July 2006 Archives

Having wrapped up Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle at last, I suppose it's time to jot down a few impressions.

1) The fact that I spent the last month reading this three-volume opus (totalling nearly 3000 pages) should tell you that yes, I think it's good. I haven't devoted that kind of time to a single work since I dove into Shelby Foote's The Civil War: A Narrative (which was 3000-pages-plus), and even then, I spread it out over three summers. With Neal, though, I just dove in and kept swimming.

2) If you've read Stephenson before and are used to thinking of him as a writer of science fiction, be forewarned that there's no real SF here. There are a few fantastical elements, and he does play merry hell with the underpinnings of the historical events of the period (roughly 1650-1714), but there's no time travel, no alien presence on earth, no anachronistic technology. It's a historical romp. Sure, there are some ideas that might not occur to real 18th-century characters, but mostly that's Stephenson playing with the reader's perceptions. WE know what's funny about the existence of the Massachusetts Bay College of Technologickal Arts in 1713 Boston, but it doesn't really break your suspension of disbelief.

3) It's funny as hell. Stephenson's ability to drolly drop in a huge exaggeration is a delight, and his creative use of footnotes is as good as that of any writer this side of Terry Pratchett. That doesn't make the touching scenes less touching, or the thrilling scenes less thrilling, but it does mean that there will be places where you'll want to read aloud to your friends. (If you're lucky, they'll get the joke without your having to explain who all the historical characters are, but if you need one, there is a helpful guide to the cast in the back of Quicksilver.)

4) There are familiar names here. No, Hiro Protagonist does not duck in from Snow Crash, but we see a Daniel Waterhouse and a Bob Shaftoe--not the ones from Cryptonomicon, but perhaps their ancestors. There's also Enoch Root, who apparently made an appearance in Cryptonomicon, but I honestly don't recall his being there--I may have missed something in those 800+ pages. And of course there are historical figures galore: Isaac Newton, John Churchill (the Duke of Marlborough), Peter the Great, Louis XIV of France, Charles II of England, Christopher Wren, William of Orange, Benjamin Franklin, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Edward "Blackbeard" Teach, and even Samuel Pepys (whose discourse on the pleasures of urination is one of the high points of the book). That said, if this is the first Stephenson you pick up, you won't have a bit of trouble following the action.

5) I said action, and I meant it. Yes, there are occasional digressions into matters of philosophy, medicine, mythology, politics, geography, information theory, mathematics, metallurgy, economics, etiquette, and even scatology, but it's a roaring adventure that literally spans the globe. There are pirate battles off Cape Cod, infantry engagements in Ireland and Belgium, artillery duels in London, attempted kidnappings on the Dutch coast, raids on caravans in India, daring rescues in the caverns of Germany, pitched battle in the streets of Cairo, robberies in Spanish estuaries and English sewers, massacres in Mexico, and intrigues in every court in Europe and a few elsewhere. It's a page-turner.

6) For all that it's an adventure, the characterization is strong. The main point-of-view character, Daniel Waterhouse, is particularly well-drawn, and his journey from dutiful Puritan child to befuddled scientist to bold (well, sort of) actor on the political scene is both believable and entertaining. The other two major point-of-view characters are perhaps less believable, but enormously colorful: the illiterate but quick-witted vagabond adventurer "Half-Cocked" Jack Shaftoe and the brilliant, beautiful, and coldly practical ex-slave Eliza (though one of my few complaints about the series is that Eliza gets short shrift in the final third of the narrative.) There's no question, though, that the imperious Isaac Newton may be the most vivid character in the book--having read James Gleick's biography of Newton last summer, I was perhaps well-prepared to see some of his character traits given life in this narrative, but I suspect Stephenson would make that work even for those whose knowledge of Newton is limited to the (apocryphal) apple-on-the-head story.

7) The ending is far better than that of either Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon, both terrific novels that started off like comets on dexedrine but sort of limped across the finish line. The "weak ending" thing is not an uncommon criticism of Stephenson's work, apparently, and it seems he's a bit touchy about it--he addresses it specifically on his website. (It's a criticism I once made about his earlier books in an online forum, only to have Damon Knight, of all people, tell me I didn't know what I was talking about. I respected the late Mr. Knight as a great editor and a major figure of SF, but having never really enjoyed his actual prose that much, I didn't find his objection especially persuasive.) The wrap-up of The System of the World, however, was (almost) entirely satisfactory, and it combined two of my favorite types of endings for different members of its sprawling cast: what I refer to as the "American" and "British" endings. The former is the ending of Catch-22, The Great Gatsby, and of course Huckleberry Finn--the hero, having overcome his present difficulties, lighting out for the territory (usually in a westerly direction). The latter is the ending of Pride and Prejudice, Oliver Twist, and The Lord of the Rings: the return to and/or settling into Home. I always think of Sam Gamgee here, coming through the door of Bag End and saying "Well, I'm back." Stephenson mixes these up very nicely, and comes to a coda that satisfies.

