If you’ve got any notion of reading any Neal Stephenson book you haven’t already read, you might consider skipping this post. I’ve got this stream of consciousness thing going on, and the current is very, very strong.
Stephenson’s (relatively) recent Baroque Cycle three-parter is a significant time investment. The character of the series is quite different from previous offerings (fewer cackles per page, I think) but it’s no less interesting. Great story, but there were segments of each book that had me dozing a bit. That could be due to sleep deprivation, though, so who knows? Just to give you a sample of Stephenson, I give you one of my favorite passages from the first volume, Quicksilver. Background (circa 1680, I think): Eliza, a slave of some Turk or other, has just been rescued by vagabond Half-Cocked Jack Shaftoe, whose name comes from the result of a disastrous and abortive attempt to rid himself of the French pox. Jack, having been deprived of some amount of sensation in certain lower extremities, has abandoned his hopes of any sort of sexual partnership. Eliza shows him the error of his ways:
"Are you sure this is how they do it in India?"
"Would you like to register…a complaint?"
"Augh! Never!"
"Remember, Jack: whenever serious and competent people need to get things done in the real world, all consideration and protocol fly out the window."
There followed a long, long, mysterious procedure – tedious and yet somehow not.
"What’re you groping about for?" Jack muttered faintly. "My gall-bladder is just to the left."
"I’m trying to locate a certain chakra – should be somewhere around here -"
"What’s a chakra?"
"You’ll know when I find it."
Some time later, she did, and then the procedure took on greater intensity, to say the least. Suspended between Eliza’s two hands, like a scale in a market-place, Jack could feel his balance-point shifting as quantities of fluids were pumped between internal reservoirs, all in preparation for some Event. Finally, the crisis – Jack’s legs thrashed in the hot water as if his body were trying to flee, but he was staked, impaled. A bubble of numenous light, as if the sun were mistakenly attempting to rise inside his head. Some kind of Hindoo apocalypse played out. He died, went to Hell, ascended into Heaven, was reincarnated as various braying, screeching and howling beasts, and repeated this cycle many times over. In the end, he was reincarnated, just barely, as a Man. Not a very alert one.
I know: been there, done that. Still, I think, said in an above-average clever way. And my apologies if this was inappropriate material, but I thought this exemplifies Stephenson’s writing style. I don’t have a word for it, but then again I’m not a literary critic.
Cryptonomicon was, when I first gave it a read, amazing. So much so that I was inspired to cobble together a sort of unplanned book review/email and fire it off to most of my family. Probably my favorite part was where our hero, Randy Waterhouse, first meets The One, America Shaftoe. No coincidence, America is a descendent of (or at least a distant relative of) Jack Shaftoe. And in fact Randy Waterhouse is a descendent of Daniel Waterhouse (Baroque Cycle), a contemporary of Isaac Newton. Unfortunately, someone seems to have walked off with my only copy, so you’re just going to have to go buy it, or check it out of the library.
Another book that seems to have walked off the shelf is Snow Crash, whose hero is amusingly named Hiro Protagonist, a half-japanese, half-black hacker/pizza delivery boy. This book is a fun ride, and has some literary pyrotechnics, but is a bit rough around the edges and requires some suspension of disbelief. Hey Hiro, want some Snow Crash?
Now, for where all of this is going: The Diamond Age. This novel is set in the genteel Victorian future, where nanotechnology is a way of life but a portion of society has abandoned the modern morality and has reconstructed the manners and mores of Victorian England although they selected a constructed island offshore near Shanghai), along with the aristocracy. Interesting, fascinating. One of the main characters is a nanotech engineer who is given the task of creating a sort of book that is itself a teaching cybernetic mechanism. The book is subtitled A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer for this reason; John Hackworth creates one for the daughter of Lord Alexander Ching-Sik Finkle-McGraw, a Duke and Equity Lord. Hackworth arranges a bootleg copy of this to be made, and in the process of doing so exposes the Primer to the likes of Dr. X, a disreputable nano-technologist living outside of the Victorian zone:
Dr. X’s real name was a sequence of shushing noises, disembodied metallic buzzes, unearthly quasi-Germanic vowels, and half-swallowed R’s, invariably mangled by Westerners.
