Simon Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 Just wondering if anybody else is as blown away by this work as I have been so far? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beerball Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 If it's Baroque toss it in the trash. If it aint Baroque don't fix it. sorry...couldn't be helped. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted September 16, 2005 Author Share Posted September 16, 2005 Wow, what bunch of illiterate bastards('ceptin for you Beerball). For my money the guy is the best American writer of this generation and nobody's even heard of him? If you're looking for some great literature I would strongly suggest picking up Vol 1 of his Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver) and then dare you not to buy Volume 2(The Confusion). I just finished Vol2 (of 3) and this work is probably the best thing I've read in at least 10 years. In a following reply I'm going to cut/paste an excerpt from The Confusion that he has on his website so anybody who's interested can get a taste of his style If you want something a little more digestable, go with his previous work, "Cryptonomicon"; not as involved but still a fantastic effort. Cya Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Fong Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 I've heard of it. Just haven't had a chance to get into it. Frankly the subject matter doesn't really sound too interesting to me and they're really long books. I'll probably get into it one day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nervous Guy Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 yer pretty well read for a Mountain Man. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted September 16, 2005 Author Share Posted September 16, 2005 This excerpt is the opening of "The Confusion". Half-cocked Jack Shaftoe, former steeturchin/vagabond/adventurer and current galley slave, awakes from a syphillitic stupor on a Barbary Coast beach circa 1689..... " He was not merely awakened, but detonated out of an uncommonly long and repetitive dream. He could not remember any of the details of the dream now that it was over. But he had the idea that it had entailed much rowing and scraping, and little else; so he did not object to being roused. Even if he had been of a mind to object, he'd have had the good sense to hold his tongue, and keep his annoyance well-hid beneath a simpering merry-Vagabond façade. Because what was doing the waking, today, was the most tremendous damned noise he'd ever heard — it was some godlike Force not to be yelled at or complained to, at least not right away. Cannons were being fired. Never so many, and rarely so large, cannons. Whole batteries of siege-guns and coastal artillery discharging en masse, ranks of 'em ripple-firing along wall-tops. He rolled out from beneath the barnacle-covered hull of a beached ship, where he had apparently been taking an afternoon nap, and found himself pinned to the sand by a downblast of bleak sunlight. At this point a wise man, with experience in matters military, would have belly-crawled to some suitable enfilade. But the beach all round him was planted with hairy ankles and sandaled feet; he was the only one prone or supine. Lying on his back, he squinted up through the damp, sand-caked hem of a man's garment: a loose robe of open-weave material that laved the wearer's body in a gold glow, so that he could look directly up into the blind eye of the man's penis — which had been curiously modified. Inevitably, he lost this particular stare-down. He rolled back the other way, performing one and a half uphill revolutions, and clambered indignantly to his feet, forgetting about the curve of the hull and therefore barking his scalp on a phalanx of barnacles. Then he screamed as loud as he could, but no one heard him. He didn't even hear himself. He experimented with plugging his ears and screaming, but even then he heard naught but the sound of the cannons. Time to take stock of matters — to bring the situation in hand. The hull was blocking his view. Other than it, all he could see was a sparkling bay, and a stony break-water. He strode into the sea, watched curiously by the man with the mushroom-headed yard, and, once he was out knee-deep, turned around. What he saw then made it more or less obligatory to fall right on his arse. This bay was spattered with bony islets, close to shore. Rising from one of them was a squat round fortress that (if he was any judge of matters architectural) had been built at grand expense by Spaniards in desperate fear of their lives. And apparently those fears had been well founded because the top of that fort was all fluttery with green banners bearing silver crescent moons. The fort had three tiers of guns on it (more correctly, the fort was three tiers of guns) and every one of 'em looked, and sounded, like a sixty-pounder, meaning that it flung a cannonball the size of a melon for several miles. This fort was