William Gibson's Idoru is a novel thick with implications and extrapolations related to the oncoming and (present) age of electronic para-reality. Stylistically, it is far from perfect, but in theme it has a firm grasp on the concept of the simulacra as it mimics, masks and replaces reality.
Gibson's characters are rarely paintings of great depth. While I would strongly disagree with the assertion that they are archetypes cut out from a mold, I would still note that they are not particularly rich or personal. This probably derives from the author's style of writing which is the radical end of the spectrum of "showing, not telling," so that we are shown the characters' pasts, physical status, and present situations, and as readers we are to intuit the logical psychological conditions associated with those factors. Gibson has rich situations, not rich characters.
That's why I find it so strange that the New York Times Book Review wrote, "Chia is one of [Gibson's] most winning creations." I fail to understand the logic. It's as though, by making her young and in a strange situation, we're to develop an instant affinity for her. Now obviously, Gibson himself is not the one to decree that his characters are strong or weak. So it is not a flaw on the part of his writing when a reader attributes an archetype to one of his characters, but I would tend to think that, by design or simple lack of skill, Gibson writes his characters a little flat. (Which, in the context of a discussion of simulacra, makes it all the more amusingly ironic that book reviewers would attribute what they would call a "hidden" level to the quality of the writing not otherwise apparent.)
Another stylistic tool Gibson employed wa...
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...and eventually defines reality? It was a simply computer, just like Idoru was simply a novel. Yet the seashells in the make of that case serve to create a fantasy as readily and importantly as the words on paper serve to create a reality (and, paradoxically, the reality in which those seashells existed.) Simply because each is not real does not disrupt the validity of their creations, for if that were true, then the seashells would never have existed in the first place, even in our minds.
Gibson understands this closely, and Idoru does an excellent job of illustrating it. While not technically perfect, it is effective, and creates an image which is useful for us to learn from.
Works Cited and Consulted:
Gibson, William. Neuromancer. (Ace Books: New York 1984)
_____, Idoru. (Berkeley Books: New York 1996)
This chapter is composed of concepts that try to differentiate between reality and what is actually happening in your mind, and are we living in a matrix? The Vats and Demons idea creates a vivid
As i have mentioned before, David tries to shed light on his statement by using metaphors and examples which are crucial in the understanding
Idoru by william gibson is nothing less than an awe-insiring book for me. no other author that i have come across can inspire one to recreate visions of reality at the turn of every page. Gibsons books are all compelling; neuromancer (1984) needing perhaps a special mention; as this book single handedly created the cyberpunk genre, aswell as coining phrases such as "cyberspace". However, as one of his later works (1996), we are able to find within Idoru's more contempory exploration of our worlds transformation into a high density infomation-governed datasphere, an analysis of what might happen to certain aspects of humanity as technology, infomation, and a new reality converge within the global infrastructure.
In the author 's next argument he uses a long illustration in support of a complex argument:
Have you ever seen the homeless people on the street? Did you know that they have lives and families?What would you do if you had the opportunity to get to know and help these people would you help or would you not care?In the book The Soloist Steve tries to help one of these people but it's difficult the man Nathaniel is homeless and sick.Watching and reading the movie and the novel there were plenty of differences and similarities.One they changed was Steve.
...e. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernatics, Literature and Informatics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Amy Heckerling’s movie Clueless focuses on an upper middle class 16-year-old girl, Cher, who lives in a nice neighborhood with her father and stepbrother, Josh. Cher and her friend, Dionne, take in a new girl, Tai, to help her fit into their high school. All of the major characters in the movie are in adolescence, which ranges from 10-19 years of age. In adolescence, teenagers undergo cognitive and emotional development. According to Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory, adolescents are in formal operational period from 11-20 years of age. During this period, adolescents develop abstract thinking and rational decision making. They experience two aspects of adolescent egocentrism, imaginary audience
Domestic Violence and Abuse can be defined as threatening behavior or controlling behavior and violence of those over the age of 16 whom have been or who are an intimate partner or family member. The abuse can consist of: psychological, emotional, sexual, financial and physical. (GOV.UK, 2013).
exist in the real would in an attempt to represent the world of ideas. All of these aspects
But the closing/opening distinction prevalent in Gibson's Neuromancer is also evident in Idoru, although in a more mythopoetical sense. Lyotard's model of subdialectic Marxism suggests that the significance of the poet is significant form.
Springer, Claudia. Electronic Eros: Bodies and Desire in the Postindustrial Age. Texas: University of Texas Press, 1996.
In reading a text like this one can look at it through the formalistic approach and gather aspects on different perspectives. In HCAL it instructs a reader to analyze a specific text by seeing the setting, certain styles, imagery, form, and texture. In William Gibsons book Neuromancer all these approaches can be seen. The novel takes place in the future and how Gibson portrays it will be. Every place is dark and gloomy with an illusion of dystopia; despair and unhappiness. Gibson's structure is very hard to follow, such as how he is repetitive with the description of people and the color pink.
In Conclusion William Gibson created a cyberpunk/ postmodernism tale that has blurred not only the physical state between mechanics and human anatomy, but has as well blurred the line between the natural and virtual world. He is making the reader contemplate how both software and hardware have influenced the natural world. Gibson’s fictional world would have not been possible without the existence of software and hardware, that is why the distinction between them is very crucial and play a different part within the text. Without these two things, the reader would not be able to comprehend and relate to Gibson’s view on how our society is interlocking with the advances of technology and the normality of today will no longer exist in the future.
In Hamlet on the Holodeck, Janet Murray argues that we live in an age of electronic incubabula. Noting that it took fifty years after the invention of the printing press to establish the conventions of the printed book, she writes, "The garish videogames and tangled Web sites of the current digital environment are part of a similar period of technical evolution, part of a similar struggle for the conventions of coherent communication" (28). Although I disagree in various ways with her vision of where electronic narrative is going, it does seem likely that in twenty years, or fifty, certain things will be obvious about electronic narrative that those of us who are working in the field today simply do not see. Alongside the obvious drawbacks--forget marble and gilded monuments, it would be nice for a work to outlast the average Yugo--are some advantages, not the least of which is what Michael Joyce calls "the momentary advantage of our awkwardness": we have an opportunity to see our interactions with electronic media before they become as transparent as our interactions with print media have become. The particular interaction I want to look at today is the interaction of technology and imagination. If computer media do nothing else, they surely offer the imagination new opportunities; indeed, the past ten years of electronic writing has been an era of extraordinary technical innovation. Yet this is also, again, an age of incubabula, of awkwardness. My question today is, what can we say about this awkwardness, insofar as it pertains to the interaction of technology and the imagination?
Characterization: Celie is the protagonist as well as the narrator. She writes letters to God which is how the story is told. The story is told in first person, “ I am fourteen years old” which is referring to Celie herself as she tells the story (Pg.8). The antagonist is her father, Alphonso. He rapes Celie and forces her to do things she does not want too such as, “you better not never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy” threatening Celie to not say he rapes her or else he will kill his mom (Pg 8). This is the main reason why Celie writes to God. Nettie is Celie’s sister who attributes to the story a lot. Nettie is the only person Celie has. Mr.__ is the man who Celie later on marries and keeps in secret all the letters from Nettie to Celie. Shug is Mr.__ mistress, but she soon falls in love with Celie and Celie does too.