The Baroque Cycle
The question is; how can I distill, honestly review, or create value from the 3,000 pages of swashbuckling international finance that made up Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle?
0) Oddly enough, my Calculus textbook recommended reading a book on the Leibniz v. Newton conflict. I can't imagine a more interesting example of one than what Stephenson has provided would exist right now
1) Stephenson has a weird sense of time in this book. He'll build up and build up the reader's expectation of some fantastic event, and then calmly walk right by it; most other authors would savour the chance to describe an important event as it happens; but Stephenson tends to describe everything important in retrospect, through the eyes of the characters. I mean, it works, but, it's defintiely not something I've encountered before.
2) I do not think that Enoch Root was necessary. Qwlghm was stretching things enough; I think Stephenson was stretching things a little with the existance of Root in the book. But it wasn't that bad; as a singular thing, and I don't mind suspending my beleif for one thing in each fictional story; everything else was plausible enough. That being said Root *did* add consistency, and probably some depth, but at the cost of making the story much more implausible.
3) Stephenson produces stories that to me, would make a lot of sense as movies. Zodiac, Snow Crash both fit into this, and The Baroque Cycle is no exception(although, it would probably take a series of 9 2 hour films, at least, to successfully portray it).
4) Like kuro5hin, after reading a few pages, I was inspired to get involved with Enterprise and productive. This kept me from finishing it, although at some point I realized that I was too tired to do any more math, and it was easier to lie in bed and read fiction than to actually sit in my computer chair and do stuff.
5) Not letting Jack die at the end, I don't know, just seemed, cartoonish, and dishonouring to Jack. Same goes for Isaac, to a lesser degree; Maybe he is essentially dead, back to being a 'normal' person, if you can call living with 'Leroy' normal. The entire epilog concerning Leroy and Jack can safely be cut from the text; actually the epilogs as a whole weren't up to par with the rest of the series(although the first one made sense of Isaac's coming-back.) I think the System of the World is better without it.
I read Eastern Standard Tribe(cory doctorow) while I was digging through this series; and it was a lot more concentrated, an exciting novel start to finish, but only 100 pages. Stephenson had excitement, had me glued to the books for long hours unable to put them down, although there was defintitely a lot of scenery; not all that exciting stuff but stuff that makes this something of a cultural monolith, an acheivment of our age, in a way Eastern Standard Tribe was not. There's a lot of work that went into making this as historically meaningful as it was; and I enjoyed that, I think, more than anything I had read prior to 2002, definitely. When I think back to my favourite book in 2000-2001, the mageborn traitor, and the books in that series by Melanie Rawn; to some extent I think they share a lot in common with The Baroque Cycle; both series tell the story from both the sides of the hero and villain, to the point where there isn't really a villain(except the french), a rich worldbuilding, and probably a lot more I just don't have words for.
All that being said though, it had to be good, otherwise I'd never had read all 3,000 odd pages. Best non cyberpunk book from a cyberpunk author, ever.
It is a trip through the physical and intellectual world of 1650-1700, stopping by at various significant milestones towards civilization and enlightenment. If anything it's one of the closest things I've seen that so explicitly deals with the topic of enlightenment; keep in mind the whole reason for me being in university in the first place is to attain enlightenment, so any treatise, even under the thin guise of fiction, that deals with this topic is probably important for me to suck up. And where does enlightenment come from in the book? Various places; but stated most explicitly it came from Coca(?). Yes there was Revolution, abolition of slavery, Science(although I'm not sure it was really called such), Reason, the application of Reason over Religion and Arbitrary State Rule, but the real visionaries were essentially stoned. This was definitely intentional.
I can't imagine rereading it, just because of the sheer amount of effort that would be involved. Maybe in 50 years.
I'm not sure.
Anyway, part of me wants to read non-Calculus things for the first time in awhile; But the reason that I read so much calculus is that I put off actually doing the excersizes while I read ahead and actually learned the material. Now I'm going back and doing the excersizes(again, and again...). Another part of me wants to jump ahead and do MacroEcon and EcologicalEcon stuff now that I'm about to take summer classes on these topics. Might be a good idea to get ahead of things before my time crunches into a little ball of null.
Another part of me is completely out of sync with the world around me. It is way too hot during the day to actually think effectively, but this is when I'm awake(due to a combination of meirionwen, work, and some minor causes). This is problematic; since I want to stay up during the night to be productive, but am torn between being productive and sleeping hours that are in sync with my surroundings. Like last summer I'm starting to fall into the rut of getting nothing done, sleeping twice as much as I should be, and just drooling in the heat, because during the extreme heat of the dailight hours drooling and staring is about all I'm capable of. That and I think the heat makes me less willing to eat; and not eating leads to some sort of biochemical induced depression... I just can't sustain my hatred and anger through this goddamn heat. Giving up is becoming attractive, and 100-200 hour fantasy excapes aren't really making things too much better...or is it? I am really running out of interesting things to talk about. Calculus just isn't cutting it. I'm drying up as an interesting person to talk to.
