William Gibson metaphor style guide
The sky was the color of television tuned to a dead channel.
I’m reading Spook Country by William Gibson which seems to be built around his famous metaphor style more than previous books. Or maybe I’m just noticing them more. I’ve even decided to give a TLA to his style: GWMs Gibson Whatthefuck Metaphors. A few choice exampled from Spook Country:
“the colour of bright shiny plastic scuffed to a dull sheen”
“the street was the colour of a tarnished silver coin”
His style seems to be to pick something bright, shiny, maybe contrived and then do something to it like age it, rust it, fade it or just smash it. But then there are the ones that are just downright distracting from the rest of the story, the kicker so far has been this one on the end of an already long sentence describing the tension that a character feels when addicted to drugs:
as though a Buckminster Fuller tensegrity structure contained a single element that perpetually tightened itself counter to the balance of forces required to sustain it.
If you don’t have a GWM moment after reading that then there’s something wrong with you. Personally I think the editor should have taken a harder stance on that one. Or maybe I need to be on those drugs.
[tags]books, metaphors, spook country, william gibson, writing[/tags]
