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July 10, 2006
"You see the fascinating thing about Ares is that he’s completely incompetent. [...] He’s wounded by one of Odysseus’s drinking buddies during the Iliad. Athena knocks him out with a rock at one point."
Some advice for someone about to read Neal Stephenson's novel Quicksilver.
Don't read this if you haven't read Cryptonomicon and plan to read it, as there are a number of spoilers meant as refreshers for people who read the novel long ago and don't care to re-read.
Don't read this if you're really fragile about spoilers and wouldn't want to know something about Quicksilver like "This one character only gets that one chapter from his/her point of view, so read carefully." I'm revealing so little of the Baroque Cycle as for it to be negligible, and rather cryptically at that.
You should be made aware now, at the very beginning of your read, that Neal Stephenson does not play nice.
Quicksilver ends a dozen years before it begins. The chronology of the trilogy is so, ahem, confused, that even volume 2 ends before volume 1 began. Volume 3 finally catches up with the end of the beginning of Quicksilver (got that?), and then goes another year or so forward in time.
When you've read the three novels you're going to want to go back and reread the beginning of Quicksilver again. Why? As I already said, Neal Stephenson does not play nice: the series ends without Enoch and Daniel having another face-to-face conversation after the one that begins Quicksilver. Stephenson intentionally denies the reader that—he has Daniel think several times "Boy, I really need to sit down and have another chat with Enoch, I'll have to do that when I get back to Boston" and then nothing. So you'll want to read that beginning carefully. In many ways, it has to function as the chronological end-piece of the series. Sure, events go on another year into the future, but there's not another clear statement of principles. I mean, there is a world-class conversation between Leibniz and Newton that must have taken Stephenson months to write. It is as if he channels the geniuses (geniii?) themselves and their dialogue is the crowning moment of the series and the philosophical centerpiece of volume 3, The System of the World....but that conversation, however brilliant, ends in a draw. Also, there's not another segment from Enoch Root's point of view, after the beginning of Quicksilver. That's important, considering that "Enoch" is the first word of the entire trilogy. Though...occulted...Enoch is somewhere behind the scenes in all the storylines.
Until you're halfway through the final volume of the trilogy you'll think Quicksilver has the worst possible ending of the literally dozens Stephenson could have chosen. After you've read the majority of The System of the World you'll realize there is no other way Stephenson could have ended Quicksilver.
You're also going to want to try to remember some key leftover plot threads from Cryptonomicon:
Rudy Hacklheber's family was friends with Enoch Root and there were so many connections he'd have to "write a whole fucking book" to explain them. In truth, more like three.
There were a bunch of golden plates with holes punched out of them, which Rudy stole from the Nazis, and which sank in the sub that was salvaged in the present-day storyline. These plates were in boxes labeled "NIZ-ARCH." This will make sense after The Confusion.
In one weird scene, Enoch Root died in a hospital from Nazi gunfire. Before he dies, he tells Rudy to get his cigar box. Then he dies on the operating table. Rudy comes back with the cigar box, and makes everyone leave the room. A few minutes later, Enoch walks out of the room, alive.
Bobby Shaftoe, the marine, he was almost killed at one point, but Enoch saved him. He doesn't remember how, exactly, but he thinks it has something to do with the box...the clearest it gets is in a dream when Bobby hallucinates he's on a sub:
A lot of the other speaking tubes have ruptured now and screaming comes from most of them; Root has to lean close to in order to shout into Bobby's ear. Shaftoe takes advanatge of it to reach over and grab for the cigar box, which contains the stuff he wants: not morphine. Something better than morphine. Morphine is to the stuff in the cigar box what a Shanghai prostitute is to Glory.
The box flies open and blinding light comes out of it. Shaftoe covers his face. The salted and preserved body parts suspended from the ceiling tumble into his lap and begin to writhe, reaching out for other parts, assembling themselves into living bodies. Mikulski comes back to life, aims his Vickers at the ceiling of the U-boat, and cuts an escape hatch. Intsead of black water, golden light rushes through.
You'll probably want to reread the key passage in Cryptonomicon (that's a pun, see...it's the key passage in the way of a keystone, but also a key as in it decodes the book's message)...it's an amazing bit of writing concerning philosophy, geekiness, and mythology. (Search down til the word "occult" and read down from there until Enoch goes to sleep.)
There's one more Cryptonomicon segment worth rereading, the conversation between Waterhouse and Turing and Hacklheber at the beginning...it's all about Leibniz, who increasingly becomes the focus of the follow-up trilogy. Pretty much all of this chapter is key for understanding Quicksilver. (If you want you can skip down to "Quite a few of these men would pretend", read down to "Soon it became clear what Alan meant", then skip the Hindenburg crash and pick back up at "Did you solve the problem?" until "Just noise in the neurons.")
Finally, the most important source of information for someone reading Quicksilver is the wiki of Quicksilver annotations. You can even get the annotations as a stylin' PDF and print them out to read aside the book, feel all intellectual like you're reading a really complex book like Ulysses or something and not overwrought, operatic, historical sci-fi.
Posted by Jon Rubin at July 10, 2006 10:04 PM
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