William Gibson has been blogging lately, and this post is simply a reminder to myself to archive the following quote for the next time I teach one of his novels: "If I were to put together a truly essential thank-you list for the people who most made it possible for me to write my first six novels, I'd certainly owe as much to Ronald Reagan as to Bill Gates or Lou Reed. Reagan's presidency put the grit in my dystopia. His presidency was the fresh kitty litter I spread for utterly crucial traction on the icey driveway of uncharted futurity. His smile was the nightmare in my back pocket."
Most of my students were just infants during Reagan's second term, and what they 'know' of Reagan is largely the stuff of campaign ads, i.e., the morning in America myth, etc. When teaching the literature that came out of the 1980s, of course, a very different account of life in America emerges.
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