Pros: Stephenson builds a gothic cathedral of a book
Cons: It falls down
The Bottom Line: Cut your teeth on a shorter Stephenson work, then decide if you're ready to take this long strange trip with him. Know that the ending stinks.
chaospump's Full Review: Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon
the quick and dirty:
Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon is a thousand pages of his agile, informative, thought-provoking, and frequently hilarious digressions. Unfortunately, this leaves only about a hundred-fifty pages for a story to digress from. And he used that hundred and fifty pretty poorly.
The book’s pace is generally fitful, and Stephenson’s temporal hopscotch would get confusing if there were much more story going on. He has a sometimes frustrating habit of setting up intriguing scenes, only to abandon them, and return after the fact with an unsatisfactorily brief blurb-like account. Several times, he introduces intriguing characters and events which demand further exposition, clarification, and resolution, which he fails to deliver.
The plot elements often seem awkward and forced, and toward the end of the book, this tendency becomes frustratingly rampant.
But Stephenson keeps me loyal despite his flaws, once again. He delivers insights historical, political, philosophical, economic, mathematical and cryptological; and his prose never fails to epiphanize entertainingly.
I would definitely not recommend this as a first try at a Neal Stephenson book, but for those who are familiar with him, and willing to overlook his little (and not-so-little) foibles, it will not disappoint.
the long and rambling:
Stephenson has made a name for himself in the cyberpunk subgenre of sci-fi. Here he moves away from that realm; Cryptonomicon is not speculative fiction, but a historical fiction/adventure novel with two threads which come together (sort of) at the end.
The stories center around two generations of the Shaftoe and Waterhouse families, and vast quantities of ill-gotten Japanese and German gold hidden in the Philippines toward the end of WWII. The elder Shaftoe and Waterhouse are both involved in the Allied cryptology effort, and their story is full of fascinating details. Sergeant Shaftoe is a gung-ho Marine, and a composer of haikus. Waterhouse is a mathematician, involved in code breaking, and also in the development of computers, which was in many ways a direct result of the crypto-battle.
Many historians today seem to concur with Stephenson that if you had to pick one crucial thing that won the war for the allies, it would have to be the successful battle of crypto fought primarily by British and American crypto-warriors – most crucially mathematicians.
The descriptions of battle and background, in the Pacific theater, and the submarine war beneath the Atlantic, are rich and believable, and Stephenson addresses Philippine culture and history with Micheneresque thoroughness.
Critics often seem to compare the chameleon-like Stephenson with other notable writers, and I’m no exception. In this book he’s also added a bit of Raymond Chandler style descriptiveness that I really enjoyed.
Waterhouse’s grandson Randy and Shaftoe’s granddaughter Amy (America) will end up as love interests, brought together in a coincidence that seems odd, but not unbelievable; by the same loot that their grandparents once plotted to grab. He’s a programmer-partner with a telecommunications venture, she runs a survey and salvage operation with her Dad, Douglas Macarthur Shaftoe, in the Philippines.
As usual, even Stephenson’s minor characters are interesting and alive. The principals quickly become familiar friends, and despite my annoyance with the plot problems, I retained my empathy for and curiosity about them throughout.
But annoyance there surely was, and especially in the last hundred pages or so.
I knew from reading Snow Crash that Stephenson can have trouble with endings. Other Epinions reviewers warned me that Cryptonomicon would not exhibit improvement in that regard. So I thought I was prepared, but, I wasn’t.
Snow Crash just ended abruptly, without the required resolution of major plot threads. Cryptonomicon doesn’t really end at all; it sort of disintegrates. Events which had stagnated for hundreds of pages suddenly acquire breakneck speed. Characters set up as threatening antagonists over long stretches of narrative suddenly evaporate, while new threats materialize seemingly from nowhere, without the requisite background to make their actions comprehensible. In the end, the good guys triumph. But I’m not being vague to avoid a spoiler; that’s about all I really found out.
So why do I remain a Stephenson fan? Because he doubles up on that old saying, “Getting there is half the fun.” Stephenson is just a riot to read, and in the end, well, I don’t care that much about the ending.
Stephenson is brilliant and witty and thoughtful and challenging. Whatever philosophy comes through his writing seems to me very rational and compassionate, and I guess I’m especially drawn to his writing because of that.
In one passage that sticks in my mind, he advances the view that reason we won WWII, and the reason we should have, was because we served Athena, while the Axis powers served Ares. Ares is the god (or cultural symbol) of violent, chaotic conflict, of the sword, of brute force. Athena is the goddess (or cultural symbol) of wisdom and restraint in conflict; she carries Aegis, the shield. Stephenson’s view that the Athenian values of restraint, of wisdom, of compassion, will prove more invincible as technology advances is a hopeful one, if perhaps a slender, shaky sapling. He thinks art and science alike flourish best in an environment of freedom and tolerance and restraint, and such an atmosphere will be necessary for nations to compete militarily or economically in the future. He may actually be right; I hope so.
So, I’m going to keep reading Neal Stephenson, for his characters, his language and his outlook. But I do hope he gets better with plotting and closure.
The adult grandchildren of two men once involved in code-breaking espionage in World War II find a sunken Nazi submarine that reveals a massive conspi...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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