8) Look, it's three books long--eight, if you read the mass-market paperbacks--and I read all 2700+ pages in a month. If that doesn't spell "recommendation" to you, what will?

4:13 AM

UPDATES:

1) Still no word on the ms. My email-checking hand is sore.

2) We've finally seen Team America: World Police, which wasn't as good as South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, but was almost as offensive. The songs were probably the best part (though Kim Jong-Il's panthers were hilarious, too.) I actually worry that the satire may have been a bit too subtle, though--not something one ordinarily feels concern about in a Trey Parker film, admittedly. I wonder how many people walked out thinking, "America, Fuck Yeah!" was a great new patriotic anthem, or believed that freedom really DOES cost a buck-oh-five...

3) I'm in the home stretch of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, with about 350 pages to go in the third volume, The System of the World. With any luck, by this time next week I'll be reading an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT BOOK. It's been a great ride, but I'm ready to get off and buy a funnel cake or something.

4) I've opened the door to Radiohead for the Things. They're often a bit wary of admitting a fondness for Dad's favorites, but I played them a couple of tracks from Hail to the Thief the other day, and I said the magic words beforehand: "You guys might like this--it sounds kind of like System of a Down." They've become big fans of SoaD's combination of hard-and-crunchy guitars with loopy lyrics and wildly varying tempos & rhythms, so "2+2=5" and "Sit Down. Stand Up" were right up their alley. We'll see if this gets them into tunes like "Black Star" and "Paranoid Android" next.

5) We've picked up a new owner for the Fantasy League of Gentlemen/Gentlewomen, as founding member Bug Grunt has retired. His franchise, the Varks, has been claimed by one Moishe Rosenbaum, who has moved it to Saskatchewan and renamed it "FC Moose Jaw." Meanwhile the other nine of us are arguing over when to hold the draft, what position to give the new guy, and which one player from last year we're allowed to keep. (We set up our first keeper scenario last year--one player drafted in round 10 or later, and kept on the roster all year, can be protected for this year. I'm keeping my 11th-round pick, Fast Willie Parker, and I'm fairly pleased with myself. Unfortunately, other owners were similarly forward-thinking, which means Ronnie Brown, Cedric Benson, Santana Moss, and--gulp--Larry Johnson will all be in enemy hands before draft day comes around.) Can the Moose really put up with this?

6) As near as we can tell, Thing Two did not lose ANYTHING during his trip to the British Isles; this is an unusual thing, as he has a tendency to get distracted and leave things in his locker (when they're needed at home) or at home (when they're needed at school). Time will tell if this is a permanent change, but it's encouraging.

7) Our porch has been completely gutted, rebuilt, and repainted, following Thing One's discovery that water was leaking out of the light fixture above it. Apparently the shingles had come loose and were letting water run through, resulting in a structure that was thoroughly rotted. The roof, the ceiling, and the front were all replaced, though the concrete floor and the posts were left alone. (The posts were repainted, along with everything else, but the thunderstorm that hit in th afternoon after the painters finished may have done enough water damage to require a return trip.) All we're waiting on now is the new light fixture, which will (I hope) fill up with fewer insects. It'll be a nice addition to the house, but not as good as a chance to actually move into another one.

8) Nuts. Still nothing in the email.

4:22 PM

We're a little calmer now that the Things have returned. Thing 1 was in Key Largo for a week with a friend's family, while Thing 2 was in the British Isles for three weeks with the People to People exchange program. This left us, for a week, with no kids at home, a development that Kelly in particular was dreading, but I'd have to say we handled it with relatively little trouble. It may have helped that their absences overlapped our anniversary, when we tend to want some time to ourselves anyway, but it may also be a sign that we've adjusted to the idea that we have two adolescents on our hands, rather than two fat little babies.

Actually, I'd already figured this last out, because there's no way two babies could a) drink that much milk, or b) use the computer that much.

Now we face the last few weeks of summer as God intended, as a foursome, but a foursome with a fifth member: Harlan the Hound, who's had his annual checkup and vaccinations, with some odd, though not exactly dangerous, results. The yeast infection in the ears was a bit surprising; we're treating it with ear drops, but the size of the floppy ears in question makes insertion a bit of an issue. When it's my turn to dose the dog, I feel something an astronaut trying to dock with a space station whose airlock has a large, velvet theater curtain in front of it. His other problem was a recurrence of the Lyme disease he was carrying when we found him--Lyme disease that I'd honestly forgotten he had. This may sound callous of me, but with the number of parasites he was harboring when he came to us out of the wild (where he'd been living for weeks, at least), forgetting one tick-borne infection might seem less surprising. Anyway, we've got him on meds for that. And last, one of the many worms he had before--everything but heartworms, I'm pretty sure--had reappeared, so he's getting hookworm medication as well. The good news is that he remains a cheerful and pleasant presence in the household, though he was a bit freaked out after several weeks of kidless living. He did remember them, but it took him a few minutes. I think Harlan considers long-term memory something like the good china--not for use on a regular basis, but he can find it if there's a pressing need for it.

