual knowledge.

I'll give another example of this in my next post.

I agree with the above.

A narrow house is a vertical space.
A mall/supermarket/warehouse is an horizontal space.

quote:

Spook Country, Chapter 12. THE SOURCE
Milgrim dreamed he was naked in Brown’s room, while Brown lay sleeping.

It wasn’t ordinary nakedness, because it involved an occult aura of preternaturally intense awareness, as though the wearer were a vampire in an Anne Rice novel, or a novice cocaine user.

Brown lay beneath New Yorker sheets and one of those beige hotel blankets that sandwich a sheet of plastic foam between layers of polyester moleskin. Milgrim regarded him with something he recognized as akin to pity. Brown’s lips were parted slightly, the upper one quivering slightly with each exhalation

When I pointed out to WG that it was actually polyester mohair not moleskin used in those hotel blankets, he replied:

"Moleskin is wrong, but it's the wrong of Milgrim's personal database."

quote:

Originally posted by Boogerhead:
I was wondering who she was too, and if Inchmale was going to be a protagonist.

I think Inchmale owns the club, I think "she" is Cayce. I do not think Inchmale is a protag, he isn't the sort that Gibson usually puts over the readers eyes as filter. There is something unknowable and, well, jaded about him that his protagonists have not had of late.