Re-reading Pattern Recognition for my presentation at the ACLA in a couple of weeks. Although my presentation focuses upon the novel’s relation to film—in particular, Chris Marker’s La jetee—Pattern Recognition speaks to a vast and inter-related media ecology comprised of words, images, icons, fashion, adverts, watermarks, human labor, sigils, and typewriters (including, hilariously, “Stephen King’s Wang”). Published shortly after 9/11, and informed by the subsequent trauma of that event, the book remains a phenomenal read. Even though the rendering farm that makes the footage and therefore the F:F:F possible seems slightly antique ten years later, the theme of technological obsolescence and overlap is so expertly woven throughout the text that it doesn’t seem remotely out of date.
“a Wang…but not Mr. King’s”