As for me, I'm having a strange and somewhat frustrating summer from a creative standpoint. I've made occasional attempts to start new projects, but I'm having real trouble sustaining my efforts and/or concentration on anything. Part of me is no doubt distracted by waiting; I've got a manuscript on an editor's desk right now, and I've been hoping to hear from her for weeks now, and the fact that I haven't weighs rather heavily on me. I check my email far more often than is healthy, for example. I'm even having trouble coming up with coherent things to say in this journal.

Then again, this last may not be due to my admittedly distracted state of anticipation. Sometimes I (and I'd imagine most writers) go into what I call "input" mode; it's the time when I read, think, talk, experience, and do all the things necessary to gather the raw materials for my writing. For me, that time over the last few weeks has involved travel--often a good source of inspiration--and thinking and (mainly) reading. My big project has been Neal Stephenson's sprawling giant of a trilogy, the Baroque Cycle; in fact, its sprawl is so pronounced that it's been released in mass-market paperback form as not three books, but EIGHT. I found this out after finishing the first PB volume, the 400-plus-page Quicksilver, only to discover that I still needed to read most of the 900-plus-page hardback edition, which also included two additional 300-page novels, King of the Vagabonds and Odalisque. I've now finished all three, as well as the next two books, Bonanza and The Juncto, which were originally presented in a single hardback volume titled The Confusion, and have now been released as two paperbacks, The Confusion, Part I and The Confusion, Part II, which seems to me reasonably appropriate, considering the title. Kelly's bringing back the third hardback, The System of the World, from the library today, and with luck I'll have polished off the final 900 pages by this time next week.

It's much like Stephenson's previous doorstop, Cryptonomicon, full of delightful scenes, sudden and improbably twists, quirky historical references, fascination with intellectual issues such as cryptography and information theory, and world-spanning adventure, only more so. There is the occasional clunky sequence where Neal's characters summarize historical events, but those are more than counterbalanced by such terrific moments as Jack's confrontation with Louis XIV, Daniel's account of the London Fire, and Samuel Pepys's prayer of thanks for urination. I'm certainly eager to get to the next volume.

Eventually (and not always predictably) I'll shift back into "output" mode and start filling up pages with the stuff I've processed from all those materials. It's not the same thing as research. It's probably more like digestion, but that analogy leads to a rather unfortunate correspondence for the final product, doesn't it?

4:09 PM

I put on my black Chuck Taylor hightops, because they were the shoes UNC wore throughout my childhood--though in Carolina blue, of course.

I wore the broken-in khakis that have been the staple of my wardrobe since I came to Woodberry.

The t-shirt was one that I'd painted myself when Kelly and the kids and I went to Hunting Island State Park in South Carolina; it's got a ghostly silhouette of a Spanish mackerel executed in fabric paint.

Over that I threw on the Hawaiian shirt that Ginny made for me in Chapel Hill, a few years after she'd been a bridesmaid for us.

And then, like a nautilus carrying my life around on my back, I ventured forth into the evening air to celebrate twenty years of marriage.

3:00 PM

It's... Literary Cash : Writings Inspired by the Legendary Johnny Cash, coming in January 2007 from BenBella Books, and it's got PC's short story "The Snow Chaser" (based on Cash's "Field of Diamonds") plus other Cash-inspired writings.

We're back!

If you didn't miss us, it's because I sometimes like to leave town without announcing to all and sundry that we're not at home. Yes, we live in a gated community with a guard house, right across from the fifth tee--and how many ex-DJs can say that?--but it's never a bad thing to give a little thought to security, right?

In any case, we're back. We were down in Atlantic Beach, staying with my extended family in a condo at Tar Landing, where I spent many a happy summer vacation with our pals the Prices (Hi, Mary Jane! Hi, KP! Hi, Tripp! Hi, Dr. Bob!) back when I was a schoolboy. It's a little different doing it as a grownup, but it's still pleasant. We're close to the beach, close to Fort Macon State Park (where I did a little early-morning birding and logged both American species of night heron--the Black-crowned and the Yellow-crowned), and close to Dad's as-yet-unnamed boat.

