Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
Nov. 23rd, 2013 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Quicksilver by Neal StephensonMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
A long, meandering, Europe-trotting historical which alternates stretches of ponderous natural philosophy with stretches of hilarious piratical shenanigans, to somewhat dubious effect. I enjoyed this, the way you enjoy a book that you read in 100 page chunks over the span of a year, and it's worth noting that I could do that since there's very little throughline. But the thing is.
The thing is, Stephenson made a conscious choice to mix his oodles of historical research with a modern prose sensibility. Which is fine, since it's not like the novel as we understand it – and as Stephenson writes it – was actually invented yet when this book is set. But his particular modern prose sensibility is basically a transcription of the stylings of an overeducated hipster douche kicking back in a hipster douche bar, telling his hipster douche friends about that time he got lost on vacation and nearly died of malaria, but the entire point of the story is to be arch and ironic and detached about the whole thing, because let's be honest, nothing bad could truly ever happen to this hipster douche, that just isn't how the world works and he knows it. I mean, he's a funny dude! He tells a great story! But there's a very fine line.
Basically, somewhere around page 700, right about where a couple of characters were observing a rape and contemplating their imminent enslavement and death, and all they did was make arch, detached, hipster douche comments to each other about it, just as every other character had done on every other occasion from the wrenching to the banal to the sublime, right about then was when I thought oh come on, a single moment of genuineness wouldn't kill you.
Except this is Stephenson, so actually . . . it might.
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Date: 2013-11-23 03:54 pm (UTC)