The Confusion
Oct. 30th, 2004 10:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avramI’m about a hundred pages into The Confusion, the middle book of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, which means I’ve committed to schlepping around massive hardcovers for the next several weeks.
They’re good, entertaining books, with lots of humor and a dollop of derring-do mixed in with the discourse about alchemy and 17th-century economics and science and politics. I’m a bit put off by the anachronisms, though.
Some of them are clearly intentional, and jokes, like when a character in 1689 (more than three decades before the birth of Adam Smith) refers to an Invisible Hand of the Market grabbing his group by the testicles. Some are humorous, but possibly accidental, such as when a crew of 17th-century crypto-Jewish galley slaves use the “Havah Nagilah” (written in the early 20th century) as a rowing song. Some I just don’t know, like when a 17th-century Brit uses terms like “homosexual” (coined in 1869) and “cluster-fuck” (American military slang).
Thomas Pynchon used anachronisms in Mason & Dixon too, but generally more artfully and clearly knowing that he was doing so. Pynchon seems generally more in control of style than Stephenson is. While Mason & Dixon featured long, complex, 18th-century sentence structures, the Baroque Cycle books generally read like modern SF with the some old-fashioned spelling sprinkled on top. Stephenson’s got a better handle on story, though.
They’re good, entertaining books, with lots of humor and a dollop of derring-do mixed in with the discourse about alchemy and 17th-century economics and science and politics. I’m a bit put off by the anachronisms, though.
Some of them are clearly intentional, and jokes, like when a character in 1689 (more than three decades before the birth of Adam Smith) refers to an Invisible Hand of the Market grabbing his group by the testicles. Some are humorous, but possibly accidental, such as when a crew of 17th-century crypto-Jewish galley slaves use the “Havah Nagilah” (written in the early 20th century) as a rowing song. Some I just don’t know, like when a 17th-century Brit uses terms like “homosexual” (coined in 1869) and “cluster-fuck” (American military slang).
Thomas Pynchon used anachronisms in Mason & Dixon too, but generally more artfully and clearly knowing that he was doing so. Pynchon seems generally more in control of style than Stephenson is. While Mason & Dixon featured long, complex, 18th-century sentence structures, the Baroque Cycle books generally read like modern SF with the some old-fashioned spelling sprinkled on top. Stephenson’s got a better handle on story, though.