I’m All Lost In, #157: A William Gibson novel; an ongoing obsession; and an unwitting reveal.
I’m All Lost In…
the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.
#157
The Week in X > (is Greater Than) Y
Submitting My Poetry Manuscript Now > Submitting My Poetry Manuscript Later I’ve been sending out my manuscript to plenty of presses all year, but there’s one press I’d been holding out on. I had a plan to send it to them when I knew the collection would be perfect. Vaguely, my goal had been to send it to them next spring. I sent it to them his week. Chances are it’ll get rejected like all this year’s other tries. But I’m glad to get on with it.
The Opening Anecdote > The Point of the Story I don’t mean this as a slight on the young acquaintance who texted me on Thursday evening to see if I wanted to get a nightcap; I was feeling blue and lonesome Thursday and was buoyed by the thought of friendly, literate company. We ended up at one of my favorite spots exchanging lively updates while the bartender played Yoku Tamura jazz records.
At one point in the evening, I could see that my pal was flummoxed because I was taken with an intro to one of his stories rather than focusing on where the story was heading. Yes, yes, but that’s not the point, Josh, there’s more, I sensed him wanting to explain to me as I lingered on the set up to his report.
No explanation was necessary. I tracked the longer story in full. But it was true, his main story about driving down to California to meet and interview a popular TikTok influencer was less engaging than the prologue: This TikTok influencer, who’s based in Minneapolis, has notably bad teeth. And one of his fans, a dentist living in Sacramento, wrote in the comments that he would fix the influencer’s teeth for free if the influencer could get himself to Sacramento. The TikToker took up the dentist fan on the offer.
A Food Menu > No Food Menu I ordered two double-shell vegan chicken tacos at Bimbo’s last Wednesday night, an order I’ve been placing there for years. We don’t do food anymore, the friendly bartender told me. We shut down the kitchen, she said gloomily, explaining they’ve been losing money on it.
Bimbo’s, formerly Bimbo’s Bitchin’ Burrito Kitchen, has been a Capitol Hill fixture since the 1990s; it was originally located west of Broadway on Pine across the street from the legendary Nirvana-era haunt, Linda’s. Then, some time in the early 2000s, it moved east into the epicenter of the Drag between 10th and 11th on Pike. I was a regular at the Pine St. location. And I’m a regular at the Pike St. spot.
This isn’t a Capitol-Hill-was-better-back-in-the-day post; in fact, Capitol Hill is livelier, more diverse, and cooler than it ever was, a case I’ve iterated many, many times. I collaborated with one of Bimbo’s recent bartenders on an album of remixes of my own songs last year. But it is to say, the economy is not good in 2026. And the mood is blue.
Bar owners will tell you it’s Seattle’s progressive minimum wage law. But I’m not so sure. The $21.30 wage has ensured that the lowest income percentiles in Seattle have grown the fastest of all wage earners. Basic math says this should create a virtuous economic cycle of spending. I think the problem with business might just be that people aren’t leaving their apartments much these days.
Just a half block north of Bimbo’s on 10th—more prime Seattle real estate just across Pine St. from Cal Anderson Park—the outdoor restaurant seating at the popular Lost Lake Cafe & Lounge was empty this past Friday, a seemingly lovely fall evening.
10/16/26, Capitol Hill Seattle
This Week’s Obsessions
1) Virtual Light by William Gibson
This is peak William Gibson. Overheating GPU prose and super prescient yet everyday scene setting. I’ll give him a pass on fax communiques. Otherwise, it’s: backup car cameras, falling asleep in bed with your cell phone, cursors on your digitized map, reality-TV origin stories, online culture flattening history, omniscient satellite databases, holographic porn, and e-journaling. “He wrote in his notebook, the pen ticking against the screen.”
This novel was published in 1993 about an imagined 2006.
It’s also peak Gibson in that it’s Raymond Chandler.
And not just because of the, damp, noir mood. The longstanding Chandler comparison is literal in Virtual Light: A weary, but honest working-class sorta cop and some equally desperate outcast and striver allies (a serious bike messenger and a recovering, cult member) are unknowingly ensnared in the devious machinations of corporate interests (DatAmerica and IntenSecure) while on the lam from some crooked homicide detectives in a crooked city police department after a dead body turns up in a hotel room.
What makes it Gibson (rather than Chandler) is the opaque, augmented-reality sunglasses at the center of the murder mystery. And also the future drugs, pandemics, video Christianity, post-apocalyptic shanty-town bazaars, neuro-net hackers, and AIDS martyrs. This is all in place of Chandler’s jazz-joint fronts, petty crooks, femmes fatales, and revolvers.
Virtual Light was the only one of Gibson’s 11 novels I’d never read before, and I was, around 200 pages in (of 320) thinking it was his masterpiece as I savored the prose. “When it got dark you could watch the lights on sips, and on the big bulk-lifters that went drumming past like the world’s slowest UFOs.”
I was also thinking how closely it tracked the real-life late-capitalism labor memoir I read earlier this year about a Beijing trike delivery driver [I’m All Lost In, $145, 7/27/26.] Unfortunately, Gibson bails two-thirds of the way in, surrendering to a lighthearted, TV cop show script to unwind the contraband chase plot for a spiffy happy ending. Not very Gibson.
Nothing like Chandler.
2) Playing Smokey Robinson & The Miracles’ “You Really Gotta Hold On Me” on Piano
This is the third or fourth time Smokey Robinson’s crushed-blues pop jam has been on this weekly obsession list. And if I may be as cocky as the opening bass line, I’ll note one difference from my earlier fixations on this song: This time I’m using the word “playing” instead of “practicing.”
3) The 9 Albums Meme
I’ll say embarrassed instead of obsessed.
This week, I’m embarrassed for my Gen X cohort. The ubiquitous 9 albums meme has exposed just how prefab our self-proclaimed alternative identity is.
No matter whether you pick Revolver or Pet Sounds or The Velvet Underground & Nico. No matter the precise Talking Heads record you decide on. Whichever CBGB-era record you go with. And whichever one classic jazz album or select hip-hop record.
Be it the Clash The Clash or the Sex Pistols’ Nevermind the Bollocks or even the Stranglers. And maybe a Queen record, or a Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, Stones, or REM LP. It’s all the same storyline, fellahs. Oh, and a defining ‘90s indie rock album too.
I did love it when a smart music friend spoofed this meme midweek by choosing 9 Nico albums. He was in earnest about Nico too!
I was in earnest as well. The website they direct you to so you can make your 9-album’s poster doesn’t allow duplicates. I had to hack it by repeatedly laying 1972’s pastel pink Free to Be… You and Me album cover directly into Facebook and Instagram. Eight times.
I also put Iron Butterfly’s self-indulgent 1968 stoned treatise In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida in there.