I figured I’d post this now since in three days I can post no longer…anyways…
I have to say that after reading 300 pages of The Confusion, I have been astounded with the quality of this book and the series as a whole.
The section I read is quite simply the most rewarding, entertaining writing Neal Stephenson has ever accomplished. I now see that every character in Quicksilver, seemingly minor or not, had a purpose. I also see that Neal can still write thrilling action scenes, and he put two brilliant setpieces one after the other.
In reality, I think Quicksilver should have been about 300 pages longer to encompass this material. It certainly would have silenced the naysayers. There’s been so much action and resolution and at the same time numerous plots have been set in motion. I can’t wait to keep reading and can’t imagine what’s going to happen next.
I’ll say it: Quicksilver is worth reading in order to get to The Confusion. If for El Desamparado alone.
I’m on page 772 right now and won’t discuss it till I finish it, then turn around and read it again slower. I will say I LOVE this series, there are tons of little throway lines that I know Im missing and will prob have to go reread a couple of my Hist texts to figure them all out:)
Also, this close to the end, it’s pretty clear that we aren’t going to get any good resolutions in this one. I’m already looking forward to the final episode.
I love Neil Stephenson, but I was left cold by Quicksilver. It was just too rambling and pointless. Did the sequel fix the problems, or did you like Quicksilver, too?
When you read it for the second time, you should take a look at www.metaweb.com. It has lots of annotations for Quicksilver and already some for The Confusion.
I love Stephenson. Snow Crash is fantastic. Cryptonomicon is one of my top 5 favorite books.
I thought that Quicksilver was like being repeatedly bashed in the head with a sledgehammer. This was due a great deal to the fact that I felt he had replaced his trademark writing style with a bunch of affectation – or at least I phant’sied that’s what he’d done.
So now I’m bitter because The Confusion is much, much better than Quicksilver. It’s got better plot, more coherence, better writing style, and so forth. But it’s still IMHO not up to his normal standards of excellence, hence the bitterness. If the book was utterly craptacular then I wouldn’t feel bad in not bothering with the third book in September, and now I’ve got to read the damn thing.
The book also does not address the one question that I’d really like an answer to:What is Enoch Root?
I read through the first 500 pages of Quicksilver and got really bored…so I took a couple months away from it. When I came back I couldn’t remember what had happened so I reread it. In fact the second time through I -got- what was happening and liked the flow of the book. Alot actually does happen in the novel, it’s just that the point isn’t clear until the second volume.
The second volume on the other hand, so far does not have the same problems. After 300 pages, alot of the dominoes that he set up with the Jack /Eliza story have fallen and there’s been alot of action. Everything’s clicking for me. I really encourage you to read it.
I haven’t finished the book so I don’t know what the next 500 pages holds but
As far as I can hypothesize Enoch is immortal due to the gold that has divine qualities. The Hacklheber uncle was immortal apparently. That same gold is the gold in Cryptonomicon which Rudy Hacklheber is trying to get his hands on. Of course that doesn’t answer how he has foresight, but I guess it’s far too early for me to judge. I need to read more!
Either way I have faith that since these are obvious threads and allusions, Neal will answer all or some of them in the next volume.
I read Cryptonomicon on a random suggestion from someone here and I really enjoyed it. I can’t say I followed it all too well - if you don’ t read every day, you can kind of get lost. Plus, I suck suck suck at math and didn’t follow alot of the crypto stuff.
Anyway, I thought that was a good book. Then yesterday I read in WIRED that Stephenson is a sci-fi writer. Eep! I don’t like sci-fi.
So my question is - should I bother with the Baroque Cycle, or will I be completely WOOSHED and bored at the same time?
Crap, this is a hijack isn’t it? I apologize to the OP for diverting from one of his/her last posts!
Um, yeah Stephenson is a sci-fi writer. Baroque Cycle is sort of scifi, but not in any way that would bother you. Mainly they are historical fiction. They are scifi only in the fact that the character of Enoch Root, who you’ve read about in Cryptonomicon, is also in the Baroque Cycle, which takes place in the 1600’s. You figure that one out. Anyways, it’s still a very small thread at this point, don’t let it scare you away.
rdm – It’s revealed that “Egon von Hackleheber” was in fact Enoch under an assumed name, and that he faked his own death at some point. Frankly that seems to be a bit unnecessaryl because he goes around with the name “Enoch Root” almost all the time anyhow. Probably that’s not his real name either, but he sticks with that pseudonym often. I suspect the reason for his immortality, if it’s ever given, won’t have anything to do with the gold.