Somehow a draft of this got posted as it's own post. nm.
0) Oddly enough, my Calculus textbook recommended reading a book on the Leibniz v. Newton conflict. I can't imagine a more interesting example of one than what Stephenson has provided would exist right now
1) Stephenson has a weird sense of time in this book. He'll build up and build up the reader's expectation of some fantastic event, and then calmly walk right by it; most other authors would savour the chance to describe an important event as it happens; but Stephenson tends to describe everything important in retrospect, through the eyes of the characters. I mean, it works, but, it's defintiely not something I've encountered before.
2) I do not think that Enoch Root was necessary. Qwlghm was stretching things enough; I think Stephenson was stretching things a little with the existance of Root in the book. But it wasn't that bad; as a singular thing, and I don't mind suspending my beleif for one thing in each fictional story; everything else was plausible enough. That being said Root *did* add consistency, and probably some depth, but at the cost of making the story much more implausible.
3) Stephenson produces stories that to me, would make a lot of sense as movies. Zodiac, Snow Crash both fit into this, and The Baroque Cycle is no exception(although, it would probably take a series of 9 2 hour films, at least, to successfully portray it).
4) Like kuro5hin, after reading a few pages, I was inspired to get involved with Enterprise and productive. This kept me from finishing it, although at some point I realized that I was too tired to do any more math, and it was easier to lie in bed and read fiction than to actually sit in my computer chair and do stuff.
5) Not letting Jack die at the end, I don't know, just seemed, cartoonish, and dishonouring to Jack. Same goes for Isaac, to a lesser degree; Maybe he is essentially dead, back to being a 'normal' person, if you can call living with 'Leroy' normal. The entire epilog concerning Leroy and Jack can safely be cut from the text; actually the epilogs as a whole weren't up to par with the rest of the series(although the first one made sense of Isaac's coming-back.) I think the System of the World is better without it.
I read Eastern Standard Tribe(cory doctorow) while I was digging through this series; and it was a lot more concentrated, an exciting novel start to finish, but only 100 pages. Stephenson had excitement, had me glued to the books for long hours unable to put them down, although there was defintitely a lot of scenery; not all that exciting stuff but stuff that makes this something of a cultural monolith, an acheivment of our age, in a way Eastern Standard Tribe was not. There's a lot of work that went into making this as historically meaningful as it was; and I enjoyed that, I think, more than anything I had read prior to 2002, definitely. When I think back to my favourite book in 2000-2001, the mageborn traitor, and the books in that series by Melanie Rawn; to some extent I think they share a lot in common with The Baroque Cycle; both series tell the story from both the sides of the hero and villain, to the point where there isn't really a villain(except the french), a rich worldbuilding, and probably a lot more I just don't have words for.
All that being said though, it had to be good, otherwise I'd never had read all 3,000 odd pages. Best non cyberpunk book from a cyberpunk author, ever.
It is a trip through the physical and intellectual world of 1650-1700, stopping by at various significant milestones towards civilization and enlightenment. If anything it's one of the closest things I've seen that so explicitly deals with the topic of enlightenment; keep in mind the whole reason for me being in university in the first place is to attain enlightenment, so any treatise, even under the thin guise of fiction, that deals with this topic is probably important for me to suck up. And where does enlightenment come from in the book? Various places; but stated most explicitly it came from Coca(?). Yes there was Revolution, abolition of slavery, Science(although I'm not sure it was really called such), Reason, the application of Reason over Religion and Arbitrary State Rule, but the real visionaries were essentially stoned. This was definitely intentional.
I can't imagine rereading it, just because of the sheer amount of effort that would be involved. Maybe in 50 years.
I'm not sure.
Anyway, part of me wants to read non-Calculus things for the first time in awhile; But the reason that I read so much calculus is that I put off actually doing the excersizes while I read ahead and actually learned the material. Now I'm going back and doing the excersizes(again, and again...). Another part of me wants to jump ahead and do MacroEcon and EcologicalEcon stuff now that I'm about to take summer classes on these topics. Might be a good idea to get ahead of things before my time crunches into a little ball of null.
Another part of me is completely out of sync with the world around me. It is way too hot during the day to actually think effectively, but this is when I'm awake(due to a combination of meirionwen, work, and some minor causes). This is problematic; since I want to stay up during the night to be productive, but am torn between being productive and sleeping hours that are in sync with my surroundings. Like last summer I'm starting to fall into the rut of getting nothing done, sleeping twice as much as I should be, and just drooling in the heat, because during the extreme heat of the dailight hours drooling and staring is about all I'm capable of. That and I think the heat makes me less willing to eat; and not eating leads to some sort of biochemical induced depression... I just can't sustain my hatred and anger through this goddamn heat. Giving up is becoming attractive, and 100-200 hour fantasy excapes aren't really making things too much better...or is it? I am really running out of interesting things to talk about. Calculus just isn't cutting it. I'm drying up as an interesting person to talk to.
Somehow a draft of this got posted as it's own post. nm.