Devil's advocate in Slate comments

[loathsome toad]

> See, I've always felt that Cryptonomicon was a watered down attempt
> by
> Stephenson as a wanna-be Pynchon to write a GR.  I think Matthew's
> comment there about sums it up for me as well.
> 
> On 7/20/06, Matthew Ryan <matthew.ryan at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > If you want to read the book that Gravity's Rainbow aspired to
> be, read Neal
> > Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, for it has many of the same concerns,
> it covers
> > the same period and theatre of operations, and it is a much
> better crafted
> > book.

Not bloody likely! Stephenson has had a couple very good books
(Snow Crash, The Diamond Age), but has a major problem in all
of them: endings. Stephenson seems to have no idea how to end 
a novel; about 3/4 the way through the book he seems to lose 
interest or cannot adequately tie the strands of the preceding
pages together in a satisfying way. Crptonomicon has such a bad 
Hollywood ending (even a happy love-story resolution) that it 
utterly ruined the preceding pages for me. Stephenson's prose 
is nicely transparent, but he is not a stylist........and 
certainly no Thomas Pynchon.

In actuality, there are many authors who seem to have difficulty
finishing their novels in an aesthetically satisfying way, so
perhaps it is not fair to single Stephenson out.

Comparing Stephenson to Pynchon is like comparing Genesis to
King Crimson or comparing U2 to Joy Division.  ;)

tired,

bill2




"The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers." ___ W. S. B.

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