William Gibson Books www.williamgibsonboard.com www.williamgibsonboard.com PATTERN RECOGNITION Bigend is Gibson's Best Character
www.williamgibsonboard.com www.williamgibsonboard.com PATTERN RECOGNITION Bigend is Gibson's Best Character Topic Closed|
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I submit this as true.
--- Reading, meanwhile, is an activity subsequent to writing - more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. |
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Anyone disagree?
He pervades the last two books like a giant asteroid in the background of a painting of dinosaurs. Yeah, you look at the dinosaurs, but that asteroid can't and won't be conscripted to the corner. Nobody puts Bigend in the corner! --- Reading, meanwhile, is an activity subsequent to writing - more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. |
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That's a bold statement.
I don't disagree with your description of Bigend's role in the last two books. That's not necessarily sole criteria for saying he's the best character. |
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Yeh, I agree with Pigkilla, he's certainly there, but "best", why for do you hold this to be true?
He's sort of intriguing, man of mystery and all that, but, to me at least, a lot of that intrigue comes from the mystery, rather than facets of the character himself. A Dirty Dancing ref? Was not expecting that. |
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Bigend's personality defines the last two books more than any other character has defined any one of the previous novels.
With an oblique insight into Bigend (always at one remove through a POV character) Gibson has drawn not only a persona but a force of personality. Further, Bigend's personality it so wholly bolted of the cloth of his time. He's absolutely definite of a kind of "now" that is difficult to put into words. A bold post-capitalist capitalist who is concerned less with money than the power to enthrall people's will toward strange ends. But then, in the way of so many visionaries, he applies this ability to the must mundane of eventual ends. He is simultaneously representative both the best and worse aspects of the global economy, a Medici Patron out of the Renaissance who, for all his patronage of the arts, is quite satisfied with having Da Vinici design him a tanks, rather than a flying machine. Moreover, he sticks with a reader longer than just about anyone else, wedges himself between your synapses in the same way he imposes himself into the lives of the fictional characters he largely overshadows. The final test, for me, is that Bigend, despite his use as plot device, seems to me to the character who Gibson has the least amount of conscious control over. --- Reading, meanwhile, is an activity subsequent to writing - more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. |
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Kind of strikes a chord with me: But for me, Bigend is not unique in that respect. He is a bit like Molly's little Brother: - Both symbolize parts of the worlds they come from: Molly is the perfect 80's SF icon, not Case. Case just lives there. Case you sympathize with, case is your eyes and ears, your simstim ride. But Molly is your tourguide. Same with Bigend and Casey. You travel with Casey, but you travel in a world represented by Bigend to places Bigend wants you to go. (Bigend has more of Wintermute or Virek in that respect. And also seems driven like them, btw). - Both have something you could (mis)interpret as moral indifference: they are not actually bad, more like they accept they're worlds and are completely into them. - They are a bit like the WG version of Lucas' 3PO: A familiar sidekick to keep the stories connected. - I like the notion that WG doesn't really have absolute control over Bigend, that he just wedged in again. And I like to think it was the same with Molly in the Sprawl trilogy. - Maybe Gibson sometimes feels the needs to put the characters that get a little too cocky back into place: Like he lets Casey mock Bigend with his Stetson, just to put him of balance, before he gets allusions of grandeur (Thinking of how Bigend always seems so perfectly confident, so in balance and how he likes to put others of it, that must have been an odd feeling for him ...). Same with Molly, when he lets her ask the Finn how Case did ... Probably thats just good character development, since it makes them more human, but I can't really picture WG thinking conciously about that. And I sort of like the idea of him having a chat with all those weird creatures he created. Like: I could imagine he never intended Molly to appear in all three (+1/2) books and she just "refused to go". Maybe initially he thought it would be a cool idea to brush up the Jonny-M. Molly for Neuromancer, and she fit his "guy who is weaker than his girlfriend" idea so well. And then he was a bit irritated at how persistent she was. Maybe that was the reason for: "And he never saw Molly again." -> Not to keep himself from writing a sequel, but to keep her from wedging in again ... "Well, now we got the doors barred. See how you get into my next novel when Case won't see you again, eh' Punk?" "You forgot to barr the windows, honey. You see: who gives a shit about Case anyway ... ?" "... ! Oh well, suit yourself. Grab a seat and shut up, the kids are sleeping. But speaking of Case: you know, I always found it odd how easily you left him & never looked back. 'Maybe nobody's girl?'. Need nobody? nobody to keep the walls from coming closer? Maybe not now ... but how about ... say 15 years?" "..." "Let's see: I think I'll let you ask the Finn how Case did. And I'll let him have a nice quiet life with that woman called Michael and a bunch of critters. Really no regrets? Ever? And I think I'll let you age a little, get a little tired, a little slower, just a little bit scared ..." "You sonofa...!" This message has been edited. Last edited by: Billy Billions, |
