William Gibson’s Neuromancer continues its difficult ways in the second assigned section, Chapters 7-12. As I read on, it becomes blatantly clear that Gibson is purposely trying to keep the reader off-balance and overwhelmed. Similar to the first section, my biggest challenge has been the quickly shifting scenes. One of the clearest examples of this is when Case “flatlines” at the end of Chapter 9, only to be reawakened and walking “through customs” (109) in the first line of Chapter 10. The explanation for his recovery is minimal and the fast pace of the story leaves little time for clarification. Instead, the action plows forward onto the next location.
In addition, the detached main characters and foreign words remain a distracting obstacle to the story. Couldn’t Case smoke Marlboros and eat Twinkies? Heaven forbid I relax, as Gibson adds a new wrinkle to the plot with demanding secondary characters. Just as I start to get comfortable with the existing people, he ups the ante by introducing a number of progressively odd folks that create great confusion on the page.
Whisked off to Istanbul, we meet up with Terzibashjian, whose name is so challenging that even our protagonist Case can’t pronounce it. His English is choppy and fragmented, which causes me to slow down to understand what the guy was trying to say. Almost as foreshadowing, it gets even worse once the action shifts to Zion and the Rastafarians. The dialect of the guides Aerol and Maelcum borders on unreadable unless I sound out each syllable in my head. I am happy to leave these “hey Mon”s behind on their tugs. Obviously, I’m not stoned enough to actually absorb the full meaning of their dialogue.
The trickiest personality introduced in this section is Peter Riviera. His entrance is probably the most confusing part of the story so far. He appears, gets “trapped” in a white spotlight and then collapses before a monster rips his body open. Of course, we later discover that he’s a master of illusion, which starts to blur the line between reality and imagination. Our main characters are thrown off by his mirages, which only adds to my confusion of what is really happening. He’s anything but the “harmless clown” (102), as he conjures up images both repulsive and off-putting. Who else could give the boss “bright pustules on his nose, cheeks, and chin” (107) one minute and turn around to sleep with traitorous creatures like an imaginary snake and scorpion the next?
And if that wasn’t enough complexity, two artificial intelligences (“AIs”) join the party in this section. The Flatline actually has a stabilizing role in the plot, since he brings Case’s past and present together. Although he exists in the virtual world, I like the anchor that the Flatline provides. The main diversion here is when Case alternates between the AI’s Flatline name and the Dixie and Dix nicknames. The other AI is much more complicated. I feel that Wintermute is the first sympathetic being introduced so far. However, his actions are extremely disorienting when uses Case’s memories to transfer the scene back to Ninsei and Chiba City. Just when I thought this set of characters were a thing of the past, they return to serve as the Wintermute’s interface. Linda, won’t you please stay dead?!?
Through the introduction of these five new characters, my grasp of reality and the continuity of the story slips further out of my control. Don’t even get me started on the whole Armitage-is-Corto twist. Guess I need to sit back and let all these eccentric folks drive me (both literally and figuratively) completely crazy. Maybe I won’t miss my sanity as much if I stay “jacked in” to this book.