Sorry for reawakening an old thread, but I just finished reading The Confusion, which, while somewhat dense, I found to be fantastic.
To address the Enoch Root question, I believe that Lothar out-and-out states that he more or less knows what Enoch is, and he’s not human, so I don’t think it has anything to do with alchemy.
Anyhow, a few things I’m a bit confused about:
(1) Where did father De Gex come in? Do we know what motivated him in the first place to be the enemy of our heroes?
(2) What about this countess woman who brought him back to life? Is she the same one who was going to help Eliza poison D’Archacon? Why is she on the bad side?
Also, does anyone know of some FAQ somewhere that discusses which of the characters are actually real historical figures? Fatio? Princess Caroline? John Churchill? Sophie and Sophie Charlotte? (And so forth).
thanks…
However, the annotations for Quicksilver are in one place. And the annotations for The Confusion are in another. All easily findable with the combined brainpower of Leibnitz, Hooke, and Newton along with the seeming immortality of Enoch Root.
I thought The Confusion was a lot of fun. I think Quicksilver repaid years of reading all the boring bits in historical court intrigues, inasmuch as it was really no harder to follow than Dumas at his most laboriously mysterious, but The Confusion was absolutely spritely, a pleasure of a picaresque. I’m looking forward to the third, Stephenson’s gone and created worlds and characters that I don’t want to leave at the end of the book, and that’s the highest praise I can give.
Yet every copy of either book I’ve seen in the bookstores was shelved either in the new books section – or the SF section. Same with Cryptonomicon, which has no fantastic or supernatural elements in it, and no science or technology that hasn’t been discovered/invented yet. Writers tend to get typecast, you know? Harlan Ellison once wrote a humorous story – forget the title – about a writer named “Cordwainer Bird” (Ellison’s own pseudonym when he wrote for The Starlost or any other project that got so far away from him that he wanted nothing to do with it any more – because “cordwainer” means “shoemaker” and what’s more pointless than making shoes for birds?) – Bird’s mainstream highbrow lichracha novel got shelved in the “sci-fi” ghetto because he had first made his name in that field; so he went on a rampage and murdered most of the New York Literary Establishment. It really was a hoot.
Quite so about the extreme borderline status of both Cryptonomicon and Quicksilver.
Yet the former won the Locus Award as best sf novel of the year and was a finalist for the Hugo Award; it even was a finalist for the British Fantasy Award!
And the latter just won the Arthur C. Clarke Award as best sf novel published in Britain last year.
The best sf has very little or nothing to do with spaceships and everything to do with ideas about the way the world works. Stephenson is very fine at that.
I’m speechless at how stunningly good this is. To all those who encouraged me to finish Quicksilver a couple months ago, when I posted a thread about the one-quarter mark, asking whether I should continue, thank you. Thank you very much. I am the type to re-read books, but not usually back to back. However, I plan to crack Quicksilver open again tonight when I get home, and start again, hoping to catch some of the 80% that I missed the first time 'round.
I am SO looking forwrd to the last book, but also dreading its arrival, knowing that after that, there will be no more.
I’m nowhere near finished, but I stayed up late last night to read through the Cabal’s execution of
[spoiler]the plan; finding the gold and then escaping through the proto-Suez canal. WOW! I physically couldn’t stop reading, Stephenson really has written an amazing batch of set pieces there, hasn’t he?
Ok, so many characters have decendants in Cryptonomicon, Jack obviously has Amy and her dad (&c &c), or are these Bob’s decendants? Daniel’s decendants are still at MIT (Rudy et al), Gabriel Goto’s decendant is obviously Goto Dengo. So who are Eliza’s decendants? Or does she lose out by being a women? (I know she has the Qwghlm link where a Lawrence Waterhouse was posted during WW2).
So who else is represented in the modern world of Cryptonomicon with ancestors in The Baroque Cycle?
Also, is the gold stolen from d’Archanon the same gold as that found by Rudy, Amy et al in the Philippine jungles? I believe i read this somewhere but can’t remember, and given the other similarities I wouldn’t find it odd at all. Implausible maybe, but not odd. [/spoiler]
goddamn I’m loving this book! Oh, well, I’m only on page 261, LOTS more to go! woooo!
I apologize to the OP for diverting from one of his/her last posts!
Anyways, it’s still a very small thread at this point, don’t let it scare you away.