Salon Interview with Neal Stephenson 61
papertiger writes "Andrew Leonard has an interesting story,
Code, on Neal Stephenson.
He also has a FAQ on the book which is worth reading. " And I get to see Chris DiBonia today-who has my signed copy,
Re:Mugshot! Yes! (Score:1)
Stephen Bury- The Cobweb -
Stephen Bury- Interface -
both are excellent books Stephenson wrote under that psuedonym.
Re:Why Finux and not Linux? (Score:3)
Let's say he wants something similar-a OS made by a worldspaning megacompany, but without, say, the baggage of Microsoft being beseiged by DoJ, Linux, etc. So he calls it Ultrasoft RP, and he has most of the background there (most people will know what he's talking about), but he can change crucial details. He could say the RP kernel was created by a prodigy 10-yr old girl and was ripped away from her by said evil corporation, which is not (to the best of my knowledge) something you can say about NT. Calling Linux Finux allows Neal to take the essence of the concept and dress it up as he wants.
Dave*
Why Finux and not Linux? (Score:3)
Anyone have any ideas?
-Brett.
Pynchon and Stephenson (Score:1)
Please excuse the length of this post.
The critique of Pynchon above is one of the weakest of the dozens I have read. I urge all thinking persons to read Vineland or GR and find out for themselves. "Forced imagery?" Perhaps. And that damn Van Gogh, always with the heavy brushstrokes! What's up with that?
Reasons you might like Pynchon:
1) His books (since GR) are designed as nonlinear conceptual puzzles. They are difficult on purpose, but with a heavy payoff.
2) The structure of his writing is fractal, in the metaphorical sense obviously. Motifs are repeated across scales, with variation. He will suddenly "zoom in" on a detail to such a degree that it leaves you wondering why he'd bother - but remember it, because you'll need it later. Also, motifs/tropes emerge from each other in a seemingly dynamic fashion.
2.1) For this reason, while you are "inside" the structure, his stories seem very chaotic and confusing, but once the "big fractal" pops into relief, all of the various elements across scales "come into focus." This is art for people who think in terms of dynamical systems.
2.11) This (seeing the big fractal) is less true for GR, his most difficult (and rewarding) work. I have read it nearly a dozen times and am still apprehending parts of the overall structure.
3) He's hysterical, if you're smart enough to understand him.
4) At least in GR, he intentionally weeds out the weak early on. The entire first section ("Beyond the Zero," I think) is very dense, utterly nonlinear, and contains a "killer" section in the form of a really long boooooooring part followed by a couple extreme grossouts in close succession. Persevere, or skip to part 2, which is much easier to read, more fun and draws in the connections that let you understand part 1.
I always recommend Vineland first, especially to Americans, especially to West Coast or somewhat counterculture-ish Americans.
Now, Stephenson - he's OK. He didn't invent anything much though. He's obviously brilliant and is full of good ideas and great metaphors - I *love* the 4 car dealerships from "Command Line" - but he couldn't plot his way out of the proverbial wet paper bag. At least, that is his historical weakness. He tends to overflow with genius notions, and crams them all in the first 100 pages of his books; then he realizes he has to somehow make all this stuff *work* together as a story. It never does, and the endings of Snow Crash and Diamond Age are among the lamest I know. He's very witty and fluent, but he's like that programmer we all know who's writes great low-level code but doesn't have a clue how to design a large, functioning system. I enjoy skimming his books for the ideas and clever prose, but as *books* I have considered them all failures. Influential, interesting, fun failures, and at least he's posing worthwhile questions, but still...
It's a pleasure to see Vernor Vinge mentioned here. I would also recommend the later works of Philip K. Dick (the Valis trilogy et. al), especially to those of you who have referenced Illuminatus! (or if you enjoyed the metaphysical elements of The Matrix). Interesting discussion.
Cryptonomicon: What's Good and Bad? (Score:5)
Let me say first that I liked this book, and that I would definitely recommend it to those who've enjoyed Stephenson's other work. However, that doesn't mean I don't have problems with it, which I do. Here are a few impressions:
The editing, at least in this first printing, is nothing short of terrible. The book is full of typos; the FAQ-documented one in the middle of a Perl script is just the most technically relevant. Some are truly embarrassing -- using "damn" to mean "dam" in one place -- while others just look to be the sign of a lack of spell-checking.
