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September 24, 2004

My Favorite Unit Of Entertainment Product, 2004

The Earl of Upnor, The King of the Vagabonds, and my
infatuation with Neal Stephenson’s The Baroque Cycle

Some four days prior to the lay-down date of The System of the
World, the third volume of Neal Stephenson’s gargantuan (a scant
2,704 pages) The Baroque Cycle, I’ve taken a better-to-have-it-
and-not-need-it decision on how I plan to consume the book:
upon completion, I will proceed directly back to the beginning of
the first book in the trilogy, Quicksilver, and plow my way through
all three volumes a second time. So great is my anxiety about this
saga and these characters disappearing forever (barring some of
sort Star Wars-style resurrection twenty years hence; but I know
better – only EXTREMELY profitable entertainment franchises can
indulge in that sort of longevity, and thousand-page books set at
the turn of the eighteenth century ain’t that kind of profitable)
that I’ve been forced to make this pact with myself.

It’s really the only way.

In case you skipped them, the first two books of The Baroque
Cycle thread together amply detailed helpings of history, finance,
philosophy, diplomacy, war, alchemy, colonialism, fencing, sexually
transmitted diseases (both acquisition and treatment), public
executions, globalization, technology, courtesan fashion, money,
the development of national banking systems, religion, maritime
navigation, medicine, shipbuilding, cuisine, slavery, calculus, higher
education, romance, revenge, true love, and general
swashbuckling into an engaging and, in all fairness, addictive
achievement of fiction. About midway through the first novel, I
began to feel self-conscious about how much I was enjoying
(gasp!) historical fiction – and something of a bodice-ripper at
that! About 300 pages into the second novel, The Confusion, I
realized that it was actually worse than I had thought: I wasn’t
just gushing about historical fiction, I was in fact obsessed with a
freakin’ PIRATE STORY.

It’s a curious thing, my infatuation with these stories, and one
that most certainly flatters Neal Stephenson as a writer. The
elevator pitch on The Baroque Cycle didn’t exactly set me a-
tingle. This was an author known for ultra-detailed techno-thriller
adventure stories with a feel for language and a sly sense of
humor. Previous novels tackled cyberspace (Snow Crash),
nanotechnology (The Diamond Age), and cryptography
(Cryptonomicon). Historical fiction set in the eighteenth century?
The part about the invention of calculus seemed to make sense
(in the context of his fabulous take on the origins of cryptography
and computers in Cryptonomicon), but European royal court life?
The Glorious Revolution? Coinage? And he wrote three (3) of
these things, each close to a thousand pages long?

And he pulls it off. Strike that. He doesn’t pull it off – he gets it
so precisely right that you start to think you’re a little crazy for
liking it so much. It can’t really be this good, you think. It’s a
pirate story. Yup. A pirate story AND THEN SOME – one that has
turned out to be my Most Favorite Unit (or, rather, three units)
of Entertainment Product, 2004. I could pitch you on why
these books are insanely intelligent, offer some insights on select
themes, and even try to rend some greater meaning out of The
Baroque Cycle, but that’s all poppycock. (Also, it’s tackled by folks
far more adept with the vocabulary of literary analysis than I.) I
just want to sell you on why you’ll enjoy the hell out of these
books, and why they deliver as outstanding consumer
products:

The Genius in the Details: perhaps it’s worth getting this out of
the way right off – my enthusiasm for The Baroque Cycle is in no
small way a consequence of my rather, shall we say, ahem,
bookish tastes. I read non-fiction books. Late-night TV might
mean the Discovery Times channel. I have an Atlantic Monthly
subscription. So I am confessing to a predisposition to enjoying
meandering tangents regarding favored execution techniques of
the Barbary corsairs, the mechanisms of primitive financial market
manipulation, and European court fashion trends. I understand
that this isn’t for everyone. But if you’re so inclined, these books
are fabulous. You actually begin to believe that you can take his
pages of details as historical fact and start holding court as an
expert on any number of aspects of daily life in Christendom (what
Europe called itself before it called itself Europe! See, there’s one
right there.) at the turn of the eighteenth century. So precise
and thick are the details that you almost begin to think it’s non-
fiction – if only because no one would go to the trouble to
actually make all that crap up. As a consumer, you get
swashbuckling adventure story AND charmingly interesting non-
fiction volume all in one! Thought it’s worth noting that 90
percent of the facts could be complete hogwash for all I know;
short of a Ph.D. in Eighteenth Century European and World
History, I really have no idea how one would go about verifying
this stuff. Though (of course) in the acknowledgments
Stephenson is good enough to point you towards “Sir Winston
Spencer Churchill’s six-volume biography of Marlborough, which
people who are really interested in this period of history should
read, and people who think that I am too long-winded should
weigh.” Right. We’ll take your word for it.

