Author (“sci-fi novelist”) William Gibson in an interview. (He lives in Vancouver.)
No one in Zero History seems to be from anywhere, and indeed could be in London or Paris or New York and it didn’t really matter — just that they were in urban areas. Are we losing the concept of home and the notion of being from a specific place?
I’m happiest with people who’ve gotten furthest from traditional ideas of nationalism. I’m happiest in wildly multicultural post-national environments, which most large world cities now are.
I’m writing about places I like. Last year I thought about the first time I traveled through Europe, which was in 1970. When I traveled through Europe, each country had not only its own currency but its own brands of cigarettes, its own everything. That was such a wonderful experience. Each country in Europe was a pocket universe. That’s gone. It’s just gone. They all just have EU stuff and a lot of American stuff and a lot of Japanese stuff. It’s not as charming. But it’s the way it is.
I don’t really see how we could have kept it the way it was. I don’t feel nostalgia for what it was. I’ve become convinced that nostalgia is a fundamentally unhealthy modality. When you see it, it’s usually attached to something else that’s really, seriously bad. I don’t traffic in nostalgia.
And to illustrate his point that we’re becoming a global culture, a Gibson tweet from today:
(Fujiya) on Clark can sell you one of the very best cold sit-down lunches in Vancouver. Pocky Chocolate Crush for dessert!
