Comment by saltcured
It's funny, I think the second one is easier to parse. I loved Neuromancer when it got shoved in my face in 1992.
I don't understand how people can find Gibson hard to read. I somehow lump him together with Hemingway. He may use more punctuation, but his phrases are bite size and flowing.
I see the influence of beat poets. His prose isn't a paragraph long sentence to parse into some giant syntax tree. It's a stream of fragments, most of which are shallow simile. But they imply a larger metaphor as they settle into the mind and fade out.
(Edit: I mean, yes, they are sometimes a paragraph long sentence. But they don't require such careful parsing to understand. Now Stephenson on the other hand...)
I recently read A Farewell to Arms, and disagree with you on the Hemingway comparison. Hemingway is perhaps the clearest, easiest to read author among the 'greats' so far for me. I felt his style is pretty much the exact opposite of Gibson's.