City Come a Walkin' Book

HOLY SHIT.

Really, just...holy shit. This book takes "amazing" to a whole new level. Aside from one typographical error (a capital A following a comma), not one piece of this novel was out of place.

Forewarning, I may just write "holy shit" a lot to convey my love of this book.

First off, if you read it, make sure you get an edition with the intro by William Gibson. I was hooked just from that, I didn't even need the narrative. It also provides a bit of context, not that you'll need it.

Now, just...I don't quite know where to begin, even. The intro and outro provide a structural frame for the narrative, mirroring each other very nicely and in such a way that the reader can easily forget they're even there. You don't *need* them to enjoy the novel, but reading them lets you enjoy it in an even deeper level. So, really, read it.

In Chapter "WUN" the narrative tells you exactly what's about to happen in the rest of the book. It goes through ten beats, "WUN" through "TENNN" and each beat is reflected in the TENNN chapters of the novel. Structurally? HOLY SHIT. The talent required to make that work is just enormous. To think of doing that structure almost makes me want to cry because I'd never have thought of something like that. I kept flipping back to the page where the beats occur as I read through the novel, to refresh my mind on what I should be looking for. I didn't want to miss anything. The structure is so sound that the narrative virtually carries itself along the rails set by those ten beats, never skipping a moment and never letting up. Once you're in, you're in for the long haul. Fortunately, this book is a flight of a read, it's over very quickly--too quickly.

The language of the narrative is also beautiful. It's fluid, poetic, and wonderfully reflective of the surreality in which the novel takes place. Shirley paints a picture of a world where things are so much more than the physical manifestations we mortals perceive, and gives the reader a world where--and I flipped to a random page for this because I knew I would find an example no matter what page I turned to--"caffeine's fight with alcohol produced a headache that rang like a prizefight bell." There is a grace to Shirley's writing, his ability to turn a phrase just the right way to make the reader understand the inherent beauty in the destruction and chaos that is so artfully manifested in this novel.

Gibson's introduction clearly states that this novel is where all cyberpunk comes from, and reading through it the imagery and concepts embodied in the narrative are easily identified as the same ideas that came about in Neal Stephenson's works, as well as William Gibson's, and--as Gibson points out--in Ridley Scott's "Bladerunner." It's felt or seen in other movies and novels as well, all from the science fiction genre. The near-future setting, as seen from 1979--is full of technology that reminded me of Philip K. Dick stories and the world they existed in, a world oddly prophetic from the 2012 perspective. And yet, I hesitate to clump this in with science fiction. Nor is it science-fantasy. But it isn't quite pure fantasy either. It's something unrepeated and unidentifiable. There are elements of surrealism, Marxism, Jungian concepts of collective consciousness, transcendentalism, Nihilism, and probably a lot more that I either can't identify or am simply unable to find words for. They all mix in with science fiction and fantasy to create a world where so much is possible that the reader's mind may literally go reeling.

Therein may lie the only critique I have of the novel. The concepts embodied in the narrative are so high, so mighty, so HUGE, that the narrative often has to break from its flow to explain them in explicit terminology for the reader. There's not much left to subtext, not much to analyze as far as what the narrative was looking to show on a linear level--though I assure you there is plenty to analyze on a multitude of different levels in this novel. But even when the narrative takes a break to explain itself to the reader, it's done in this florid manner and handled usually by explaining it to a character that needs to understand it. So while it broke the flow, it didn't break the narrative. Not for me, at least.

But really, I just can't get away from the structure of the narrative. Shirley tells the reader in the beginning--in the INTRO--what happens at the very end of the main narrative. Cole tells Catz right there about the last image, and the reader knows well before it happens that it's going to happen because the structure gives it all away. Even knowing the end, the journey is such a beautiful, tragic, inescapable ride that there's no way to not keep going. It's not enough to know *how* it ends, the narrative insists on knowing the *why* of the ending. It's a tactic that I've seen employed a few times, but never--NEVER--so successfully as in this novel. Hence, holy shit.

So, really. Read this book. ESPECIALLY if you live in San Fransisco.