“Oh, good; you're almost done”
12 o'clock, February 5, 2003
I managed to get in to William Gibson's reading at Elliott Bay last night. Got my Spanish-language copy of Neuromante signed, along with an English-language copy for Lara — and also a copy of the new book, Pattern Recognition, which I felt vaguely obligated to buy. I haven't really started it yet; the section he read, where protagonist Cayce Pollard meets a Russian kid named Voychek who collects Timex / Sinclair ZX81s, was damned funny, but — I'm not sure I go to William Gibson for funny, you know? We'll see.
Anyway, during the question-and-answer period, among other things (like sorting out someone's boy/girl fight over whether Case from Neuromancer, not to be confused with Cayce from Pattern Recognition, is a boy or a girl) he said that with every one of his novels, he gets to a point, usually when he's quite close to the end, where he becomes convinced not only that the book is bad, but that it's the worst book ever written.
He stumbles up from the basement.
His wife says: What's wrong?
It's the worst book ever written, he says.
Oh, good, she says. You're almost done.
Mr. Gibson has a great and wonderful variety of writerly tricks under his sleeve, but this is the one I need to learn: Realizing, when you're almost done, that what you're working on is the worst book ever written.
Not when you're only a third of the way through.
Gibson had a reading last night?! No one told me. Dammit.