mostly shrouded in powder-smoke, with long bolts of flame jabbing out here and there, giving it the appearance of a thunderstorm that had been rammed and tamped into a barrel. A white stone breakwater connected this fort to the mainland, which, at first glance, impressed him as a sheer stone wall rising forty or feet from this narrow strip of muddy beach, and crowded with a great many more huge cannons, all being fired just as fast as they could be swabbed out and stuffed with powder. Beyond the wall rose a white city. Being as he was at the base of a rather high wall, he wouldn't normally expect to be able to see anything on the opposite side thereof, save the odd cathedral-spire poking out above the battlements. But this city appeared to've been laboriously spackled onto the side of a precipitous mountain whose slopes rose directly from the high-tide mark. It looked a bit like a wedge of Paris tilted upwards by some tidy God who wanted to make all the sh-- finally run out of it. At the apex, where one would look for whatever crowbar or grapple the hypothetical God would've used to accomplish this prodigy, was, instead, another fortress — this one of a queer Moorish design, surrounded with its own eight-sided wall that was, inevitably, a-bristle with even more colossal cannons, as well as mortars for heaving bombs out to sea. All of those were being fired, too — as were all of the guns spraying from the several additional fortresses, bastions, and gun-platforms distributed around the city's walls. During rare intervals between the crushing thuds of the sixty-pounders, he could hear peppery waves of pistol-and-musket-fire rolling around the place, and now (beginning to advert on smaller things) he saw a sort of smoky, crowded lawn growing out of the wall-tops — save instead of grass-blades this lawn was made up of men. Some were dressed in black, and some in white, but most wore more colorful costumes: baggy white trousers belted with brilliantly hued swathes of silk, and brightly embroidered vests — frequently, several such vests nested — and turbans or red cylindrical hats. Most of those who were dressed after this fashion had a pistol in each hand and were firing them into the air or reloading. The man with the outlandish johnson — swarthy, with wavy black hair in a curious 'do, and a knit skullcap — hitched up his robe, and sloshed out to see if he was all right. For he still had both hands clamped over the sides of his head, partly to stanch the bleeding of the barnacle-gashes, and partly to keep the sound from blowing the top of his skull out to sea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted September 16, 2005 Author Share Posted September 16, 2005 yer pretty well read for a Mountain Man. 443123[/snapback] Possum stew purty well makes its own self, so a fella's got to find something to keep him occupied while his next set of boogers firms up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghost of BiB Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 This is a joke, right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted September 16, 2005 Author Share Posted September 16, 2005 Her's an excerpt from "Cryptonimicon". I lent my copy out and haven't seen it in years so while I think this is how it opens, I'm not positive. And yes, Bobby Shaftoe is a descendant of Half-Cocked Jack. "Two tires fly. Two wail. A bamboo grove, all chopped down From it, warring songs ....IS THE BEST THAT CORPORAL BOBBY SHAFTOE CAN DO ON short notice--he's standing on the running board, gripping his Springfield with one hand and the rearview mirror with the other, so counting the syllables on his fingers is out of the question. Is ``tires'' one syllable or two? How about ``wail?'' The truck finally makes up its mind not to tip over, and thuds back onto four wheels. The wail--and the moment--are lost. Bobby can still hear the coolies singing, though, and now too there's the gunlike snicking of the truck's clutch linkage as Private Wiley downshifts. Could Wiley be losing his nerve? And, in the back, under the tarps, a ton and a half of file cabinets clanking, code books slaloming, fuel spanking the tanks of Station Alpha's electrical generator. The modern world's hell on haiku writers: ``Electrical generator'' is, what, eight syllables? You couldn't even fit that onto the second line! "Are we allowed to run over people?'' Private Wiley inquires, and then mashes the horn button before Bobby Shaftoe can answer. A Sikh policeman hurdles a night soil cart. Shaftoe's gut reaction is: Sure, what're they going to do, declare war on us? but as the highest-ranking man on this truck he's probably supposed to be using his head or something, so he doesn't blurt it out just yet. He takes stock of the situation: Shanghai, 1645 hours, Friday, the 28th of November 1941. Bobby Shaftoe, and the other half-dozen Marines on his truck, are staring down the length of Kiukiang Road, onto which they've just made this careening high-speed turn. Cathedral's going by to