We spent a little time on the former, playing in the feisty surf with nephew Sam, digging for sand fiddlers (not many of them this year, alas), and watching the occasional passage of one of the Tall Ships. This group of old-fashioned sailing ships was harbored in Beaufort (that's BO-furt, for those of you used to the South Carolinian pronunciation BYOO-furt) for the July 4th weekend, and thousands of people apparently decided to come down and visit them. Perhaps because we'd already explored an old sailing vessel, one of the whalers at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, we felt as though we could give these a miss; we figured we knew enough about the workings of the Age of Sail already: cramped, dark, dangerous. Words like "press-gang," "scurvy," and "keelhaul" come to mind when I think of those times, and while I remain enormously impressed by the courage of the men who braved the seas with little more than several varieties of carefully prepared cellulose to keep them alive, I did not see much point in using my precious vacation days to be further impressed by them. Besides, every report I've read suggests that most of the people who came to see the ships were forced to stand in line, in the scalding-hot sun, for hours on end before they could board, and some were turned away altogether.

As far as I'm concerned, if you're going to be out in the sun in the Atlantic Beach area, you should be IN a boat, not waiting to board one, and I had two chances to ride the waves. On Sunday morning, Cap'n KP took us out in his dad's big cabin cruiser, Promises Too, for a fishing trip up and down Bogue Banks. Ian had never been fishing in the actual ocean, and our few fishing trips in the Beaufort River in SC had been unproductive in the extreme: in the ten years my parents lived there, we'd caught exactly ONE fish. By comparison, Sunday was like the annual salmon run up the Columbia. Granted, we had some dead periods, but eventually we were able to catch seven Spanish mackerel and a bluefish, all of which but one were landed by Ian. If it wasn't the bounty of the first deep-sea fishing trip Ken and I took together--44 Spanish macks in a half-day, sometime around 1975--it was still a treat for Ian, and a nice way to provide dinner.

The other boating was done in my dad's Grady White, a new speedboat with a canvas top for shade and a small cabin for storage or even sleep (a great improvement over his previous console-only boat). He ventured up into Core Creek with me, Kelly, Ian, my brother David, his wife Pam, and their three-year-old Samuel, all of whom he persuaded to take a ride in the inflatable raft he was towing. We tried it in various combinations--Sam with Dave, Sam with Pam, Ian with Kelly, Ian with me--and generally enjoyed ourselves, despite the bumpy surf. Things really didn't get out of hand until Dave decided to take a solo turn and called Dad out: "Show me what you got, pussy!" Dad obligingly subjected him to a cruel variety of high-speed curves, one of which finally caught Dave at a bad angle and sent him spinning ass-over-teakettle into the drink. He came up laughing, and I took a solo spin myself.

On my first go-round, I'd been sitting in the back of the raft with Ian in front, helpfully blocking a substantial amount of the spray. Without his head screening them, my eyes quickly filled with stinging salt water, but I gamely handled the bouncing and swerving to which I was being subjected--by, I might add, Dave, who had taken command of the boat. (He enjoys driving the boat, which I don't; while I'm utterly comfortable behind the wheel of a car, I am 100% landlubber when it comes to internal combustion. Canoes, small sailcraft, rowboats, kayaks? All fine. But if it's got an engine, it had better have four wheels.) I bounded and spun at the end of the tether, occasionally getting airborn, but I didn't flip out until I got caught in a fairly slow curve outside the wake--just a bad angle, I guess.

Ian joined me for one last tandem ride, and we once again clutched the handholds fiercely and complained about the spray, though I didn't let him know just how much of it he was keeping out of my face. We bounded and flew and practiced our body English for what seemed like twenty minutes before we finally caused Kelly to go completely mental by simultaneously flipping out of the raft. Naturally, she was certain that our skulls had collided with the force of two bowling balls, while our hands had simultaneously raked each other's life-jacket clasps open, and we were both instantly on the bottom of Core Creek, unconscious and inhaling flounder poop. In reality, of course, we came up sputtering and laughing and marveling at the violence with which we'd been thrown into the water, but I'm sure Kelly wasn't quite happy until we'd both climbed back into the boat.

Aside from a bit of sunburn, thanks to the not-as-waterproof-as-advertised sunscreen I had on, the worst damage I did to myself on the trip was probably to my waistline. Not only did my Aunt Susan make my favorite--pound cake--but we ate like kings all week: Frogmore stew, gyoza, pizza, chicken w/sour cream & mushroom soup, plenty of Breyer's ice cream, bagels, and of course fresh fish.

Now I'm relaxed and ready to face the next challenge: the second volume of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, The Confusion. I finished the 900 pages of the introductory volume, Quicksilver, but many questions remain to be answered. Can Half-Cocked Jack escape galley slavery? Has Eliza's binary cypher really been broken by the government of Louis XIV? And what about Daniel's bladder surgery? Inquiring minds want to know!

5:46 PM