Another example of poor editing is evident in the large portions of the book which are printed in a monospace (non-proportional) font, intended to resemble email or other computer text. Real email does not contain ligatures (those jammed-together "fi" and "fl" characters), and in a real monospace font, the spaces themselves are the same size as the letters.
Early in the book -- in the part excerpted on the Web page -- Stephenson commits the Bill Gates Crypto Error. This is my expression for referring to, in the context of crypto, "factoring large prime numbers", as Gates did in The Road Ahead. Naturally, it is very easy to factor large prime numbers; what is hard is to factor composite numbers which are the products of large primes. This is called "prime factorization", but the numbers being factored are most definitely composites.
Okay, enough of the technical bickering
In the light of Larry Wall's eminently reasonable adoption of the postmodern aesthetic in discussing Perl, the Net, and (post)modern culture, I find Stephenson's sniping at postmodernism to be rather silly. While his spoofs of academia -- as in the characters Charlene and Geb (that's G.E.B., as in Hofstadter's book) -- may well be deserved, he seems all too willing to sweep the postmodern under the rubric of the decadent, morally loose, and irrational. These are, ironically enough in a WWII novel, basically the same critiques that the Nazi regime made of "modern" (e.g. Picasso) art.
That's about all I can come up with right now -- oh, one other thing: How the fsck did Enoch Root come back to life?!
Stephenson and Postmodernism(s) (Score:5)
I for one think that calling Charlene postmodern is to confuse the issue. Charlene is intolerant and politically-correct, and uses her position as a scholar to mistreat Randy. Her intolerant breed of feminism is a good example of a "totalizing discourse", something that postmodernism tends to critique.*
Have you read "Perl, the first postmodern computer language" [perl.com]? While I think he makes some mistakes about Modernism, he can at least get the point out about postmodernism.
That we live in a postmodern world does not mean that we're not allowed to have opinions or be right or wrong. To me it means things like these:
(This is of course just a partial list. Any other people out there who think postmodernism has something useful to offer, please add to it.)
* Michel Foucault, a postmodern cultural critic if ever there was one, refers to perspectives that claim to understand the whole world as "totalizing discourses". Marxism is his classic example; a die-hard Marxist claims that all social phenomena can be explained completely in terms of economics. Charlene's warrior-feminism is a totalizing discourse which sees everything in terms of white male aggression. Foucault holds that totalizing discourses don't work.
Re:Cryptonomicon: What's Good and Bad? (Score:1)
I found the typos appalling to. My best guess is an proofreader who was paying a lot less attention toward the middle of the book than at the beginning.
Re:Cryptonomicon: What's Good and Bad? (Score:1)
Actually, I wouldn't characterise myself as especially postmodern either, just as someone who thinks that the junk that preceded the postmodernists wasn't any more useful. Going back to more rigourous philosophies would be an interesting trick, since I am unaware of any well defined philosophy that would genuinely qualify itself as rigourous (the sole exception being objectivism, which I can only qualify as a sick, twisted joke.)
Pomos aren't well described using simple declarative sentences. To say that postmodernism *is* something is almost always false, which seems to be exactly how most pomos like it. That can be frustrating, and it certainly makes it nearly impossible to say what postmodernism is, but then the same can be said of most philosophy and ALL literary criticism. To characterise it as anti-science (at least, as anymore anti-science than, say, the US Department of Defence) isn't really accurate. Ignorant of science, I might agree with that, but then so are probably the majority of
Certainly saying that pomos "object violently to those who disagree with them, because [they] despair of being able to resolve differences rationally" is a stereotyped canard. Have you ever seen rational arguments in any university department (the hard sciences NOT excluded)?
Reason has little to do with debate at the best of times. Try arguing that Linux is anything less than the greatest thing since sliced bread here on
Here's another important point you make: 'The postmodernists don't believe in "truth" or "reason", so how can you "reason" with someone with a different "belief system"?'
Do scientists believe in truth? In an absolute sense, the answer is a resounding NO. All science is tentative and subject to review. High-energy physics (my old line of work) takes for granted that someone, someday, somewhere will blow the whole apparatus of quantum theory and relativity out of the water.
Do scientists believe in reason? In the old Kantian sense, NO. Pure reason can't accomplish anything - there is no substitute for an instance of empirical results. Experiment and simple observation trump reason every time and arguments predicated on reason alone are viewed with deep suspicion. Hunches, on the other hand, are often quite well regarded, although they can never substitute for experimental results.