the right, so that means they are, what? two blocks away from the Bund. A Yangtze River Patrol gunboat is tied up there, waiting for the stuff they've got in the back of this truck. The only real problem is that those particular two blocks are inhabited by about five million Chinese people. Now these Chinese are sophisticated urbanites, not suntanned yokels who've never seen cars before--they'll get out of your way if you drive fast and honk your horn. And indeed many of them flee to one side of the street or the other, producing the illusion that the truck its moving faster than the forty-three miles an hour shown on its speedometer. But the bamboo grove in Bobby Shaftoe's haiku has not been added just to put a little Oriental flavor into the poem and wow the folks back home in Oconomowoc. There is a lot of heavy bamboo in front of this truck, dozens of makeshift turnpikes blocking their path to the river, for the officers of the U.S. Navy's Asiatic Fleet, and of the Fourth Marines, who dreamed up this little operation forgot to take the Friday Afternoon factor into account. As Bobby Shaftoe could've explained to them, if only they'd bothered to ask a poor dumb jarhead, their route took them through the heart of the banking district. Here you've got the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank of course, City Bank, Chase Manhattan, the Bank of America, and BBME and the Agricultural Bank of China and any number of crappy little provincial banks, and several of those banks have contracts with what's left of the Chinese Government to print currency. It must be a cutthroat business because they slash costs by printing it on old newspapers, and if you know how to read Chinese, you can see last year's news stories and polo scores peeking through the colored numbers and pictures that transform these pieces of paper into legal tender. As every chicken-peddler and rickshaw operator in Shanghai knows, the money-printing contracts stipulate that all of the bills these banks print have to be backed by such-and-such an amount of silver; i.e., anyone should be able to walk into one of those banks at the end of Kiukiang Road and slap down a pile of bills and (provided that those bills were printed by that same bank) receive actual metallic silver in exchange. Now if China weren't right in the middle of getting systematically drawn and quartered by the Empire of Nippon, it would probably send official bean counters around to keep tabs on how much silver was actually present in these banks' vaults, and it would all be quiet and orderly. But as it stands, the only thing keeping these banks honest is the other banks. Here's how they do it: during the normal course of business, lots of paper money will pass over the counters of (say) Chase Manhattan Bank. They'll take it into a back room and sort it, throwing into money boxes (a couple of feet square and a yard deep, with ropes on the four corners) all of the bills that were printed by (say) Bank of America in one, all of the City Bank bills into another. Then, on Friday afternoon they will bring in coolies. Each coolie, or pair of coolies, will of course have his great big long bamboo pole with him--a coolie without his pole is like a China Marine without his nickel-plated bayonet--and will poke their pole through the ropes on the corners of the box. Then one coolie will get underneath each end of the pole, hoisting the box into the air. They have to move in unison or else the box begins flailing around and everything gets out of whack. So as they head towards their destination--whatever bank whose name is printed on the bills in their box--they sing to each other, and plant their feet on the pavement in time to the music. The pole's pretty long, so they are that far apart, and they have to sing loud to hear each other, and of course each pair of coolies in the street is singing their own particular song, trying to drown out all of the others so that they don't get out of step. So ten minutes before closing time on Friday afternoon, the doors of many banks burst open and numerous pairs of coolies march in singing, like the curtain-raiser on a fu(king Broadway musical, slam their huge boxes of tattered currency down, and demand silver in exchange. All of the banks do this to each other. Sometimes, they'll all do it on the same Friday, particularly at times like 28 November 1941, when even a grunt like Bobby Shaftoe can understand that it's better to be holding silver than piles of old cut-up newspaper. And that is why, once the normal pedestrians and food-cart operators and furious Sikh cops have scurried out of the way, and plastered themselves up against the clubs and shops and bordellos on Kiukiang Road, Bobby Shaftoe and the other Marines on the truck still cannot even see the gunboat that is their destination, because of this horizontal forest of mighty bamboo poles. They cannot even hear the honking of their own truck horn because of the wild throbbing pentatonic cacophony of coolies singing. This