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I did not find Bigend to "stick" more than anybody else, personally, he seems like the prototypical Gibsonian Deus Ex. Somebody hyper-rich, with mega-connections, and eccentric agendas must motivate most of these stories. This has been true since the get go, and most obviously so in the form of a "person" (tho, of course, they are not really "people" since they are not really human, generally) starting in Count Zero. I don't see how Bigend really breaks that mold except that he actually appears as a character to a greater degree than his equivalents in prior works. With Virek being almost entirely a abstraction. Can you provide some examples of what you mean by Gibson having less control over the character? |
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Molly wasn't in Count Zero. I think you underestimate Bigend's importance, he's representative of something new, he manifests it, he's bigger than the page in a way the others are not. --- Reading, meanwhile, is an activity subsequent to writing - more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. |
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One way in which he breaks the mold is that Bigend has expressed philosophies. In both PR and SC it is his musings during conversation which give the narrative substrate. In PR he ties together the conversation in which it is mentioned that we have no real future anymore (by Cayce) and he observes that all advertising addresses the old brain stem and that the brain is an enlarged glad "piggybacking" on an older armature of instincts. It's more than himself being intelligent, Bigend has an expressed world view which is complex and, for me, definitive of essential points I think Gibson believes about the human condition. Not only that, but Bigend has served as a mouthpiece for Gibson's ideas in a way that the others never have. he's the one in SC that has possibly the most relevant point : We've crawled through the mirror, we've punched through the screen, the media has ceased representing the world and come to comprise it. Bigend is Gibson's Kilgore Trout. That's high praise from me. --- Reading, meanwhile, is an activity subsequent to writing - more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. |
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True. Misremembered the storyline from MLD. Doesn't change the argument though, IMO.
Ok, what I meant was that both characters for me are symbols/representatives for the world Gibson portrays in the respective novel or trilogy. So for me they start out (!) rather as "narrative functions", not as characters, but become characters as the story unfolds. And I meant that I wouldn't be surprised if Gibson hadn't planned this in the beginning, but rather that those characters walked up to him and "demanded a bigger role". They are rather one-dimensional in the beginning ( Molly's first appearance being in Jonny M.), but both in Sprawl trilogy and PR/SC there are scenes where those characters suddenly are in situations where they act more human, are out of balance or show signs of fear and regret. Those scenes don't feel "plot necessary" for me, but as if Gibson had suddenly decided to add a detail to them, changing their role. This was what I interpreted (not dead seriously) as them "demanding a bigger role". The "wouldn't go away" I imagined like this: http://www.spikemagazine.com/0899williamgibson.php “I thought of him as literally being someone who wandered in from another book. He turned up one day. Wouldn’t go away. After the book was finished I wondered if he weren’t some sort of avatar connected to the late William Burroughs. An unconscious expression of Burroughsness. He’s a character Burroughs would’ve enjoyed, I’m pretty certain of that.” It's true that Bigend has more Virek/Wintermute qualities additionally and that Molly is more "in the plot" in Neuromancer. But I was alluding to their "independence" and their function as symbols, not to their respective roles. This message has been edited. Last edited by: Billy Billions, |
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The Finn mentions her. ------- Birth, School, Work, Death |
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And you're right that Bigend is a cool character. He's more than a foil (If I understand the term correctly). I wouldn't know how to rate "best", maybe you mean "character that is at the same time interesting, serves the plot, is fascinating yet repulsive, symbolizes part of the world, etc." -> a single character that serves many different purposes?