Stephenson is not ahead of the curve here. Ahead of the curve might have been noting modern trends in academia for what they are, a mixture of frauds looking for tenure and sincere researchers who, like most people, can't always get ahead of their prejudices. This is as true in a physics or economics department as in sociology or ethnic studies. (Actually, I'd say it was most true in economics - I have never seen more intolerance than in an Ivy League Econ department.) Slagging academia is behind the curve - Sokal was there five years ago and he at was attacking those who were plainly frauds instead of painting whole bodies of thought as intolerant.
This is not said to provide any comfort to those who treat Lacan as anything but a fraud, or who expect much out of Derrida other than that he share his drugs. I don't think highly of postmodern theory, but I got there by trying to find out what the principles had actually said (when they were comprehensible at all). And there is much to be admired and considered there, as well as a lot of crap. And, as another
Re:Cryptonomicon: What's Good and Bad? (Score:1)
How should one construct a philosophical system when everyone in history who has claimed to be right on any basis other than empiricism has ultimately proven to be horribly, horribly wrong?
The only conclusion I can draw is that any attempt to devise such a philosophy would probably lead to anarchic confusion as each party was forced to investigate their own prejudices before attempting to make sense of phenomena - which strikes me as the perfect description of postmodernism.
Literary criticism, or even cultural analysis, lends itself poorly to empirical analysis. Postmodernism has served literary studies fairly well. It is broad-based, tolerant, and evades the fallacy of objectivism that haunted the incredibly useless structuralism that preceded it. I'm still very fond of Bakhtin (bless his Trotskyist heart), even when I don't agree with him. Foucault is reasonable when he's awake. Saussure is often claimed by postmodernists (I wonder what he would think of that) as is Roman Jakobson, and both are, IMHO, rightly well regarded for very scientific analyses of language as well as somewhat more amorphous analyses of semiotics.
Cultural studies are nearly impossible when someone believes their world view to be so right that anyone else's is just silly native superstition. This was what the cultural wing of the postmodernist camp was rebelling against. When you can't ever objectively look at another society, what options do you have outside of some sort of crypto-postmodernism?
Now, the wrong conclusion to draw form this is that reality itself is a product of how you think about it. That is bunk, and some postmodernists do press that point of view. That is antithetical to the scientific method.
Science does have a way of resolving its conflicts, but the humanites and some of the social sciences never really have, and in that context postmodernism makes a lot of sense, in broad outlines if not specifics. I rail against scum like Latour and Lacan as hard as the next guy when they pass of a lot of nonsense as wisdom, and they are usually at their worst when they talk about the sciences. But I can't quite go from the Typhoid Marys of the French Disease to saying that pomo is essentially anti-science. That Latour is, sure.
But who among the structuralists, or their 19th century predecessors was doing better? Nietzsche? Marx (who would probably have hated the pomos)? Hegel? The era's largely forgotten French philosophers? Confusius? Calvin (please, dear God, don't let Calvinism become fashionable)? Each had their own version of absolute truth that was completely unable to stand the test of empiricism. At best, their systems were axiomatic and therefore of no importance.
There are some classics of philosophy that are worth the trouble of understanding, I don't mean to reject the previous 4000 years of thought, but those are not usually the things people disagree about. I can't remember that last time I heard an argument over Cartesiansim outside of linguistics. The existence of God is something of a nonsequiter. Human liberty and political science is just as ill-suited to empiricism. Economics has its own problems. No, the postmodernists are dealing with a confusing world at least as well as their predecessors, in part by admitting that it's confusing.
The pomos are pretty harmless and occaisionally, when sufficiently modest and aware of their limitations, make important observations. Like every other movement in history, they have plenty of tenured cranks and extremists, and they are embarassed by them, but the replacement of postmoderism by one of its predecessors is unlikely at best, and I suspect undesireable.
The Diamond Age described a future that has gone back, sort of, to an earlier set of values. However, this too is revealed to be a lot less than utopian, and not always a good idea. I already put far more of my time than I like in a cubicle, working for a company with no vested interest in my well being, it would be worse to be forced to spend time in the company church and put my children in the company school in order to keep my privileges. The Neo-Victorians struck me as a very unpleasant society to live in. They didn't strike me as having much at all to do with common sense, rather they were the expression of a society tired of having to think about what values they ought to have and whether other people had the right to their own values. Instead, they substituted a complex social structure that was no more than a cultural invention, not because it was right but because they thought they needed to believe in something, even if they didn't know what.
