"The Chat" and "Night City"

The novel “Neuromancer” by William Gibson was a story written before the “matrix era.” I found it quite hard to read at the beginning. I found myself rereading a lot of the same passages to try and understand what was actually going on. From what I have read so far, I have been introduced to the following characters: Case, Linda, Lonny, Wage, Julie, and Ratz. From what I understand, the novel is going to be based around the main character Case. Case is an illegal dealer who is addicted to acetaminophens.


I noticed that Gibson uses a lot of imagery to help breakdown the settings in each scene. In the first few pages of the novel, he depicts a place called “The Chatsubu” or “The Chat” for short. It is a bar that Case visits often. Ratz is the bartender at this bar. This bar represents a starting, central point for the novel. Immediately following a conversation that Ratz had with Case, it goes into detail about who Case used to be.


In this beginning passage with Ratz and Case, Gibson describes Ratz as an “ugly bartender.” Through the dialogue in this scene, you could already tell that Ratz would be an important informer in the novel. Most bartenders have that “awareness” aspect to them. I see “The Chat” as being a source of where information is given. Case lives in this odd world where strange things happen. I believe “The Chat” will be a major reference point in the novel.


A few pages later, the novel describes the idea of “Night City.” From what I have read, “Night City” is the world in which people do illegal selling of things. It is a type of black market. If you did not do what you should, you could have to deal with the consequences of obstructing the layout of the market. The whole idea of “Night City” is very hard for me to grasp. I do not know if it is actually a city or whether it is just a word used to represent the “black market culture.” I do not know if this has anything to do with idea of the matrix yet, but I have a feeling it does. The way that “Night City” has been depicted so far gives me a vague image of what it truly represents. Hopefully, later in the novel I will get a better idea of what “Night City” truly is.