ain't just your regular Friday P.M. Shanghai bank-district money-rush. This is an ultimate settling of accounts before the whole Eastern Hemisphere catches fire. The millions of promises printed on those slips of bumwad will all be kept or broken in the next ten minutes; actual pieces of silver and gold will move, or they won't. It is some kind of fiduciary Judgment Day. ``Jesus Christ, I can't--'' Private Wiley hollers. "The captain said don't stop for any reason whatsofu(kininever,'' Shaftoe reminds him. He's not telling Wiley to run over the coolies, he's reminding Wiley that if he refrains from running over them, they will have some explaining to do--which will be complicated by the fact that the captain's right behind them in a car stuffed with Tommy Gun-toting China Marines. And from the way the captain's been acting about this Station Alpha thing, it's pretty clear that he already has a few preliminary strap marks on his ass, courtesy of some admiral in Pearl Harbor or even (drumroll) Marine Barracks, Eight and Eye Streets Southeast, Washington, D.C. Shaftoe and the other Marines have always known Station Alpha as a mysterious claque of pencil-necked swabbies who hung out on the roof of a building in the International Settlement in a shack of knot-pocked cargo pallet planks with antennas sticking out of it every which way. If you stood there long enough you could see some of those antennas moving, zeroing in on something out to sea. Shaftoe even wrote a haiku about it: Antenna searches Retriever's nose in the wind Ether's far secrets This was only his second haiku ever--clearly not up to November 1941 standards--and he cringes to remember it. But in no way did any of the Marines comprehend what a big deal Station Alpha was until today. Their job had turned out to involve wrapping a ton of equipment and several tons of paper in tarps and moving it out of doors. Then they spent Thursday tearing the shack apart, making it into a bonfire, and burning certain books and papers. ``Sheeeyit!'' Private Wiley hollers. Only a few of the coolies have gotten out of the way, or even seen them. But then there is this fantastic boom from the river, like the sound of a mile-thick bamboo pole being snapped over God's knee. Half a second later there're no coolies in the street anymore--just a lot of boxes with unmanned bamboo poles teeter-tottering on them, bonging into the streets like wind-chimes. Above, a furry mushroom of grey smoke rises from the gunboat. Wiley shifts up to high gear and floors it. Shaftoe cringes against the truck's door and lowers his head, hoping that his campy Great War doughboy helmet will be good for something. Then money-boxes start to rupture and explode as the truck rams through them. Shaftoe peers up through a blizzard of notes and sees giant bamboo poles soaring and bounding and windmilling toward the waterfront. The leaves of Shanghai: Pale doorways in a steel sky. Winter has begun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lothar Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 Possum stew purty well makes its own self, so a fella's got to find something to keep him occupied while his next set of boogers firms up. 443142[/snapback] I've read about half of his early work - Snowcrash (a bit more juvenile than I expected), Diamond Age (brilliant!) and Zodiac (offbeat and entertaining). Haven't the time lately to invest in one of his epics - the Baroque cycle sounded like one of FFS's posts on Lindell's accuracy x 1000. Also been reading that most of his fans were disappointed at his latest ... your comments have piqued my interest though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McGill Bill Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 YES! A Neal Stephenson fan! Snow Crash is bar none my favourite book ever. I've also read The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, and The Big U. All amazing. I own Quicksilver, but haven't gotten around to reading that tome. I plan to start soon, but with school and all, it's hard to find the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beerball Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 RIP Half-Cocked Jack, the guy who would never admit what happened to the other half. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted September 16, 2005 Author Share Posted September 16, 2005 This is a joke, right? Nope, the guy is freaking brilliant. If you can find time to read something slightly less heavy than your professional responsibilities, give him a shot. I've read about half of his early work - Snowcrash (a bit more juvenile than I expected), Diamond Age (brilliant!) and Zodiac (offbeat and entertaining). Also been reading that most of his fans were disappointed at his latest ... your comments have piqued my interest though. Your assessment of his earlier works as juvenile is exactly how I viewed them. But his last two efforts are like something that came from a completely different writer. An unreal leap in quality. Most