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Book Review: Quicksilver February 1, 2008
Note: This is book 5 of my 52 Books in 52 Weeks Challenge
I think it's official: I hate Neil Stephenson. I hated his so called cyberpunk classic Snow Crash --a fact that sets me apart from most of the nerdegalian-- and I really hated Quicksilver.
Quicksilver is kind of hard to classify, if you in fact insist on classifying it. It's kind of historical fiction in that it's set in the 17th and 18th century and follows the rise of empiricism and science. It features real people from that period, like Isaac Newton, Gotfried Leibniz, Robert Boyle, Robert Hook, King Louis XIV, and others. But the "fiction" part of "historical fiction" comes into play because the main characters --an aspiring natural philosopher (read: scientist) named Daniel Waterhouse, a former concubine turned finance tycoon named Eliza, and a charming vagabond named Jack Shaftoe-- never really existed and were fabricated for the sake of the book, which traces the activities of these three main characters as they live through the era.
The main problem I have with Quicksilver was that it was largely plotless. I kept waiting for something to happen or some plot to coalesce out of the noise, but it didn't. The characters are really just there to give Stephenson an excuse to carry on about the development of science as a discipline, the ephemeral nature of money, and pirates --sometimes all three in the same passage. There's no narrative, just a seemingly endless burbling of scenes --the damn thing is nearly 1,000 pages long, and I READ the paper version of this one. I actually kind of liked the some of the parts with struggling scientist Daniel Waterhouse the best, because the history of science interests me, but even these moments of engagement were covered up by obscure details and diversions that were like overgrown plants in a sprawling garden.
In fact, the whole book is bloated with details about experiments, geneologies, dissertations on stock markets, battles, family histories, and other verbal flotsam that it made it downright hard to read the book and impossible to enjoy. I get the impression that Stephenson gorged himself on research for the book, and then decided to use it all --every last syllable-- no matter what hellacious effect it has on the narrative or the goal of actually telling an interesting story. Quicksilver may be more entertaining than a high school textbook on the same topics, but only marginally.
And the thing is that it's only the first THIRD of a trilogy, plus a tie-in to Stpehnons's book Cryptonomicon. What's worse is that I went ahead and picked up the other books in hardback, though I did so at a thrift store and only set myself back a total of like three bucks. I think I'm just gonna eat that cost and not even think about picking them up, given how much I disliked Quicksilver. Life is too short.
Others doing the 52-in-52 this week:
- Jeremy reviews Y-The Last Man by Brain K Vaughan
- Heliologue reviews Thomas Pain's the Rights of Man by Christopher Hitchens, The Big Con by Jonathan Chait, and History of the Millenium (So Far) by Dave Berry
- Natasha reviews What is What by Dave Eggers and Rules by Cynthia Lord
- Kevin reviews Diamonds are Forever by Ian Flemming
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Tags: Book Review, Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver, The Baroque Cycle
Comments
Posted by Heliologue on February 1, 2008 9:28 AM:
I read Cryptonomicon which was kind of good, but infinitely slow and ponderous. Stephenson's a bit like Stephen King in this regard, in that he writes stuff simply for the sake of writing it. I've got one of these Baroque Cycle books, but I doubt I'll ever get around to reading it.
Posted by Jamie on February 2, 2008 6:54 AM:
I dunno, I read a lot of King and like him quite a bit in a guilty pleasure kind of way. At least things happen in King's stuff, and his MO is to putter around for a few hundred pages establishing characters and mysteries, then have everything explode in the last quarter of the book. Stephenson just puttered from cover to cover.
Posted by Laura on February 2, 2008 8:32 AM:
What was it you disliked so much about Snow Crash? A friend said I should borrow his copy, and I'm maybe 100 pages in, but it's been sitting on my night stand for a couple months now. That's mostly because I've been busy but also because it hasn't managed to grab me in 100 pages. I've been debating whether or not to finish it. Would you mind shedding some light? Thanks!
Posted by Jamie on February 4, 2008 10:22 AM:
It's been a while since I tried to read Snow Crash, but I remember a few strong impressions. First, it was very imaginative. That's good. Second, though, I remember getting really annoyed that Stephenson just talked about this incredible technology as a matter of fact, saying "She used her BLAH BLAH BLAH to BLEH BLEH BLEH" and never explained what exactly a BLAH was in the first place or what BLEH'ing was. It was really distracting and made it hard to follow because my mind kept going "Wait, what was that? What did she do? What just happened?" No amount of re-reading helped. I'm told this is a staple of the cyberpunk genre, but that doesn't help me.
I also remember a good deal of the same things that I disliked about Quicksilver: Lots of pointless narration and exposition and stuff that didn't matter. I guess I just don't like Stephenson's style.
Posted by Eric on February 13, 2008 9:48 AM:
I must admit I hated Quicksilver the first time I read it. I couldn't figure out where it was going. For some reason I picked up the second book and suddenly I had a story. The series has become one of my favorites. I am in the process of rereading Quicksilver to see what I missed now that I understand the big picture. I still find the first 100 pages when Daniel is in Boston and on his way to England a bit tough to get through but I seem to remember that the book picks up considerably after that segment.