Aside: I first read this about three years ago, right before we were to go pick up Abby in Changsha, Hunan, PRC. So, I’m reading this book, not really expecting any synchronicity, when:
It was a clear night with a nearby full moon illuminating the hull of an enormous ship nearby. Even without the moonlight this vessel would have been noticeable for the fact that it blocked out all of the stars in one quandrant of the sky.
…
Judge Fang had been expecting that the ship would be some kind of bulk carrier, consisting almost entirely of huge compartments, but what he saw was a long corridor running parallel to the keel, seemingly the entire length of the ship. Young women in white, pink or occasionally blue dresses and sensible shoes bustled back and forth along this corridor entering in a nd emerging from its innumerable doors.
…
Dr. X chose a door, apparently at random, swung it open, and held it for Judge Fang. Judge Fang bowed slightly and sepped through it into a room about the dimensions of a basketball court, though with a lower ceiling. It was quite warm and humid, dimly lit. Then he realized that the room was otherwise filled with cribs, and that each crib had a perfect little girl baby in it. Young women in pink bustled back and forth with diapers. From place to place, a woman sat beside a crib, the front of her white dress unzipped, breast-feeding a baby.
…
Judge Fang whirled on his heel and stormed out of the room, brushing rudely past Dr. X. He picked a direction at random, walked, strode, ran down the corridor, past five doors, ten, fifty, and then stopped for no particular reason and burst through another door.
It might as well have been the same room.
…
"It has always been done with us. The great rebellions of the 1800s were fueled by throngs of angry young men who could not find wives. In the darkest days of the Mao Dynasty’s birth control policy, two hundred thousand little ones were exposed in this fashion [referring to a film depicting abandonment of a baby] each year. Recently, with the coming of civil war and the draining of the Celestial Kingdom’s aquifers, it has once again become common. The difference is that now these babies are collected. We have been doing it for three years."
"How many?" Judge Fang asked.
"A quarter of a million to date". Dr. X said. "Fifty thousand on this ship alone."
"It won’t work." Judge Fang said finally. "You can raise them this way until they are toddlers, perhaps – but what happens when they are older and bigger, and must be educated and given space to run around and play?"
…
"I see now why you desired the little girl’s book so strongly," Judge Fang said. "These young ones must all be educated."
This was, for me, an all-over goosebump moment. I was going to be family for one of millions of young Chinese that had no family, and here’s this guy in the very book I’m reading that’s endeavoring to rescue hundreds of thousands, possibly millions. It probably goes without saying that this does happen, Dr. X makes many, many thousands of copies of this full-of-wonder teaching book/alternate reality. The rest is interesting and engaging, but not strictly relevant to the train of thought.
But one part I found extremely funny: a young man brought before Judge Fang is accused of stealing something (in fact, it’s the Primer); we was apprehended after some pursuit during which he crashes his bike:
"The suspect had experienced a ballistic interlude earlier in the evening," Miss Pao said, "regrettably not filmed, and relieved himself of excess velocity by means of an ablative technique."
Miss Pao was outdoing herself. Judge Fang raised an eyebrow at her, briefly hitting the pause button. Chang, Judge Fang’s other assistant, rotated his enormous, nearly spherical head in the direction of the defendant, who was looking very small as he stood before the court. Chang, in a characteristic gesture, reached up and rubbed the palm of his hand back over the short stubble that covered his head, as if he could not believe he had such a bad haircut. He opened his sleepy, slitlike eyes just a notch, and said to the defendant, "She say you have road rash."
So, no point here or anything, just something that’s been dancing around the edges of having to be said for a while. Stephenson’s got a nearly arid wit, and his brand of humor fits nearly perfectly into my humor receptors. If any of this looks interesting to you, go buy or check it out from the local library.
One of my favorite images from Snow Crash was how they took a recidivist violent criminal and tatooed “Poor Impulse Control” on his forehead. It was supposed to be a warning; he turned it into a validation.
And the whole meme thing! Snow Crash was the first time I encountered the concept. Since evolutionary pattern-seeking is one of my hobbie-horses, I was astounded and delighted to find out there was a whole theory dealing with one aspect of it.
