Cayce Pollard (descriptive reference)

In Pattern Recognition Gibson describes Cayce using this reference,

"Pupils contracted painfully against sun−bright halogen, she squints into an actual mirror, canted against a gray all, 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."

Interestingly, I have not been able to verify a nude portrait of Jane Birkin by Helmut Newton.There are the famous, provocative shots of Birkin with Serge Gainsbour. And there are quite a few topless Birkins that are attributed to Newton, but the provenance of these is questionable. If anyone can confirm, please let me know. All things considered, I think this may have been the image (by David Bailey) that Cayce/Gibson was referencing:

After PR's publication Gibson mentioned in an interview, and subsequently on his blog, that he imagined Cayce looked something like British singer/songwriter Beth Orton:

"In one interview I said that I imagined Cayce looked something like Beth Orton. That was probably the result of having seen a photo of Beth Orton, not long before, and just then having imagined Cayce looking like that. Myself, I usually don't have any very clear sense of the features of my central characters."

 Here are a couple images of Beth Orton.

Definitely a resemblance.

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Descriptive References

Gibson has a long history of describing his characters in terms of their likeness to pop culture icons. Nothing wrong with that. There is a solid tradition of this literary short-cut (e.g. Ian Fleming's description of James Bond in terms of him resemblance to Hoagy Carmichael) and in Gibson's case it makes particular sense. One of Gibson's most fundamental and recurrent themes is the impact of the 'mediated world' on the 'real world' (if, that is, there can be any distinction between the two). So what better way to reference his 'real' characters than by comparing them to ubiquitous media constructs.

Since I usually look up the descriptive references at some point in the re-reading process I figured I'd post those here as well. A little to the left of the original intent of this project, but I suppose these are also connections.

It would be interesting to check to see if he has used the same descriptive reference for two different characters...