of his fans are out of their trees if they can't appreciate the marvel that is his last work. RIP Half-Cocked Jack, the guy who would never admit what happened to the other half. He freely admits it, and when convenient even displays it. But you'll have to buy the book to find out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agilen Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 Yes! I'm about 100 pages into The System of the World. Its a fantastic series, if a little long-winded. I thought Quicksilver was a slower read, but had more geeky stuff in it, while The Confusion had a plot that I really got into. I liked Snow Crash, and thought Cryptonomicon was really good, although sometimes I got a little annoyed at how he spent time explaining things to the non-geek readers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevbeau Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 I read Quicksilver and bought Cryptonomicon (haven't had a chance to get to it yet. Didn't know the 2nd volume of the Baroque cycle was out yet. I don't think your average Dan Brown fan would care for his books...Stephenson's writing is a lot more complex than most of the current popular fiction writers (although I believe Crypto and Quicksilver spent a fair amount of time on the Bestseller list). I lent Quicksilver to a friend and he returned it after a few chapters, because he had to "think" too much to understand the story. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevbeau Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 Yes! I'm about 100 pages into The System of the World. Its a fantastic series, if a little long-winded. I thought Quicksilver was a slower read, but had more geeky stuff in it, while The Confusion had a plot that I really got into. I liked Snow Crash, and thought Cryptonomicon was really good, although sometimes I got a little annoyed at how he spent time explaining things to the non-geek readers. 443190[/snapback] That's me with Clancy novels. I really enjoy Tom Clancy's novels, but I struggle through the first half of his books..which are all detailed setup. However once the plot really kicks in, I'm hooked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted September 16, 2005 Author Share Posted September 16, 2005 Yes! I'm about 100 pages into The System of the World......I liked Snow Crash, and thought Cryptonomicon was really good, although sometimes I got a little annoyed at how he spent time explaining things to the non-geek readers. You're about 85 pages ahead of me. And if he didn't explain some of that stuff re: physics, finance, etc. I'd probably be lost. But at least he explains it with style and aplomb. Didn't know the 2nd volume of the Baroque cycle was out yet.......I don't think your average Dan Brown fan would care for his books... Yeah, actually both the 2nd and the final volume are now out in trade paperback. When I was buying the final volume last night the bookstore guy started asking me to compare Stephenson to Dan Brown. I had half a jag on and told him Dan Brown was a "kindergartner". I got the distinct impression that he didn't appreciate some guy that smelled like a brewery strolling in around closing, making him dig a book out of a box in the back room and then slurringly tell him his favorite author writes like a 6yr old. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pine Barrens Mafia Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 I read Diamond Age. It's OK. Also read Cryptonomicon. Again, OK, but his style isn't one I prefer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pine Barrens Mafia Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 Might I recommend: Halperin? I enjoyed his first book. Haven't read the second yet. Looks good, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave mcbride Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 Wow, what bunch of illiterate bastards('ceptin for you Beerball). For my money the guy is the best American writer of this generation and nobody's even heard of him? If you're looking for some great literature I would strongly suggest picking up Vol 1 of his Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver) and then dare you not to buy Volume 2(The Confusion). I just finished Vol2 (of 3) and this work is probably the best thing I've read in at least 10 years. In a following reply I'm going to cut/paste an excerpt from The Confusion that he has on his website so anybody who's interested can get a taste of his styleIf you want something a little more digestable, go with his previous work, "Cryptonomicon"; not as involved but still a fantastic effort. Cya 443117[/snapback] i own cryptonomicon, and planned on reading it at the beach this year. however, i read w.g. sebald's austerlitz instead. now that's an amazing book. as for cryptonomicon, i do plan to read it, but have a couple of other things i've gotta finish first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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