I am reminded of a remark in Stephenson's online essay ("In the beginning there was the comand line" - I'm too lazy to look it up). Paraphrasing: people still believe there is an absolute right and wrong, even if they think that they have to tolerate other people's ideas of right and wrong to survive. That may well be true, but it doesn't make one set of values right and another wrong. It means that people have to have a sense of right and wrong, even if there is no way of objectively determining who is right against some absolute set of values.
That idea doesn't seem to me to contradict any of the non-lunatic parts of the postmodern world. Indeed, it seems to validate many of them.
Kinda ho-hum stuff (Score:2)
What's missing seems to be a subtext. Snow Crash has a brilliant assault on the libertarian anti-utopia. Diamond Age attacks the 20th century's whole idea of cultural progress, suggesting it's an illusion altogether. Interface slags the process of packaging candidates and selling them like underarm deodorant, adding a few very 90's tricks to this otherwise kind of tired topic. Even Zodiac trashes the softer minded part of the environmental movement. But what is the subtext of Cryptonomicon? I don't know. I hope it's not his weak and insipid attacks on postmodernism. I know, it can be fun, but flamming a pomo is like eating Chinese food: at first you're satisfied, but a few minutes later you want another one. Honestly, we've all been there, and Alan Sokal did it better.
If I want to read WWII historical fiction, I can read a Mitchner novel, and the world of high-tech start-ups is already a little too heavily chronicled. So what is this book for? What does this book have to say that takes 900 pages? At page 650, I have yet to figure it out.
I don't feel that I wasted my $25 getting this book, but I learned little, and I can't say it's made me think. The book may be a commercial sucess, but I can't call it an artistic one. It's well crafted so far, which is pretty good for the Stephenson who seemed to have such a hard time bringing the Diamond Age to a satisfying close.
I really like Stephenson, I have since I bought Zodiac on a lark in train station years ago. He's going where others aren't, and I appreciate that. But he's not Pynchon, at least not yet.
This interview didn't seem to cover any new ground either, except to confirm that he has a background in tech. Salon is a big enough deal that they should be able to keep his attention long enough for a good interview.
`Novel' way to avoid export controls? (Score:2)
After reading the decision [epic.org] on the Bernstein case (see the /. article [slashdot.org] for a refresher), the typo in Stephenson's book struck me as a perfect defense.
The decision refers to the Government's claim that the functional aspects of crypto override any First-Amendment issues. (See pp. 4235, 4236, 4238n., and the dissent on pp. 4246ff.) Thus, we can export the first edition of Cryptonomicon in machine-readable form, free of obnoxious restraints, precisely because it doesn't function. A comment on the code would be nice, or a pointer to the errata, but if the code don't work, the Government can't claim it's crypto!
Any takers? :-)
Re:Mugshot! Yes! (Score:1)
Neal on ZDTV (Score:1)
Re:Yes, but not what you think... (Score:1)
Re:Cryptonomicon: What's Good and Bad? (Score:1)
Re:Uh.......... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Andrew Leonard (Score:1)
However, this was not one of his finer columns. You win some, you lose some.
Re:Nope, not at all (Score:1)
Uh.......... (Score:2)
Re:What is your fascination with Pynchon (Score:1)
The Crypto in Cryptonomicon (Score:3)
Re:Cryptonomicon: What's Good and Bad? (Score:1)
I don't think you're right, though. Not being a mathematician, I can't catagorically say that you are incorrect, but it seems to me that your proposition requires infinite precision. That's the point. Your string can never be more than an approximation to PI because infinite precision is impossible.
Re:Cryptonomicon: What's Good and Bad? (Score:1)
Re:Cryptonomicon: What's Good and Bad? (Score:3)
As far as vague impressions go, I distinctly got the feeling that this book was overambitious. Stephenson has got some great ideas, and he excells at constructing an intriguing plot, but his departure from the more blatant SF style of his previous books revealed his literary awkwardness, IMHO. He writes text like one might write code. Functionality is dominant, but he surrounds it with a lot of
What I think seperates this book from "literature" in my mind -- fancy binding nonwithstanding -- is a lack of depth in both characterization and symbolism. I don't think I would gain any more understanding of the novel by reading it again -- unlike, say, Gravity's Rainbow, which I could reread every six months for the rest of my life and probably still find new meaning in it.
