Slowsilver
Posted: 9/20/2008
Written By: Matt
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So long, sweet summer vacation. The last month has seen a fair share of cottages, lakes, campers, and bare fishing hooks.
In the slower moments, I’ve been trying to wade through Neil Stephenson’s book Quicksilver. It is proving to be bigger than me. Fisherking tells me that I’m out of the loop without having read Cryptonomicon so I’m going to drop this thing back at the library unread. This is not to say I don’t like it. I am through the first 100 pages and it has a lot going for it. It is just too thick for me to get my head around and too long for me to finish.
It has a fascinating way of character introduction, however, that leaves me wishing I were half as masterful as Stephenson. He is very subtle up front and the relishes the quiet reveal. For instance, an early interaction has a man named Enoch working his way through 1600s Boston. A boy begins a conversation with him and proves to be a very intelligent youngster. Stephenson has the boy introduce himself and Ben, son of Jacob.
The conversation lasts for pages. Only at the end of it does Stephenson let us readers in on his secret. An offhand comment from a passerby who sees the child offers the insight. “Isn’t that the Franklin boy?”
Stephenson imagines Ben Franklin as a lad playing hooky from school.
He did it again in a flashback. At least, I think it was a flashback. Quicksilver deals with chronology much like the TV series Lost. In this case, a young boy is having a great deal of trouble integrating with his school mates, and for one of his punishments, he has to sand his graffiti (created with a pocket knife) off the back of the desk chairs. The engraving read “I. Newton”. Isaac Newton had been doodling his own name.
The story is about the rise of natural science out of the age of alchemy at the end of the dark ages. It is an incredibly unique and interesting subject to novelize, but as I say, I’m not up to the task. I’ll leave it to Fisherking to post a full review if he ever gets through it. Consider this an invite to you as well. If you want to post a review of any good books you’ve read, send it to me via the contact page and I’ll put it up on the blog.
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