Diamond Age, for some reason, didn’t send me right away. I had to reread it to really appreciate it. In some ways, I see it as Stephenson’s attempt to break out of the ‘cyberpunk’ mold that Snow Crash had some critics and readers trying to stick him in.
What I most treasure about Stephenson is, he’s one of those really, really rare writers whose work demands a lot of intelligence on the part of his readers.
I’ll need to reread the Baroque Cycle to get everything out of it. I usually don’t have trouble rereading books. I read my favorites once just for the plot, again to concentrate on character development and interaction, and at least one more time for the peripheral stuff that gives the story its heft. But rereading the Baroque Cycle means rereading about, what, 2500 pages?… I’m just not sure I have the energy 🙂
I’ve been chatting around about Stephenson with my colleagues in 18th-century studies. The verdict is mixed. They tend to love love love the Diamond Age and are a bit more suspicious of the Baroque Cycle. Me, I love the Baroque Cycle.
Stephenson has always had trouble containing his plots. Snow Crash is a brilliant novel with ideas that have had a lasting influence, but the finale is a mess. Same goes for the Diamond Age, to a certain extent. Crytonomicon was the most carefully plotted, and I felt that it suffered some from its rigidity–but then I only read it once and intend to give it a second go-through now that others whose opinions I respect have raved about it.
But the Baroque cycle abandons novellistic plotting, and I for one love it. There’s an exuberant what-the-f*ck to the narrative structure: yeah, I’ll put a travelogue in the middle of a psychological thriller in the middle of a realist drama, so what of it?
And what’s even cooler about this crazed genre-mixing is realizing that Stephenson is actually reworking the kinds of writing that were going on at the time: Jack’s implausible piratical adventures in Madagascar and India are not only reworkings of contemporary legends, they are written (more broadly and satirically, mind you) in the broadsheet style of pirate picaresques.
Stephenson’s best creation in the Baroque Cycle is Daniel Waterhouse, though. Eliza and Jack are much flashier, but Daniel represents the real engine of the Enlightenment, as well as its pathos. Daniel recognizes himself as a second-tier thinker. He can understand the insights of the first tier, but he will always be a step behind the real innovators. Yet he continues his work, much of which is derivative but yet needs to be worked out to its practical conclusions and applications. Stephenson captures this sensation of being in the presence of genius beautifully–and his revision of the Puritan legacy for a popular audience is also moving.
But I agree with you, Slartibarfast: it won’t be for all readers.
“Until a man is 25 he still thinks, every so often, that, given the right circumstances, he could be the baddest M-F on the face of the earth”
– Snow Crash (quoting from memory)
I liked Stephenson’s earlier works. But good God he needs an aggressive editor. Crypto showed a dangerous tendency to wordiness (see the page and a half description of eating Capt’n Crunch) and that was confirmed with the Baroque Cycle. I never made it past the first third of the first book.
I did like Crypto even if it got distracted at times. But I simply could not get through Quicksilver. Snow Crash and Diamond Age, on the other hand, I enjoyed immensely.
The thing that bothers me with Crypto is that it seems like he realized that he needed to end it after 900 pages with a sort of deus ex machina involving gold and explosions. But otherwise it was quite good. I loved Shaftoe’s adventures in a sushi bar and the enigma stuff. A fun read, but great literature? Not so much.
I am also going to abuse my commenting priviledges to pimp one of my top three books: The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Executive summary: Hilarity ensues when Satan comes to 1930s Moscow. I really cannot recommend this book enough.
fledermaus –
a) the end of cryptonomicon
I have gone round and round with people about this one – considering all the book’s disparate themes led to the discovery of the gold and the explication of Goto Dengo’s escape machine, I found the ending immensely satisfying. Everyone always say that it left so much in the air, but I always ask – what? Via mathematics, Waterhouse reaches through time to commune with his grandfather, and this, along with the combined offices of three generations of the Family Shaftoe, the gold is found! Ari’s anti-holocaust currency will exist! Goto Dengo completes his harrowing, incredible circle! And it all comes together in a volcanic flowing rush of fire and molten gold! What else could you want? For my part, I didn’t really need to read a hundred page description of a horde of japanese construction workers damming the stream, recovering the gold from the stream and the collapsed chamber, loading it into a fleet of heavy trucks, and hauling the melted ore over to the vault. Great literature? So much. My 0.02, anyway.
b) Master and Margarita
Amen. Amen amen amen amen amen amen amen. If you haven’t read it, read it. If you’ve read it, read it again.
