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| Now 30% longer than needed! |
First things first: this novel is 1130 pages long, excluding the appendix and other extras. I am not particularly bothered or intimidated by long books, provided they don't waste my time. With that parameter in mind, I'm on the fence about Cryptonomicon.
The first thing you'll notice about this novel is how exceptionally verbose it is. Maybe Stephenson has a doting editor, or gets payed by the word ala Dickens, or his publishing house decided he had achieved enough success by this point to indulge him in a monolithic opus project. Books like Cryptonomicon are the literary equivalent of the double LP and should be viewed with the same skepticism. The shocking length at which ideas and facts are unpacked in this novel is partially forgivable due to its claustrophobic narration by a number of autists. I can't help but sense, though, that it is also a function of how taken Stephenson is with his own cleverness, and an excuse to show off how much homework he did before writing this novel.
Let's be fair, though, and give credit where credit is due: he has exhaustively researched World War II (especially the Pacific Theater and all the geography involved), has a convincing understanding of all the war-era AND contemporary technologies he references, has a (what I can only assume to be) decent grasp on mathematics and cryptography, and manages to get this all across in a very entertaining manner. Cryptonomicon is a triumph on many levels, and there are any number of nerds in any number of fields who will be tickled pink by its handling of the subject matter.
It's also a self-indulgent conceptual and linguistic wankfest. Stephenson soars off on tangent after masturbatory tangent, tackling subjects as diverse as proper cereal consumption technique, specific sexual fetishes of minor plot characters, and dot-com-boom era Silicon Valley eccentricities. The selective microscope of each narrator's stream of consciousness hones in on awkward images as relentlessly as an episode of Ren and Stimpy. These are delivered with such frequency and gusto that I found myself skimming or skipping whole pages of text that held no conceivable hope of plot advancement. If you want an excuse to peer into the quirky observations of an intelligent man, you could do worse than Cryptonomicon, but I assure you the revelations are tepid at best. I am tempted to view this book as an outlet for years of accumulated musings that didn't warrant publication on their own merits.
These intimate narrations, though, are also at the heart of Cryptonomicon's finest strength: its characterization. Each point of view (and there are a good handful, by the end of the novel) is presented with a verve I've found unmatched by anything I've read recently. Stephenson is able to convey the thoughts, feelings and observations of his characters with such immediacy that the constant switching of narrators between chapters is always a pleasure, and avoids the dissonance I've found reading other authors who try this technique. My favorite character by far is the mathematical savant crypto-genius, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse. The world as seen filtered through his peculiar literalisms is a joy to behold, and I found myself reading his chapters with childish delight. His grandson Randy, on the other hand, plays a less likable and diffident tech brat. Stephenson's attempt to cast him in a geek/playboy duality falls pretty flat, especially when the novel's romantic interest tough-girl Amy Shaftoe shows up to validate him. I didn't find their dynamic at all believable...
... Which leads me to my next criticism of this novel: the (un)believability of the whole scenario. I know, I know, it's modern fiction, which will always struggle to reconcile its larger-than-life characters and events with the contemporary world we (the readers) live in and know firsthand. By the end, though, Stephenson was stretching credibility. ***SPOILER ALERT*** Am I really expected to believe that the Shaftoe and Waterhouse lineages (the reigning patriarch of each having shared the same special secret unit during WWII) would rejoin in an unlikely business venture in the modern era? And that codes intercepted by the late Waterhouse and implausibly passed down to his grandson would happen to apply to a treasure-hunting operation underway by the Shaftoes? AND that another member of that secret unit (who also turns out to be an annoyingly unnecessary Deus Ex Machina gimmick that I was hoping to avoid having to mention) would become entangled in the operation, 50 years later? AND that several different capitalist ventures started by workers who were responsible for the burying of the treasure would also become embroiled in Randy's tech startup? AND... the list goes on. I don't mind some fun synchronistic plot connections in a history-meets-modern-era yarn, but a venn diagram showing the unlikely overlapping of relevant plot characters and bloodlines in this novel would look like a slinky after your tyrant toddler niece has gotten ahold of it. Again, Neal, your cleverness doesn't impress me.
This is a fine example of an underwhelming story told in a fascinating way. It's a fine excuse to show off a nerd's view of the world. But it ended with a big fat WAH-WAH-WAHHHHH ride into the sunset that left me feeling like I found a Nestle cream egg at the bottom of a bag of Callebaut chocolates. The plot veered into what I considered to be the least interesting conclusion possible and left me soured.
I walk away from this novel saying that it is a fun lark for anybody interested in tracing the development of computer technology from its founding during WWII through its first global peak, the dot-com boom. Cryptonomicon makes math, computers and autism fun and quirky. But Stephenson could easily have capped this novel at 800 pages and spared us his self-indulgences. And the geography lessons. I mean, damn.