Haven’t We Met Before: in Cryptonomicon, the characters in
the present-day story shared names with the folks in the World
War II flashback. With The Baroque Cycle, Stephenson has done
himself one better, by importing the names from Cryptonomicon
wholesale into each of the stories. Thus we have eighteenth
century namesakes for most of the folks and places from
Cryptonomicon – a Shaftoe or two, a Waterhouse, Enoch Root (a
bizarre and ghostly creature whom I think is the exact same dude
from the previous book – something about him not aging and
wandering through history…or something), Comstocks, Qwghlm
(pronounced…, um, I have no idea, and I’ve been reading that
word for the better part of 3,000 pages at this point),
Hacklheber, Goto, etc etc. What’s better – the characters and
places all share attributes with their cousins (or descendents, or
ancestors, or whatever) from the previous story. Cheers to Neal
Stephenson for giving us just a little bit of help finding our
bearings in the midst of this monster!

Phunky and Phantastykal Spelling: the actual text is written
in a nod-and-a-wink period style (one might even say Baroque!)
with all sorts of awkward phrasing and spellings – and not just the
dialogue, but the actual text. Of particular note is his clever
deployment of “ph” in the place of “f” (whereas the verb “fancy”
becomes “phant’sy”) and well as a cheery proclivity for adding “k”’
s either on the tail end of “c”’s or in their place altogether (see
“philosopick” and “mechanickal”). Like with most other things in
the novel, I shall assume that this is all a result of tedious and
thorough research into the etymology of our current vocabulary
as well as the state of language during the period in which the
tale takes place. Also, it affirms what the rest of the text implies
– that this guy has a passion and gift for language and the
minutiae of words and letters.

Action Scenes That Would Make Hollywood Drool: despite
the fact that you’ll never see a movie version of these stories
(more on that later), the action scenes and set pieces are flat-out
phenomenal – Errol Flynn meets Raiders of the Lost Ark meets
Braveheart, with a little eighties-style Die Hard humor tossed in to
make it all sing. Not only are the set pieces brilliantly staged, but
they almost unfailingly end with a clever comic-relief one-liner,
especially when particularly odious villains are punished. I wouldn’t
want to give too much away, but I will say that the scene in the
Khan el-Khalili in Cairo in The Confusion was pretty much the most
satisfying action sequence I had seen/ read/ encountered, ever.
That is, at least, until about 100 pages later in the same novel.
When I first read said passage, I literally put the book down and
smiled contentedly for a few minutes before continuing. I could
not have been more pleased with the way this scene went. I
really, really don’t want to give anything away, but I’m desperate
to include this quote (the one that makes me smile every time I
re-read it, though it’s not the best one, but to include the best
one would ruin the whole scene) and then I promise I’ll stop:

“You have responsibilities now, Bob. You must lose this naïve
understanding of violence! You are embarassin’ me in front of the
lads! You can’t play by their rules or they’ll win unfailingly! You
don’t engage in courtly play-fightin’ with one such as this. You
get a great friggin’ tree-branch and keep hittin’ him with it until
he dies. Like that. D’you see, boys?”

Everybody Wants It; That’s Why They Call It Money:
although far more expansive in size and scope than
Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle does tackle and add to the big
theme from Cryptonomicon: the fiction of money. And whereas
Cryptonomicon imagined where money might be going in the
future, The Baroque Cycle traces the origins of nifty features of
modern finance like central banks, financial markets, equity capital,
debt markets, taxation, and the challenges of international
commerce in the absence of commonly agreed-upon currencies.
One of the marks of truly gifted minds is the ability to digest
things that we all take for granted and recast them in different
terms – terms that reveal their essence and offer insights into
why the world looks the way it does. By asking Why about the
things the rest of us have long since stopped noticing,
Stephenson is able to walk us through beautifully simple and clear
explanations of pretty complicated topics – and leaves us nodding
our heads, feeling smarter for having read him.

PGOAT, 18th-Century Edition: an argument can be made that
Neal Stephenson hadn’t ever written a well-rounded adult female
character (not an uncommon feature of techno-fiction), which, in
certain circles, ends up being extended to mean that he isn’t
terribly sophisticated and might be borderline misogynist. Raise
your hand if you felt that the women in Cryptonomicon were sort
of embarrassing evidence of some sort of recent divorce or
separation in Stephenson’s life. Well, he is now officially off the
hook, for he has given us Eliza, Duchess of Qwghlm, pretty much
the most beautiful, brilliant, clever, amazing woman ever. In
addition to manipulating financial markets and fighting to end
slavery, she manages to shape politics across Europe, have
amazing children, exchange clever letters with some of the
smartest dudes ever, and pine for our hero, with whom (for
reasons that I shan’t reveal) she can never actually consummate
her affections (SIGH!). Mostly you end up falling in love with
Eliza. Consider yourself warned.

