The day has arrived: the first discussion day of the inaugural Caperton Gillett Creative Vaguely Advertising-Adjacent Book Club (CGC VAABC). It’s time to discuss this book that, theoretically, we’ve all been reading together. I’m pumped. So, chapters 1-12 of William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition… Ready… Go.
Okay, what happened here?
In the first twelve chapters, we’re introduced to our brand-averse heroine, her inscrutable patron, some mysterious footage, and an unspeakable violation of a one-of-a-kind jacket, and she’s sent on a mission. (Need a quick refresher before you’re ready to discuss? Read the recap).
Cayce is flat-sitting for her friend Damien while she’s in town for a gig with Blue Ant, a marketing agency that’s flown her out to get her opinion on a new footwear logo. Her opinion, after a glance, is “no,” which graphic designer Dorotea Benedetti takes super-duper graciously, doing something unforgiveable to Cayce’s favorite jacket like HOW VERY DARE YOU, DOROTEA. The next day, out for a walk, she meets Polish-born artist Voytek Biroshak outside a street market, where he’s hawking vintage calculators to fund his ZX 81 pocket computer habit. Upon her return to Damien’s apartment, she finds signs someone else has been there, including an outgoing call to… Dorotea.
Moving on. Hubertus Bigend, the ridiculously named founder of Blue Ant, takes Cayce for drinks to dicuss not logo allergies but the footage. We learn he also is fixated on the footage and has been having his people monitoring the forums, and Cayce appears to be the person best suited for his task of finding the source of the clips for reasons he doesn’t disclose. Shortly thereafter, she gets an email from Parkaboy, turning her on to a lead in the form of a hidden watermark in one of the clips, setting all the online sleuths to sleuthing online.
Cayce returns to the Big Ant offices to look at Dorotea’s revised logo, except oopsie! Dot accidentally shows her a picture of a throwback Bibendum, gosh, where did that come from? That’s for a different project, before showing her the actual revised logo. Bibendum (the Michelin Man, if you’re nasty) happens to be Cayce’s first-ever and most sever trigger, but she manages to okay the logo before bolting. She gets back to Damien’s flat to find a Michelin Man strung up on the doorknob. Cayce reluctantly takes Bigend up on his job offer, and he connects her with Boone Chu, a security/systems consultant and failed startup founder and fellow, ahem, “footagehead” to help, along with on-demand technological and financial support. And then she embarks on her new gig via a first-class flight to Tokyo.
And that’s the end of Chapter 12.
Initial thoughts
1. William Gibson can have his wicked way with a metaphor and leave you wanting a cigarette afterward. Good lord.
2. Having the job of getting flown to London to look at a logo and giving a thumbs up or down, period? Maybe not worth the brand-induced migraines, but… maybe.
3. I don’t know who at Tommy Hilfiger ran over Gibson’s dog, but damn.
4. The sense of unreality in the book is practically another character. The jet-lagged sense of her soul being removed from her body, the “mirror world” of things being just a little bit off in London, Cayce’s altered relationship with the brand-heavy world — it’s like the entire story is shot from a Dutch angle, and it parallels the mysteriousness and ephemerality of the footage people are obsessed with. Delicious.
More thoughts
The thoughts that came up after the initial thoughts.
Contemporary mass fixation
William Gibson has a talent for writing stories that are fully grounded in their space and era, and yet still feel authentic even decades later. The London of Pattern Recognition could be our London, with only the occasional tiny reminder that the book was published in 2002. The F:F:F bulletin board reads like a subreddit although, okay, Hotmail. Not to mention Cayce’s new fully loaded iBook with… a super-impressive integrated cellular modem, much tech, so wow.
It’s one reason his big plot points continue to ring true. Mass internet fixation certainly knows no era — we had lonelygirl15 circa 2006-2008 and the Blair Witch footage in 1999. (The denizens of F:F:F would have kittens when they discovered it was all a marketing ploy.) For years up until 2024, a corner of the internet quested for the origins of a mysterious early-‘80s German new wave song. And more IRL, I have to credit the Swifties for their dedication to decoding every real or supposed easter egg dropped by Taylor Swift, obsessively and adoringly. Y’all are for real.
Useful aversion
Cayce’s allergy to brands makes her life hard. She has to de-brand everything she owns. Popping into Harvey Nichols left her with her head spinning thanks to Tommy Hifiger exposure. But it’s also the reason for her career — a career that has people flying her across the ocean to pan a logo on first look. She can identifying promising street styles at a glance. That doesn’t mean it isn’t bad, but there are aspects of it that are kind of good.
And… yeah. Our industry kind of has room for that, even if it usually comes from extensive experience rather than allergy. Some deeply experienced creatives have developed the ability to yeah or nah creative output at a glance. I know social media strategists, bless them, who can barely tolerate everyday social media, but that same eye makes them masterful at their job. And I might have an actual allergy to the standard LinkedIn posts and the AI Accent, but it also makes me much more effective as a writer and editor in an industry suffused with AI.
So, I gotta wonder…
(These aren’t discussion questions. I said no discussion questions. They’re just… questions one might be inclined to discuss.)
1. What other The Footage-like mass obsessions are we seeing today? And also, don’t we have to admit the Swiftievestigators are, on the whole, dedicated, curious, and analytical, which are positive qualities, even if they’re sometimes annoying?
2. Do you have any blessing-and-a-curse industry allergies? Also, what a power move with “no critique, no advice, take my yes or my no and pay my bill”? Now there’s an upside to the allergy.
Next up
Cayce is on her way to Tokyo, so we are, too. We’re reading chapters 13-21, for to discuss on Thursday, October 22. So, I’ll see you here, then. In the meantime, our current chapters: Current mass obsessions? Your blessing-and-a-curse industry aversions? Also, if you had to name one brand mascot that would be your personal, illness-inducing Bibendum, which would it be? Let’s discuss in comments.
Honestly, I’m not sure what my Bibendum would be (although I’m sure there is one), but I will say that if Dorotea really did hit Cayce up unexpectedly with the original Michelin Man mascot, I can see myself having a panic attack, too.
https://guide.michelin.com/kr/en/article/features/8-fascinating-facts-michelin-man