Anyway, I have no doubt that someone could write an interesting paper on sexual elements in his novels. I didn't find it objectionable, but I was definitely struck by the how utterly shallow Stephenson's charactarization of his female characters is. His women all seem to be a sort of Platonic ideal according to -- for lack of a better classification -- the male geek. (I admit I find them appealing, but they're just plain unrealistic. They might as well all be 6' Amazon lingere models with male brains grafted into their feminine bodies.) However, deep characters are not his strong point, nor, if I may suppose, his intent. He's an idea man, and this is a techno-thriller.
Regarding the masturbation incidents, I don't think it's clearly characterized as draining creative energy. Waterhouse Sr. made the observation that he did his best work after visiting the whorehouses. Waterhouse Jr. when he's in prison does seem to experience a creative burst, though. I dunno. This, like quite a lot of other tangents in the book, could easily be omitted and the book would not suffer.
The Enoch Root character was interesting. I understood him as a sort of emissary -- his presence in the novel wasn't as a normal character, but more as an embodiment of the superhuman. The superuser among us, so to speak. I think his name was clearly intended to evoke this idea, but his humanity (the affair with Julietta, the explicit death scene) is sort of confusing. Perhaps, more mundanely, Enoch Root is a title in the Societas Eruditorum, rather than an individual. Enoch was a biblical patriarch, and we all know who root is. Not only that, but apparantly (from an Altavista search on Enoch I just did) according to Christian mythology, Enoch is thought to never have died, and he "...was a member of the line of descent through Seth by which the knowledge of God was preserved." (italics mine).
Finally, I should say that the reason I am a little disappointed with this book is because I liked it so much. If it was just another SF novel, I wouldn't think to complain about it. But this was good enough to deserve critical thought.
FAQ much better than interview (Score:1)
NS signed my penguin (Score:1)
I asked him, and apparently, he originally wanted to add two other subplots to 'Cryptonomicon', but he was advised the printing machines couldn't handle the manuscript if he did that. Someone else asked him about 'In The Beginning was the Command Line', and he replied that text was in some deep way just better than simply graphics.
And yeah, when it came time for the signing, I snatched a Beanie Baby penguin, the only one I'll ever buy, and asked if he could sign it. The Vromans staff was nonplussed but game, he quizzed me on my choice of Linux distribution and the penguin was signed (as well as the book.)
mugshot (Score:2)
Re:FAQ much better than interview (Score:1)
I agree that the faq is interesting, but I also liked the interview given the constraints that Andrew acknowledged. I think it might be easier to interview Stephenson by email. There was an excellent long email interview with him in Microtimes around the time Snowcrash came out. Unfortunately, I don't think it is on the web.
Re:Uh.......... (Score:1)
Infinite precision (Score:1)
Then there's the whole problem of units. Your "international standard inch" may be one inch long by definition. What's to stop someone from devising a new system of measurement, in which some platinum bar in Paris is (by definition) pi units long?
Re:Interview (Score:1)
Re:Uh.......... (Score:1)
His novel, Headcrash, is very entertaining, particularly the early bits which have a very tongue-in-cheek portrayal of sysadmin life. Fair warning - the last twenty pages take a left turn into what can only be described as some random novel written by martians on crack - but it's a fun read nonetheless.
It's perhaps a bit distracting to focus on who exactly invented what. Vinge, Stephenson, Bethke, and Gibson, along with several others, are clearly pioneers in the 'cyberpunk' genre, and are worth reading. (Vinge is my favorite of the bunch, actually.)
Yes, but not what you think... (Score:2)
Kaa
Nope, not at all (Score:2)
Kaa
The interviewer is more concerned with himself (Score:4)
New/interesting info about Stephenson/Cryptonomicon: zero. New info about Andrew Leonard: self-obsessed. Avoid.
Kaa
Agreed (Score:1)
I was hoping for an informative Q/A session with someone I consider to be a brilliant writer. No. I don't agree with everything he says, but admire his courage in saying it, and the intelligence of his conclusions.
Maybe it's just me, but Leonard's apparent "expertise" on Geeks [note the capital letter, as Leonard seems to imply] ("Lesson for would-be interviewers of geeks: Never ask them a yes-or-no question, because that's all you'll get in response.") was entirely too distracting in the context of this story (an interview it most certainly is not).
