I really like some of his stuff, but i agree he is way to wordy. I got through the first 2 Baroque Cycle books and have the third waiting for me, but since i have a goal to read 36 books this year, i’m hesitant to pick this up as each of the previous ones has taken me over 4 weeks to get through.
A friend of mine had an interesting gripe about how every time he mentions a character, he uses their full name. It’s an interesting quirk and once you notice it you can’t stop noticing it. It’s also a little grating after a while.
I would have to say of all his books I liked Diamond Age best, followed by Snow Crash and then Crypto, then the 2 of the 3 baroque books i have read so far.
I don’t think the analogy holds unless you can show that Stephenson wrote “better” (I don’t personally have a problem with them, really) endings before he was succesful than he does now.
True, but you know what I’m alluding to. The whole “Who are you to tell me xxxxxx sucked? I’m xxxxxx” attitude.
I remember when The Matrix came out. I told my wife, that I hope the success doesn’t go to their heads and they go batshit crazy with power. Well… :rolleyes:
Zodiac. I’m not quite willing to say that it ended well, but it certainly had a better than most of his books. OTOH, I still read whatever he publishes, as soon as I get my hands on it.
All right, Jurph, I am not the OP but I will take up the challenge. Here are some non-rhetorical questions that I don’t know the answer to, after reading Cryptonomicon.
(1) Who owned the gold at the end of the book? Note that apparently the Roman Catholic Church owned the land that the gold was on. The Pope does employ a lawyer or two.
(2) Why did Enoch Root arrange for Waterhouse to crack the code? I loved that scene, but Enoch already knew the answer.
(3) Why did anyone think their problems were resolved? We established X-hundred pages before that simply knowing where a few hundred tons of gold were located, in the middle of the Phillipine jungle, did you no good at all.
For the record, I loved reading the book, but hated having read it–the resolution to the mystery of Enoch Root basically spoiled the whole thing for me. Also, after reading the book I visited that area of the Phillipines. Beautiful, rugged country. Not even close to as hard to travel in as Stephenson would have you believe. Note: I was not there in rainy season. They do still tell stories about the Japanese gold hidden somewhere in the hills.
Re: The Big U having a better ending than most of his books…I dunno. It’s super abrupt, which can be either a decent thing or a sign of laziness on the part of the author. I would have liked a little more exposition as to what happened after the big event–but I’d probably have let it slide were it not for the fact that I was judging him on the balance of his other endings, which are all lazy, bad, or both. Makes more sense to let it fit into that pattern, then.
I also was dissatisfied with his endings until I realized that having an ending where everything is neatly wrapped up and clearly finished is very artificial. We’re used to that narrative treatment because it’s a standard in Western culture.
When I read some Asian literature (in translation), Chinese conventions of storytelling particularly got on my nerves. There are too many fantastic coincidences where people separated for twenty-plus years meet in some out of the way hamlet on the backside of nowhere, find out that they are actually related in some way, blah, blah, blah. Chinese audiences love it. Average Chinese probably hate it when those elements aren’t there.
My point is that Stephenson is breaking some of the conventions of storytelling that we’re used to, and I think he does it deliberately, just as he says he does. He quits in the middle of the action, when things are still up in the air, and we all want to know what happens next, what happened to ___, and why the hell did ___ do ____?
If you don’t like it, you don’t like it, but I don’t think it’s fair to say that his endings suck any more than it would be fair for me to say that Henry James sucks because of all the introspective navel-gazing and seemingly pointless exposition about nothing in particular. I loathed reading anything by Henry James after the first time, but I can’t say he sucks. I’m not comparing Stephenson to James, or that Stephenson’s work is Great Literature (it isn’t) I’m just saying that suckiness shouldn’t be predicated on only one element of writing.
I don’t anyone here is saying Stephenson sucks specifically because his endings aren’t (in our estimation) very good. For a lot of people who like him, it’s just a continual source of frustration in an otherwise very enjoyable body of work–that’s all.
I don’t quite agree. It’s not just that he left some loose ends; I actually prefer that, and it’s a hallmark of Patricia Highsmith, who is one of my favorite authors. It’s that his endings (in Cryptonomicon, at least) made no bloody sense. He had a conflict (Andrew Loeb) come out of nowhere and do nothing that made sense in relation to the rest of the story. He dropped–not just didn’t complete, but dropped–numerous plot threads along the way. It was (to me) as if he suddenly just got fed up with the whole thing and slapped as quick an ending as he could write, regardless of its appropriateness to the rest of the story.
And a novel or a film is artifical by its very nature. You may not have an ending which wraps up all loose ends, but you should have some kind of conclusion that leaves them definitively hanging. I didn’t get that from this novel; it seemed like he just didn’t care any more.
What seems to appeal to most people (based on this thread) is not Stephenson’s plotting but his characterization and his prose. Neither appeal to me personally, but I can understand that. I feel the same way about Wodehouse, or Heller, or Douglas Adams. But the claim that it’s an unreasonable demand for artificial endings is disingenuous, I think.
Well, it’s unreasonable in the sense that it would be unreasonable to expect a Beethoven symphony to feature an electric guitar. It’s just not something Stephenson does. Wether he does it intentionally or because he’s incapable of writing a satisfactory ending is, of course, debatable. And it’s certainly not unreasonable to dislike his novels because of it.
Just to add my vote to the poll, I’m in the “fantastic chapters, mediocre books” camp. Quicksilver is on top of my to-read stack, and I anticipate quite enjoying it, but I DONT expect it to be a tightly plotted work.
A couple people mentioned the vastly different styles between the sections, and for me, that was a major part of the fun. The way the stories of different characters were narrated in entirely different voices, even in entirely different genres, yet woven together in fascinating ways- fun.
Whoa! Whoa whoa. I read it a long time ago, but I remember Enoch Root as being the big flashing neon un-tied-up loose end. I don’t suppose someone could englighten me?
I don’t remember the Enoch Root resolution from Cryptonomicon that well but from The Baroque Cycle we find out exactly who he is and what he’s about:
He is a member of the von Hackleheber family, I think a nephew. He, before the Baroque Cycle, found a stock of the Solomonic Gold, refined its essence of life to get the Philosopher’s Stone and apparently acheived immortality. There are others like him, but it is only hinted at. He helps Hooke revive Daniel Waterhouse and Waterhouse revive Isaac Newton after they die using the same Solomonic essence. He works as a kind of freelance scientist/trader/craftsman/badass. IIRC the Hackleheber’s played a role in the Cryptonomicon when it came time to get the gold – which is apparently the very same Solomonic gold which forms an object of fixation in the Baroque Cycle.
Note: I did not read all of the Baroque Cycle. I skimmed through it to find chapters that interested me; I skipped entire chapters, including all the ones about Jack Shaftoe in the Confusion. However, I believe that is not the correct origin on Enoch Root.
Enoch Root is not really a member of the von Hackleheber family. He took the name to provide himself with an identity. Baron von Hackleheber reveals this in the Confusion. He also says, that though he once believed that Enoch Root achieved immortality through alchemy, he now knows that is not the case. Right before Jack Shaftoe is about to be hanged in the System of the World, the priest reads a passage from the Bible about Enoch being translated bodily by God. I think it is implied that he is some kind of other-wordly being.