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Gavin's Reviews > Gnomon
Gnomon
by
by
Aims for Eco and Calvino, hits Nolan and Stross. Unsugared mind candy. About twice as long as it should be.
How do you have a horror film when the characters have mobiles? How do you have a whodunnit when the entire world is on camera? What if you automated totalitarianism, and it somehow actually made almost everyone safe and happy? Gnomon is a well-executed mistake.
I loved the initial Kyriakos (the Greek debt crisis of 2009 dramatised; the right kind of conspiracy thinking) and Athanasai segments; initially it felt like Cloud Atlas but irreverent and stronger at sentence level. The depiction of the Athenian mob is extremely acute. But the second half ruins it. (view spoiler).
In spending so much time in the head of an intentionally obscure novelist / conspirator, Harkaway has the perfect excuse to go full hog on the idiocy and hallucinations of semiotics, the maniac idea that puns and etymologies reveal Reality. The constant repetition of a few abstruse ideas is meant to be a profound weave but it's just boring. Catabasis torn gnomon gnomon gnomon. But a lot of the SHEER DETAIL is actually cool, not just the usual tired mythic icons: a measured account of how collateralised debt obligations are unfairly demonised, a Space Truckers reference, details of St Augustine's youth. It would be fine if the central symmetries were less contrived. (All of these four people... have at some point been in a small room!!) So I can't avoid mentioning Dan Brown can I, even if Harkaway's prose is suspended entirely above that.
(view spoiler)
It's very romantic, underneath the verbal pyrotechnics. We know that the panopticon state is wrong before anything goes actually wrong because it is sterile. The jumbled literary rebellion of Hunter (Diana! geddit) is portrayed as enough to shake the totalitarian. Neith is sterile too: even her scepticism and openmindedness are tame and ultimately help close her off.
One brilliant thing is how banal the mindrape technicians are. Like Brazil except without Gilliam's gurning and cartoonish sensibilities.
The pareidolia proliferation pogo can be great - Labatut or Delillo, Ghost in the Shell.
How do you have a horror film when the characters have mobiles? How do you have a whodunnit when the entire world is on camera? What if you automated totalitarianism, and it somehow actually made almost everyone safe and happy? Gnomon is a well-executed mistake.
I loved the initial Kyriakos (the Greek debt crisis of 2009 dramatised; the right kind of conspiracy thinking) and Athanasai segments; initially it felt like Cloud Atlas but irreverent and stronger at sentence level. The depiction of the Athenian mob is extremely acute. But the second half ruins it. (view spoiler).
In spending so much time in the head of an intentionally obscure novelist / conspirator, Harkaway has the perfect excuse to go full hog on the idiocy and hallucinations of semiotics, the maniac idea that puns and etymologies reveal Reality. The constant repetition of a few abstruse ideas is meant to be a profound weave but it's just boring. Catabasis torn gnomon gnomon gnomon. But a lot of the SHEER DETAIL is actually cool, not just the usual tired mythic icons: a measured account of how collateralised debt obligations are unfairly demonised, a Space Truckers reference, details of St Augustine's youth. It would be fine if the central symmetries were less contrived. (All of these four people... have at some point been in a small room!!) So I can't avoid mentioning Dan Brown can I, even if Harkaway's prose is suspended entirely above that.
(view spoiler)
It's very romantic, underneath the verbal pyrotechnics. We know that the panopticon state is wrong before anything goes actually wrong because it is sterile. The jumbled literary rebellion of Hunter (Diana! geddit) is portrayed as enough to shake the totalitarian. Neith is sterile too: even her scepticism and openmindedness are tame and ultimately help close her off.
One brilliant thing is how banal the mindrape technicians are. Like Brazil except without Gilliam's gurning and cartoonish sensibilities.
The pareidolia proliferation pogo can be great - Labatut or Delillo, Ghost in the Shell.
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