On mixed metaphors

Modern guidance warns against "mixed metaphors"—no beating that horse when it gets there—but exceptions appear with enough reading.

Again we're talking about William Gibson's "Neuromancer," which, after completing, I can say in full praise is the finest pulp novel ever written. Portending cyberspace deserves acclaim, as does lending material to infinite generations of novelists and moviemakers, but "cowboys," guns, and drugs drive the narrative, and that, my friends, is pulp (we didn't even mention the blind ninja).

Putting pulp and prophecy aside, Gibson's writing is electric, and concerning today's topic, it's exceptional. This portrayal of drug use, for example:

“The drug hit him like an express train, a white-hot column of light mounting his spine from the region of his prostate, illuminating the sutures of his skull with x-rays of short-circuited sexual energy. His teeth sang in their individual sockets, each one pitch-perfect and clear as ethanol."

That second sentence collision brings such joy and, as it happens, it goes against modern guidance—the teeth not only sing, they sing a sound of liquid. What even materializes in the mind here? A tuning fork's hum sloshed into a beaker? A plush glass brick whining back daylight?

Or maybe it's whatever's captured in first few seconds here:

Dissecting prose this much is a crime, but I'm sensitive to this because seven years ago, for a former employer, I wrote about a delicate intelligence memo in Washington DC that "roiled Congress" and a colleague struck the language: Congress couldn't be roiled, only water could.

But water can be anything, which means so can we.

(Yes, I've held this grudge for seven years, and yes, I've always been this right about it. Please enjoy the Delia Derbyshire interpretation above, it's how I imagine chandeliers dream.)