Spook Country

By Lauren Denhartog

here were you when the World Trade Towers were hit?

It’s been nearly six years since twin planes brought down NYC’s towering giants. Just long enough, some would argue, to slightly diminish our memory of the day we sat glued to the tube as images of the blazing fortresses burned themselves eternally into our memories. It is with this anniversary that William Gibson’s latest novel, Spook Country, is appropriately released. Set in post-9/11 America the novel is concentrates on the memories born from traumatic experiences. On a deeper level, it analyzes the impact these memories have on the day-to-day lives of the people who carry them around.

Inspiring journalist and former 80s rock princess Holliss Henry has been asked to write an investigative piece for the soon-to-exist magazine, Node (“A European version of Wired, it seemed, though of course they never put it that way.”) Her editor, Philip Rausch, reveals himself sporadically through telephone conversations with Henry but never introduces himself in person. He is one of several characters mentioned that remain elusive, much like the actions that propel them. We suspect, as does she, that there is more to this assignment than meets the eye and throughout much of the novel, Gibson feeds us tiny nuggets of information that suggest we aren’t entirely wrong.

With an unlimited expense account and a handful of leads, Holliss is sent to LA to interview Alberto Corrales, an inspiring artist within a contemporary movement dubbed ‘locative art’ (the subject of her article). The concept might be easier to grasp if you’ve seen the 2002 Tom Cruise flick, Minority Report. This artistic movement allows individuals to create seemingly real landscapes which are visible to scale only when the right piece of headgear is worn (here a padded headband with a visor across the eyes). For one piece, a character recreates the body of River Phoenix in a pool of his own blood on Halloween, 1993 - the night he died from a drug overdose. From this point, Henry is sent to interview Bobby Chombo, another locative artist who prefers to sleep in a different square of a large grid every night. It is Bobby’s mysterious disappearance that sets in motion a chain of events, which ultimately lead to a shipping yard in Vancouver’s port. A subsequent search for an unmarked shipping container is the force that unites all of the characters at the novel’s conclusion.
The novel is rife with peculiar characters whose stories, like the plot, unfold gradually. One such character, known only as ‘the old man’ appears to be pulling the strings of this twisted game of cat and mouse; his motives stretching back to the origins of the war in Iraq. A former National Security member for the American Government (who apparently went mad in the immediate aftermath of 9/11), he forces Hollis Henry to bare witness to the crime he is about to commit, not because she is a journalist but because she is a celebrity.

“You want to tell me your secrets because I used to be a singer in a band?” she asks the Old Man, echoing, at the same time, our own confusion.

“You already constitute a part of the historical record, however small you might prefer to see it. I’ve just checked the number of your Google hits, and read your Wikipedia entry. By inviting you to witness what we intend to do, I will be using you, in effect, as a sort of time-capsule. You will become the fireplace brick behind which I leave an account, though it will be your account, of what we do here.”

It’s nice to know that in the not-too-distant future, where the novel is set, Wikipedia and Google are still the standard.

Spook Country presents an array of characters who are not easily digested mainly because they are only rarely presented as real people outside of their titles: rock star, journalist, spy, kidnapper, etc. When their facades are removed, it is often through memory that their true selves are revealed and, in effect, we are able to identify with them. Holliss often recalls her turbulent life on the road as a member of the now defunct band, The Curfew while Tito, a member of Chinese-Cuban crime family, returns often to his Aunt Juana’s kitchen in Havana at times of peril.

Fans of the cyberpunk genre Gibson is often credited for will not be disappointed by the novel’s wealth of shady villains, spies, cyber-lingo, deception and intrigue. Much like a noir film, the landscape of cyperpunk is dark and forboding. Cold winds, dark alleys and an impending unnerve are what contribute to the novel’s overwhelmingly catastrophic air.

Spook Country, much like locative art, is a study in ‘history as internalized space,’ about identifying the effect of trauma on a particular body or body of people. At the heart of this dystopic tale, we are presented with an analysis of a post-9/11 society where people certainly haven’t forgotten the attacks or their influence on the (re)shaping of history immediately afterwards. 9/11 serves as an almost mythical event, presented to us in fragments: one character’s mother became sick after the attacks, another became angry. In doing so, Gibson asks us to revisit our own memories of 9/11 and to explore the emotions that overwhelmed us in its immediate aftermath. It’s a wild trip, but definitely one worth taking. -L.D.