The slashdot-linked review of The Confusion really brought out the haters of Quicksilver, the preceeding book in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle trilogy.
I appear to be a somewhat atypical Stephenson reader. I've read Zodiac, Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, and Quicksilver. Of those I thought Snow Crash was the weakest - many readers seem to think that was his pinnacle. I enjoyed the pulpy Cryptonomicon; I thought Quicksilver was a great book.
So, I'm running up a quick list of what's good about Quicksilver. Be clear that I don't own the book, I returned the library's copy 6 months ago, and I have a poor memory. Mild spoilers inside.
- How about Papa Waterhouse? The guy has most of his facial features removed but lives on for years, successfully, to go on and die in a glorious explosion?
- And more gross outs: Newton coming to understand lenses by sticking a rod into his socket and changing the shape of his eye; The live dog dissections; the ever-present 'Barber-Surgeons' with their quick amputations.
- I found the opening scene, in Boston, to be captivating. I know I'm a sucker for anything set in that city, but I loved the description, the revealing of characters, Daniel's internal dialog (like his risk assessment of when to reveal his weapons), and the goofy Harvard boys.
- So many of the characters had interesting backstories. How about the Shaftoe boy's childhood occupation of execution acceleration? How about 'Half-cocked'?
- One more aside that sticks in my head - when Jack realizes that farrier and the french for horseshoe share a common root, meaning that somehow english and England had been influenced by french and the French.
And on a grander scale, he accomplishes two literary feats: first, the slow merging of two stories that start out totally separate; second, the illustration of commonalities between his characters of several hundred years ago and his modern readers.
A common complaint of the book seems to be its length. So what? It could be shorter, but nearly any fiction can be abridged. Its length allows it to, as I stated above, slowly merge two seperate stories, develop at least 5 main characters (so far), and cover at least 50 years.
Maybe all the dislike will mean fewer people will be in line ahead of me to borrow The Confusion at the library....
Posted by msouthwo at April 14, 2004 09:47 PM