Editing Pattern Recognition (novel) (section)

== Style and story elements ==
{{Essay-like|section|a composite of WP policy-compliant reporting from sources, but adding original research in part|date=April 2025}}
{{original research|section|date=April 2025}}
The novel uses a [[third-person narrative]] in the present tense with a somber tone reminiscent of a "low-level post-apocalypticism".<ref name = Hollinger/> Cayce's memories of the [[September 11, 2001 attacks]], which briefly use the future tense,<ref name=Smith>{{cite web |title= Pattern Recognition by William Gibson |url= http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/patternrecognition.htm |access-date= 2007-12-15 |first= Jeremy |last=Smith |date=21 February 2004 |publisher= infinity plus}}</ref> are told by Gibson as "a [[Walter Benjamin|Benjaminian]] seed of time", as one reviewer calls it,<!--THIS CITATION ONLY COVERS THE BENJAMINIAN QUOTE, OTHERWISE MAKING NO REFERENCE TO MONISTIC, LYRICAL DESCRIPTION, WHICH IS ALL WP OR AND EDITORIALISING.--><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Taylor |first=Paul |year=2006 |title=Pattern Recognition in Fast Capitalism: Calling Literary Time on the Theorists of Flux |journal=Fast Capitalism |volume=2 |issue=1 |pages=47–60 |doi=10.32855/fcapital.200601.005 |url= http://www.uta.edu/huma/agger/fastcapitalism/2_1/taylor.htm |access-date=2008-01-01|doi-access=free }}.</ref> because of the [[monistic]] and lyrical descriptions of Cayce's relationship to objects with the attacks in the background.{{or|date=April 2025}}{{cn|date=April 2025}} 

Two [[neologism]]s appear in the novel: ''[[gender-bait]]'' and ''mirror-world''.{{cn|date=April 2025}}<!--Someone beside us needs to state that these terms have never been used before!--> Gibson created the term ''mirror-world''{{says who|date=April 2025}} to acknowledge a locational-specific distinction in a manufactured object that emerged from a parallel development process, for example opposite-side driving or varied electrical outlets.{{or|date=April 2025}}{{cn|date=April 2025}} ''Gender-bait'' refers{{says who|date=April 2025}} to a male posing as a female online to elicit positive responses.{{or|date=April 2025}}{{cn|date=April 2025}} The term ''[[Coolhunting|coolhunter]]'', not coined by Gibson,{{says who|date=April 2025}} but rather used in the marketing industry for several years,<ref>{{Cite news|last=Gladwell |first=Malcolm |author-link=Malcolm Gladwell |date=17 March 2007 |title=The Coolhunt |magazine=The New Yorker |url=http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_03_17_a_cool.htm |access-date=11 January 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071030181246/http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_03_17_a_cool.htm |archive-date=30 October 2007 }}.</ref><!--THIS SECOND REFERENCE DOES NOT CONTAIN "COOLHUNT", "PATTERN", OR "GIBSON", BUT RATHER IS JUST THE TOP LEVEL WEB PAGE FOR A GENERAL INVESTIGATION OF MARKETING TOWARD TEENS, I.E., IT IS A WP:OR EDITOR'S ASSOCIATION, IN PLACE OF OUR REPORTING ON PUBLISHED INTERPRETIONS: <ref>{{cite video |people=Rachel Dretzin, Barak Goodman |date=2001-02-27 |title=Frontline: The Merchants of Cool |publisher=[[Public Broadcasting Service]] |url= http://www-c.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/ |access-date=2008-01-09|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080119140046/http://www-c.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/ |archive-date = January 19, 2008|url-status=dead}}</ref>--> is used to describe Cayce's profession of identifying the roots of emerging trends.{{or|date=April 2025}}{{cn|date=April 2025}}

The September 11, 2001 attacks are used as a [[Motif (narrative)|motif]] representing a break with the past with Cayce's father, who disappears during the attacks, as the personification of the 20th century. Gibson viewed the attacks as a nodal point after which "nothing is really the same".<ref name=Suzuki>{{cite journal | last = Suzuki| first = Shigeru |date=November–December 2003 |title = A Requiem for the Fall of the Petal | journal = [[American Book Review]] | volume = 25 |issue=1 | publisher = [[Illinois State University]] | pages=31}}</ref> One reviewer commented that in "Gibson's view, 9-11 was the end of history; after it we are without a history, careening toward an unknown future without the benefit of a past—our lives before 9-11 are now irrelevant."<ref>{{cite journal|last=Barlow |first=Jeffrey |date=March 2003 |title=Pattern Recognition |journal=Interface |volume=3 |issue=2 |publisher=Berglund Center for Internet Studies ([[Pacific University]]) |url=http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/02/gibson.php |access-date=2007-12-17 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080505032216/http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/02/gibson.php |archive-date=2008-05-05 }}</ref> Cayce's search for her father and Damien's excavation of the German bomber symbolize{{says who|date=April 2025}} the [[historicist]] search for a method to interpret people's actions in the past.{{or|date=April 2025}}{{cn|date=April 2025}} Shigeru Suzuki interprets the character Cayce's coming to terms with her father's disappearance as a requiem for those lost to the 20th century,<ref name=Suzuki/> something that may have been influenced by Gibson coming to terms with the loss of his own father.<ref name=Graham/>

The film clips are a motif used to enhance the theme of the desire to find meaning or detect patterns,{{says who|date=April 2025}} being released over the internet to gain a cult following.{{cn|date=April 2025}}<!--None of this opening interpretive perspective appears in Ahrens otherwise aptly cited article.--> Frank Ahrens of the ''[[Washington Post]]'' notes that Gibson  predicts the arc of the [[lonelygirl15]] videoblog, that gained an international following in 2006.<ref>{{Cite news |first=Frank |last=Ahrens |url= https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600105.html |title=The Lessons of 'Lonelygirl': We Can Be Fooled, And We Probably Don't Care |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |date= 17 September 2006 |pages=F07 |access-date= 7 March 2008}}.</ref> In Gibson's novel, corporate interest in the footage is aroused by its originality and global distribution methods, and the characters debate whether the anonymous clips are part of a complete narrative or a work in progress, and when and where they were shot.{{cn|date=April 2025}} Tatiani Rapatzikou has suggested that the enigmatic nature of the footage metaphorically represents the nature of a confusing and uncertain post-9/11 future.<ref name=Rapatzikou>{{Cite book |last =Rapatzikou |first =Tatiani |year =2004 |title =Gothic Motifs in the Fiction of William Gibson |volume =36 |series =Postmodern Studies  |place =New York |publisher =[[Rodopi Publishers|Rodopi]] |isbn =90-420-1761-9}}.{{page needed|date=April 2025}}</ref>{{page needed|date=April 2025}}{{verification needed|date=April 2025}} [[Dennis Danvers]] has remarked that the footage being edited down to a single frame is like the world compressed into a single novel.<ref name=Danvers>{{cite news |first=Dennis |last=Danvers |author-link=Dennis Danvers |title=Review: Pattern Recognition by William Gibson |publisher=[[Blackbird (online journal)|Blackbird]] |date=Spring 2003 |url = http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v2n1/nonfiction/danvers_d/gibson.htm |access-date=2007-11-27}}</ref> The footage, released freely to a global audience with a lack of time or place indicators, has also been contrasted to ''Pattern Recognition'' written under contract for a large corporation and which uses liminal name-dropping that definitively sets it in London, Tokyo, and Moscow in 2002.<ref name= Easterbrook/>