Good stuff. Zodiac is a fairly decent read also. I agree with whoever said Stephenson needs an aggresive editor. The Baroque Cycle was incredibly wordy (too much so I thought) and I found myself skimming sometimes.
I would also recommend books by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson if you enjoy Stephensons work. I consider the three to be the “holy trinity” so to speak of the cyberpunk movement.
I’ll have to check it out, Die Fledermaus and st.
Being completely outdone by the commenters wasn’t quite the embarrassment I had imagined. Doing Stephenson justice would have required quite a bit different of an approach, though, and the stream of consciousness was…well, too much of a riptide.
Another Crypto passage that I particularly enjoyed was, if I’m remembering correctly, about Randy Waterhouse as a badass MF, as evidenced by his being a descendent of millions of generations of badass MFs. I’m going to have to buy the book, again. I think this’d be my third copy.
Cryptonomicon is one of my all-time favorite books, but I simply couldn’t make it through the first book in the Baroque Cycle.
One of my favorite things about Stephenson is his gift for unusual metaphors. His description of the boxes of Cap’n Crunch is simply genius. I had real trouble keeping myself from laughing constantly while reading–not so much as when reading Good Omens, but pretty close.
I think there are two passages that take the cake, though. One is the Epiphyte Business Plan. The other is Waterhouse in the room full of Navy crypto people, trying to explain his breakthrough. The lead-up is good enough, but I lose it every time Waterhouse starts to explain the fundamentals of this breakthrough:
“Dr. Turing, of Cambridge University, has pointed out that bobbadah bobbadah hoe daddy yanga langa furjeezama bing jingle oh yeah,” or words to that effect.
My favorite description was encountered within seconds of opening Snow Crash (my first Stephenson read) wherein he described the engine of the Deliverator as containing enough power to put a pound of bacon into lunar orbit.
Slarti –
What are you trying to pull? Neal Stephenson didn’t write “The Phantom Tollbooth.” That was your assignment. You’ve got homework to do, young man! Quit procrastinating.
I thought I had read all of Stephenson’s stuff, but somehow missed “Diamond Age” and am just reading that now, a little slow to get into, but it’s really starting to take off.
For those who enjoy Stephenson, let me recommend Robertson Davies. The humor is even a shade drier, but the narrative skills are awesome and there is a catalog that will keep you busy for quite a while. “World of Wonders” is a good place to start.
I heard that Tom Clancy killed off all the book editors. 🙂
For those who enjoy Stephenson, let me recommend Robertson Davies.
I wouldn’t have made the link, but now that you have, I’d say the same.
Don’t forget his most excellent essay, “In the Beginning Was the Command Line.” Read the whole thing here:
http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html
His observations about the primacy of text are just priceless.
Oh, yay!
Slarti,
That’s a great passage. Which book is it from? I haven’t read any of Stephenson’s stuff, but if he writes like that I might have to check him out.
Cryptonomicon, tony.
I swear, the Phantom Tollbooth still beckons. Question is, do I do it before or after the wood floor goes down in the master bedroom?
Maybe I should rephrase. The notion of laying wood in the master bedroom is probably a little too close to the edge of decorum.
I just checked the posting rules. Punnish innuendo is not forbidden.
st –
hmmmm I really hadn’t fully considered it from the “full circle” angle. And good point about the 100 pages on the logistics of moving several tons of gold. Now that I think about it its been a couple of years since I read it, might make for a good spring read.
I still think he has gotten too wordy and this began in crypo and was carried to absurd lengths in Baroque Cycle.
Anyone who finds the Baroque Cycle too wordy hasn’t read any literature written before Hemingway. Describing a world that is unfamiliar to a reader is perhaps the most difficult task that a writer can have. How do you edit description and not leave some necessary element out. Read Conan Doyle, HG Wells, or Helen Keller if you think Stephenson needs a better editor.
And if you want to read perfect English literature written in this century, read Patrick O’Brian for both his erudite and descriptive prose.