Yes, send Stephenson back to Seattle, he DOES have more writing to do... and while you're at it, send Leonard back to to the "La Prematentious Cafe" where he can enduldge himself without fear of witnesses.
David Veatch => Pretentious enough to know better
Re:The Crypto in Cryptonomicon (Score:1)
## of doing addition for encryption, and subtraction for decryption).
add-->> $d = shift if $ARGV[0] =~
$f = $d ? -1 : 1;
Re:The Crypto in Cryptonomicon (Score:1)
stephenson (Score:1)
a nice interview... (Score:1)
but i know that no one but computer geeks and what-to-be-hackers-in-training will read his new book, i mean 900 pages that bigger then illuminatus and that some sex in it so most people could get something from it. ( but then illuminatus has nothing to do with computers, but somehow alot with geeky things )
hmmm now how will i trick non-greek (we need a better term for this ) friends to read "In the Beginning was the Command Line." cause they ask questions that are answered there and i dont think i can put it as well. hmmm...
well, time to get back to werk...
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
Re:`Novel' way to avoid export controls? (Score:1)
but one question...
how has the time to keystroke all 900pages it in?
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
Re:What is your fascination with Pynchon (Score:1)
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
Re:Kinda ho-hum stuff (Score:1)
Thank god somebody else mentioned Pynchon here. As I read the book, all I could think of, especially during the Slothrop, er, Shaftoe sections, was Gravity's Rainbow. Was he intentionally modeling large chunks of this book on GR?
While GR is possibly my favorite book of all time, I just hate being reminded of it by a pale imitation. I would go so far as to say Cryptonomicon is Gravity's Rainbow for people who have never done acid. A bit (ok, a LOT) more linear, easier to follow, not as much distracting depth.
Don't get me wrong. I *really* like Cryptonomicon so far (650 pages in), but I keep waiting for the characters to break into Pynchonesque song (sorry, haiku doesn't count), or dive down a toilet to retrieve a harmonica.
At least it's something good to read while we wait another dozen years for the next Pynchon book.
Re:Cryptonomicon: What's Good and Bad? (Score:1)
Sure, there are topical similarities, the hallucinogenic asides and level of detail are common to both authors. However, all of Stephenson's books are the type of book that Pynchon would pound out if he had a fixed deadline and needed money (Vineland is a perfect example for comparison
Every few pages in his books, I stumble across something that makes me wonder if he really reviews what he writes. This book (and to a lesser extent, the others) looked a lot like a first draft. They are fun to read, and I look forward to the next books, but he is by no stretch of the imagination comparable to Thomas Pynchon, except perhaps as the "Dummies Guide" version.
Mugshot! Yes! (Score:1)
My brother has been urging me to read his stuff for more than a year, but until I read the Slashdot-posted interview I hadn't. After reading it, I was hooked: the guy is brilliant, yet down to earth -- and translates those properties well onto paper.
So in the past 2 weeks I've read Snow Crash and Zodiac, am almost through The Diamond Age, and 40 pages into The Big U; I'll get in some quality Coffee time at barnes ignoble soon to get into Cryptonomicon.
Go Neal!
timothy
Re:Cryptonomicon: What's Good and Bad? (Score:2)
Re:Uh.......... (Score:2)
Did anyone else notice... (Score:1)
What is your fascination with Pynchon (Score:1)
Pynchon's imagery is overdrawn and forced (ESPECIALLY in Gravity's shit-eating Rainbow)
He is obviously a scared person (see Vineland)
I haven't read the Crying of Lot 49.
WHY do people keep comparing people to Pynchon?
Writers write, Pynchon TRIES to write, and apparently Stephenson PROMOTES what he writes.
Try William Vollman, but I'm not promising everything. John Barthes The SotWeed Factor was a joy, but the Floating Opera was not.
The hot literature right now is coming out of India anyway. See the recent issue of the Economist for a couple of REAL reviews.
The reviewer obviously could not remove his lips from the base of Neal's *ock (can I say that, is this cable?) long enough to take a good hard look and what seems to amount to little more than pretentious pop trash.
Coding Basic since he was 15? Am I supposed to be impressed, or was his AIM to get me to laugh?
I was 9. I was doing stuff on a Vic-20, a Commodore PET, the first programmable Atari box and one of my friend's had a Sinclair.
Life can be vicious and rude, and tripe like that review brings out the worst in me. Pynchon is a waste of time.