Neal Stephenson as 'Pynchon-lite'

[Paul Mackin]

I had a reaction much like that of Kevin. After about a hundred pages I
handed the  book to a visiting friend and told him not to return it
to me under any circumstances. Never heard whether he'd gotten any further
with it than I did.

Yes, read the Hodges' bio of Turing and a lot of other good accounts of
these admittedly exciting goings on. 

Don't know how much of a problem it is for people who didn't live through
these exciting events as I did but Stephenson's writing has very little
verisimilitude about it. He doesn't even bother to get the
contemporary names of well known institutions such as banks,
etc. correctly. Must have done zilch by way of research. These are the
areas in which Pynchon of course shines.

			P.

On Mon, 8 May 2000, Kevin Troy wrote:

> The problem with the _Cryptonomicon_, in a nutshell, is it comes across as
> a rude combination/ summarization of the historical and techinical texts
> that it's based on.  One could probably get more enjoyment out of reading
> non-fictional accounts of early computing, code-breaking, WWII commando
> actions, and modern-day e-ventures than from reading the _Cryptonomicon_.
> (At least, I did.)  As for the "hacker" scenes, I won't say that you would
> _enjoy_ reading a UNIX for Dummies-type book more, but it might be equally
> interesting.
> 
> In _GR_, Pynchon transcends his source material; it is merely serves as a
> backdrop for a story he's telling.  The same thing goes for, say, the
> Jacobean theater stuff in _Lot 49_, the Baedeker's junk in _V._, or the
> references to pop culure in _VL_.
> 
> There is some good stuff in _The Cryptonomicon_, but it's very, very
> little of the entire text.  Stephenson seems more comfortable writing
> off-the-wall, fantastic stuff like _Snow Crash_.  He also seems more
> comfortable writing in past tense, but he insists on at least trying to
> write _Cryptonomicon_ in the present tense, relying heavily on
> poorly-framed flashbacks to get the story across.
> 
> And he claims that it's the first installment of a trilogy.  Hopefully
> he'll take a very long time to write it, and even more to edit it, and get
> it right, this time.
> 
> Kevin Troy
> 
> "What a wretched piece of work do we seem to be making of it in America!"
> --Edward Gibbon, 1777
>