That I would agree to. But I wouldn't be surprised if Bigend is also one of characters that Gibson himself finds most repulsive (rather "ambigous"). The big nose he puts places it shouldn't be: That's the other side of the "coolhunter". (And those teeth ...) Wasn't there something that Gibson admitted in an interview to falling for his own idea of himself as coolhunter, that Laney and his node-seeing ability is sort of an "over the top self image"? Then one could see Bigend as a sort of caricature of that. Like: "You see Boys & Girls, coolhunters are cool, and all this nodeseeing and stuff. But they also are ppl. that put their big noses where they don't belong and they always fiddle with things, change their natural development. This might result in a beautiful new art form ending up as car comercial." Who knows how the net would look like without Neuromancer? Probably the same, but ... That's what makes Bigend "cool" for me. You can't speculate a lot about Wintermute or Virek. Not enough texture. What I dislike is that he's "another Dr. No", like jbx said: there's always one of them in his books. And I'm a little tired of Dr.No's. Not quite contemporary anymore, IMO. This message has been edited. Last edited by: Billy Billions, |
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I can agree with that, but I never said that Bigend was the most humane character, nor the most detailed. He doesn't have much of a private life and we are never privy to his interiority. he is though, fully realized as a force or personality, as an imposition of selfhood, or, perhaps, as an imposition of the very lack of selfhood. A post modern, Sartrean hero. --- Reading, meanwhile, is an activity subsequent to writing - more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. |
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Bigend isn't Dr. No. he isn't malicious or even selfish in the ordinary sense of the word, he is fully preoccupied. In fact, I'd say Bigend's lack of self-refelction is his strongest trait. When he went to Brazil to find himself, I imagine he did so, found the revelation to be not that interesting and then quickly discarded the very notion of a self. he exists, for me, as a complex pattern, a Platonic form of of the zeitgeist at a certain point. He is certainly the most memorable persona in the books for me. And I believe he is the most important figure from any sort of analysis of the meaning of the text. Bigen represents the world, America in fact, in a way that none of his other characters do. (Yes, I know he's Belgian). In 50 years, if people are studying Gibson in college courses, they'll be talking a lot more about Bigend then the others I suspect. --- Reading, meanwhile, is an activity subsequent to writing - more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. |
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Thanks, billy, that's a great link. I attributed it mistakenly to JBX in another post which I am not too lazy to go back and change. --- Reading, meanwhile, is an activity subsequent to writing - more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. |
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"Dr. No" was loaded with wrong connotations, bad comparison. Forget about that. I wasn't refering to his moral qualities, I know he would laugh at the very question (And I partly agree with that)(interesting idea, btw. -> did you listen to that Gibson Interview? He says he could not befriend someone who didn't have a sense of ambiguity. Yet he talks about the lack of compassion in the world. Compassion as an impetus, a reason for true moral choice, while being good is just "trying not to get punished"?). Yes, he is fully preoccupied. I was refering to the fact that he is another one of Gibson's puppet master's. Someone who pulls the strings of the world, while remaining behind the curtain. And I strongly dislike this notion. I get sick to my teeth when I hear ppl. e.g. talking about the illumitati. For me they are just another excuse for not being responsible. This is simply not true. Power is not taken, but given. If someone gives you the "three hats and a peanut" trick, who says you have to bet your money?
