After rereading every single one of his books three to six times I need something else so are there any authors who write in the same style. Besides the guy who wrote “Vineland”.
thanks in advance
You mean, “besides the guy who wrote Gravity’s Rainbow.”
If you liked Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, you might like the works of Haruki Murakami. He isn’t concerned with technology like Stephenson, but he has the same style (describes everyday routine in unexpected detail). I just finished his The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and enjoyed it quite a bit. Like Cryptonomicon, it has flashbacks to World War II which hold the key to what’s happening in the present day.
As far as Pynchon’s concerned, I don’t get why so many people compare Stephenson to him. Pynchon is a talentless hack who won awards for doing for Americans what Joyce had already done for the world in general. His works are unreadable (yes, they are easier to understand than, say, Finnegans Wake but he says nothing meaningful while he’s spewing racism and fetishism in a pathetic attempt to get attention).
UnuMondo
Very cool - the first person that came to mind for me was also Haruki Murakami, especially his book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.
Please note: HM’s books aren’t anything like Stephenson’s - it is more that they play in a similar near-real space. Where Stephenson is overly wordy, techno-nerdy, and tends to chase down every stray thought with an explanation, Murakami is quite spare, leaves big spaces in his character descriptions for you to fill in, and has much, much leaner prose.
So I guess a question might be - what about Stephenson do you like?
If you like his irony, his intelligence and his wordy, informed style - you might consider books like Dave Egger’s Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - a memoir, no sci-fi, and a lot of people hated it, but I found it a great, interesting read.
If you like the hyper-attention to detail, you must read Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine, which covers the 45-seconds it takes for our hero to move on an escalator after having bought a replacement shoelace during his lunch break, but it chase down every thought he has during that time. Amazing, funny, literate. Baker also wrote a couple of very sexual, literate books, Vox and The Fermata.
If you like his polymath expertise about every damn topic in existence, you might consider some non-fiction like Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel which claims to answer the question “if western European powers have established the dominant world culture based on their access to guns, germs and steel during the colonialization of the world, how did they end up with those guns, germs and steel - are they genetically superior or was it due to other factors?”. Great read, requiring inclusion of a number of fascinating disciplines.
Have fun.
thanks I have now put my summer reading off for another two weeks (CliffNotes here I come)
I like (although I can’t understand) the polymath but my favorite aspect is how he ‘chase down every thought’ . In one book he writes "This was an epic tale not worth telling. He then proceeds to tell the whole story over six pages
Another is William T. Vollmann’s “You Bright And Risen Angels”.
Vollmann, like Stephenson, is another guy form the School Of Pynchon: phone-book sized novels, encyclopedic, techy knowledge and Joycean prose-style. “You Bright…” is about a global war against a band of fascistic insects (literal insects) with plans of world domination, set in the jungles of South America. All this is tied into the history of electricity. Pynchonesque enough for you?
By the way, saying Pynchon is “that guy who wrote Vineland” is a bit like saying Shakespeare is “that guy who wrote The Merry Wives Of Windsor”. Vineland is a minor work, a throwaway book that has bewildered Pynchon fans since its publication. Gravity’s Rainbow is his major book. The most influential novel of the last half century and also the most fun to read. I also recommend Pynchon’s “V”, which some like even more than Gravity’s Rainbow.
Make sure you keep the title in mind when you read it…its the key to unlocking the whole book.