Iser and Gibson's Relationship

In Iser’s article Interaction Between Text and Reader, he states that when reading a novel, it is not just about what the author is saying in the text, but the connections the reader has to make between the words written in the text and what the author is implying. This is done by the author leaving “gaps” in the book to allow the reader to link the communication between what is said and not said. All Tomorrow’s Parties by William Gibson demonstrates Iser’s idea. With numerous fragmented sentences, and short, random chapters all throughout the book, Gibson leaves these “gaps” to be filled in by the reader.

The parts in the book where I felt I had to fill in the gaps to make these connections were during the beginning of the book when Laney is describing the stalker effect of the 5-SB. What is the stalker effect of the 5-SB? Is it a type of drug that causes people to end up in the cardboard city? Or why does Fontaine take care of Silencio and brings him along when he meets his wife? He could have just left him in the back of the shop searching for watches on the notebook. By inserting gaps into text, it allows the reader to ask questions about what the author is trying to tell audience members. Readers answer their own questions which help bridge these gaps to link the communication between the text and the reader. When Gibson has short, concise chapters and fragmented sentences, it leaves a lot of blank spaces for the reader to fill in to allow them to have the opportunity to make the novel much more interesting for them to read.

Certainty Breeds Extremists

Coupland's Hey Nostradamus! is meant to instill doubt in his readers. He seems to have a unique perception on the concept of doubt and faith. Doubt, a word with a more or less negative connotation, is viewed as by Coupland as admirable. With doubt, there is uncertainty and with uncertainty comes humility and an open mind. Without doubt, certainty builds, which leads to arrogance and eventually, closed mindedness. A closed minded individual is often defined as one who is unable to accept ideas or concepts foreign to him. This can be seen in Reg's character during Jason's childhood in Hey Nostradamus!, but how does this lack of doubt translate in the everyday world? One of the ways this lack of doubt parallels reality is religious extremists. If the lack of doubt breed closed mindedness, this would probably be a good explanation as to how extremist groups are formed. Within any religious organization there are likely individuals who are unable to see their situation from a perspective other than their own. These are individuals who bury themselves within the rulebook of their religion and take every vain detail of it to heart and persecute those who don't take their point of view. These closed minded few then isolated themselves from the rest of the organization, where their reassurance of each other further withers the almost nonexistent doubt within them. Soon they take a violent step in their cause in order to draw attention to them or their ideology, justifying their actions as some holy or moral deed for the greater good. This is how extremists are born. This is why Coupland tries to instill doubt in his readers. A doubtless individual with blind faith in his religion can lead to dangerous outcomes due to their inability to listen to reason.

All Tomorrow's Parties: Gibson's Purpose

It is more than likely that William Gibson had some alternate motive other than profit when composing All Tomorrow's Parties. The world described in the novel is one that is very differant from that of today's and the immense differances can be said to create awareness towards certain aspects of modern society. Gibson illuminates many problems within today's society but it seems one of the major differances between reality and All Tomorrow's Parties' reality is that of social and moral degradation, an issue that he puts much emphasis on. The openning chapters describe this high-tech world that is spotted with homelessness, poverty and prolific use of drugs. However unusual to the audience, it seems to be a norm to the people of All Tomorrow's Parties; the homeless go unnoticed and the drug usage is socially accepted. Although these differances seem remote, Gibson tries to suggest that today's society, although not completely submerged in the social and moral degradation, is in fact on the same path as the society in All Tomorrow's Parties. His immplied audience is one that lives in a somewhat socially responsible community, one which still cares for the homeless and the poor. However, many in today's society are still blind to the social issues that plauge their community and by comparing the real world with Gibson's fictional world, readers begin to understand the importance of social awareness. Small steps towards the same social degradation go unnoticed by people in today's society but with time would eventually lead to a world similar to that of All Tomorrow's Parties; a world where the homeless are left to be as they are and all perception of time is lost in the vast world of cyberspace and drugs.

Hey Nostradamus!: Are we conditioned to accept violence without shock?

I was inspired to discuss how violence is represented in today’s society by the film Elephant. An important message that Hey Nostradamus! and Elephant both give their audience is how mundane and almost natural violence has become in our society.
In Elephant, the shooters are filmed in a style much like a video game; while the shooter is on the hunt the player sees the back of his head, but while the shooter is about to commit an act of violence, the audience receives a view of the shooter’s face. I believe this is an assertion to how we casually accept much of today’s violence as being “a game.” The way the shooters were taking action was as if what they were doing didn’t really matter. In childhood we often learn that when you’re playing a game, your not “playing for keeps,” I think the shooters were acting in such a way. Rather than interpreting what level of maturity they showed, I think their attitudes about what they were doing reflected how violence in our society has become such a mundane action that we no longer give it the attention or perhaps the fear that it deserves.
The same concept of how natural violence has become in our society is present in Hey Nostradamus! However, Douglas Coupland chose to represent the casualness of violence by connecting it to food. Of all things in society food is one that is often discussed in a mundane manner. We connect food to positive things, and Coupland provides a waking prod when he connects violence in Hey Nostradamus! with food. Jason describes the cafeteria as having “bodies [lay] all around, like Halloween pumpkins smashed on the road on the morning of November first.” (57) Associating violent deaths with food shows how violence has become a commonplace affair in today’s society.

Belief and Doubt in Hey Nostradamus!

Belief and doubt are a major concept in Douglas Coupland’s Hey Nostradamus. The title of the book, Hey Nostradamus means “Hail Our Lady” which is a spiritual request to a higher form of belief. The cover portrays an image of a person kneeling, possibly in prayer, or reversed, a question mark. This is directly related to Coupland’s concepts of belief and doubt. Kneeling symbolizes a person’s faith in God, while the question mark represents an individual’s uncertainty. The front cover of the book represents doubt and open mindedness, both essential for belief.

Hey Nostradamus is divided into four sections. Each section is narrated by a character that represents a stage in the hierarchy system of faith; heaven, purgatory, limbo and hell. When the character Reg is first introduced in the book, the reader is given the impression that he represents hell because he is not open minded and arrogant at times. For a number of years, Reg held strong religious beliefs towards God and believed that he gave him a mission, which would explain why Reg was always so distant from his surroundings. After the shooting when Jason was considered to be a hero, Reg was jealous that God had favored his son in granting him with a mission and not himself. After the death of Kent and the disappearance of Jason, Reg’s only two sons, he begins to have doubt in his faith and has a confession for all his weaknesses. Reg undergoes a change and begins to see the world from a different perspective. Coupland uses the character of Reg to display his concept that when a person has strong religious beliefs, doubt needs to be considered as well.