A pop-culture reference pops up in the book you’re reading. You can pull part of the idea from context, but there’s some shade of meaning missing:
Pupils contracted painfully against sun-bright halogen, she squints into an actual mirror, canted against a gray wall, awaiting hanging, wherein she sees a black-legged, disjointed puppet, sleep-hair poking up like a toilet brush. She grimaces at it, thinking for some reason of a boyfriend who’d insisted on comparing her to Helmut Newton’s nude portrait of Jane Birkin.
Who is Jane Birkin? I hold William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition in one hand and type “Jane Birkin” into the Google Toolbar with the other.
I see what Cayce Pollard sees in the mirror. I read about a film I have to find, an album I must listen to, the meaning behind a song I enjoy.
The ex-boyfriend sees some Swinging London in her, a breathy singer, a tragic exploited actress, a screen lover of Brigitte Bardot; rawness and exhibitionism and erotic magic. She doesn’t see it.
Reading is new. And old, like a Bible concordance. And newish, like a deconstruction of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