Well that may or may not be true, I'm not sure wether this is really an expression of "self-less-ness" or of "Gibson doesn't yet knwo what to make of him". Case's lack of affect in NM was also attributed by some to Gibson's not yet fully developed abilities of character development (not sure I get your thought of Bigend's scorn of the notion of a self ) But for me Bigend is also: a)Gibson himself. Bigend is the ultimate coolhunter. But while he is able to spot the the Butterfly, he cannot refrain from touching its wings (the reference in SC that he turned the Footage into an advertizing strategy). Maybe Gibson sometimes thinks about creating minor nodal points by seeing them & writing about them? (Think Herbert, Dune, Mua'dib) Would the Net be different without Neuromancer? b) Gibson certainly tries to emphasize that Bigend is a human being. Maybe this is the most scary thing about him. This I miss a bit in your description. You talk about him almost entirely as a function. Again: Recall the scene when Casey mocks him with his Stetson, how this hint of intimacy temporarily unsettles him. He also seems much more "flesh & bones" to me in SC, compared to PR.
He's certainly one, if not the most important character of the current "trilogy".
Well, since I wouldn't recognize a proper text analysis if it bit me in my butt, I can't really talk about that. I think that Gibson hasn't fully decided yet what to make of Bigend. He's too detailed for a Virek or Wintermute, but not yet human enough for me to come out of the screen. This message has been edited. Last edited by: Billy Billions, |
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I read that interview you linked to, where is there one to listen to? That quote wasn't in the text I read I do not think. Pls give me linkage, I subsist on coffee grounds and Willaim Gibson musings.
Gibson states this himself in PR when Cayce remembers Win telling her that paranoia is fundamentally self-aggrandizing. I would add that it is a surrogate for the religion node in those whose node doesn't accept religion or our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ.
As Gibson himself mentioned: I infer an awful lot. I think he's Gibson if Gibson hadn't been a hippie and gone off to Cananda. if he'd stayed in America and got tucked into a skinny suit with a flat top haircut, he might have turned into a Bigend. I am certain that Gibson would never say that he creates his own nodal points for fun. He'd say his process is wholly unconscious which is what he always says when you try and get him to talk about what he might have meant by such and such. It's his go-to PR (public relations) answer. I would guess it's mostly true, but anyone as intelligent as he must analyze his own work in retrospect and during its manifestation.
I suspect, at times, that being human is precisely a kind of function, that everything else piled on is unessential. What Bill mentions as 'culture," quoting I forget who. I am not entirely convinced that we are really "in the business" of being individual entities. I sure know we want to be and try to act like we are but I'm not at all sure that "individuals" is exactly what we are. I think we comprise a system and we are always more at the behest of whatever that system is than we are of our own "free will." I haven't decided whether I believe this or not yet but I like the idea. It smells "nodal."
Here is how to spot it: It will always use the word "masticate" when it bites you ass, it's in its nature to be verbose. --- Reading, meanwhile, is an activity subsequent to writing - more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. |
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http://williamgibsonboard.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/547101...971088583#3971088583 <- You can also SEE him! Towards the end is the reference to "ambiguity". I think it is related to one of the Proust questions, but I'm not sure. Amen. Let's become ... charlatans! The perogative of the writer My idea is that one of the functions of Bigend is that Gib-San is trying to do just that (musing about wether seing the nodes and using them creates a different fututere). And no, I also don't think he does this for fun. But if everybody calls you "The guy who invented cyberspace", even if you know they wouldn't do if Sterling (Shirley?) hadn't experimented with his early forms of viral marketing, I think you would also think about how the butterfly would look if you hadn't touched its wings-".
It smells Neuromancer. Marie-France and her idea that the evolution of the neocortex may have taken a wrong direction. (Ya'know, somewhere around where Case goes to that Beach and meats Neuromancer - too lazy to look it up right now.)
Well, I was in the process of thinking of some smart line of how it can kiss- instead of masticating it, but I think I'll just go to bed now |
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No, that's not what I was getting at. It isn't about a wrong turn, it's more to do with the tree being unable to see the forest or how it really has more to do with what happens to the tree than the tree itself does. This is one of them koan trees what is sentient and the like. --- Reading, meanwhile, is an activity subsequent to writing - more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. |
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