The Imp of the Perverse: after Baroque Cycle Action Hero Jack
Shaftoe (that would be Half-Cocked Jack Shaftoe, L’Emmerdeur,
the King of the Vagabonds, Ali Zayback) contracts syphilis (a.k.a.
“French Pox”) and goes completely crazy but then becomes sane
again yet still retains a proclivity for crazed thoughts and bizarre
deeds, he starts blaming his more erratic decisions and
predicaments on “The Imp of the Perverse.” He imagines said
Imp of the Perverse to be a sort of gremlin guardian angel with a
nasty sense of humor that follows him around and nudges him
towards foolish (yet usually brave) actions because the Imp finds
Jack’s suffering to be amusing. I just like the idea of blaming my
own bad decisions on the Imp of the Perverse. Give it a whirl: “I
can’t believe I _____ last night! Must’ve been that pesky Imp of
the Perverse!” I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Old-Timey Medicine: when we think about how cool it is to get
to live at the beginning of the twenty-first century, we tend to
get caught up in things like the Internet, contact lenses, and
affordable air travel. Things we don’t tend to think about too
much include clean water, a general understanding of the virtues
of cleanliness, and the state of modern medicine. Wow. You did
NOT want to be getting sick in the eighteenth century. Surely
STDs, and specifically HIV, are a scourge for the world today, but
at least we have some tools for their prevention and treatment.
Stephenson is generous with his descriptions of the ravages of
the French Pox (syphilis) – both physical and mental. Apparently
there were lots of folks back then (including most of Christendom’
s royalty) walking the streets with some serious physical
deformities and scars due to various (hideous) diseases and their
nasty aftereffects. For those lucky enough to get treatment,
most times this meant a good bleeding (yikes!). For the luckiest
(those who happened to be friends with Robert Hooke, the guy
who figured out cells), you could actually get a proper operation if
need be – only one without anesthesia and performed with
butcher tools. I just hope that if I’m ever Cut For The Stone,
they have something better than moonshine rotgut to get me
through it.

Weapons Selection That Few Videogames Can Match:
remember being dragged to an art museum on a school trip as a
ten-year-old? For the most part, pretty boring stuff, though
surely it was doing much to add to our overall sophistication and
culture quotients. After suffering through gallery after gallery of
paintings and sculptures, what was the highlight of the school trip
to the art museum? Arms and Armaments. That’s right. The
room with all the swords and armor and shields and spears and
other accessories from our adventure stories and fairy tales. I’m
somewhat ashamed to admit that The Baroque Cycle has actually
motivated me to spend time in the Arms and Armaments room
again. The descriptions of the various swords and edged
weapons in these stories borders on the fetishistic – and they
completely rock. Said descriptions include (but surely are not
limited to) spadroons, rapiers, cutlasses, samurai swords (“a sort of
queer two-handed scimitar of Nipponese manufacture”), cavalry
sabers, small swords, and of course, the Granddaddy of them all,
the Janissary sword. (Note: The Met does not have any Janissary
swords in its collection. I know. Total bullshit.)

Supercool Historical Figures: of course I understand that one
of the features of historical fiction is that the fictional characters
interact with well-known figures from history. Fair enough. But
the choice of folks who show up in feature roles and cameos in
The Baroque Cycle is just way cooler than average (or at least
way nerdier): Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, William of Orange,
Peter the Great (all seven feet tall of him), Blackbeard (!), Robert
Hooke, The Sun King, and even a seven-year-old (and terribly
clever) Ben Franklin. Let us also tip our cap to Mr. Stephenson for
having a character that walks around with a necklace made of the
beads that were traded for the island of Manhattan.

And The Best Part: unlike other glorious adventure stories that
were chopped up and transformed into major mass-entertainment
movie events, no one will ever, ever, ever make The Baroque
Cycle into a film. Never. Too much story, too many nerdy
characters, and too much of the appeal is buried in the minutiae
of the writing. Sure, you could extract the Jack and Eliza parts
and make some sort of romance adventure out of it, but not
really, since they don’t actually spend so much time together.
Thus you can read and re-read these books without having to
worry about them being sullied by some hack attempt to fashion a
lame two-hour action movie out of them, including hideous
casting decisions (who could play Eliza? Who? Tell me who?).
But the books aren’t going anywhere – and they’re not going to
get worse with age. These things are keepers.

Like I said, it’s really the only way.

******

Also on my list of Favorite Units of Entertainment Product,
2004:
Winning Eleven International 7, Konami Games
The Secret Machines, Now Here is Nowhere
City of God on DVD
Spiderman 2 in the theaters
Kanye West, The College Dropout
NFL Football

Posted by thatkid at September 24, 2004 7:05 PM under Stuff To Buy

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