William Morrow, September 2008
In another cosmos and another time millennia from now, on the planet Arbre, the avout of Saunt Edhar's cloister themselves within concent walls, as have generations of avout before them. Fraa Erasmus, along with his brothers and sisters, live according to the Cartasian Discipline, a strict path they must follow in their pursuit of truth in the realms of math and science. The discipline dictates every facet of their lives, from the bolts and chords they wear like monk's robes to their very separation from extramuros, the world outside of Saunt Edhar's.
The length of an avout's commitment to the discipline varies according to the "math" they've joined - there are unarians, decenarians, centenarians, and even millenarians. When Anathem begins, Fraa Erasmus, a "tenner" or decenarian, approaches his tenth year and with his decenarian fraas and suurs prepares for the celebration of Apert, an opening of the concent gates for ten days, during which sightseers from the outside may enter and the avout can venture extramuros.
Anathem centers thematically around this divide between the avout and the saeculars, the pure pursuit of truth in the mathic world and the ugly consumerism and warring arks (churches) outside. There is much more than this to Neal Stephenson's sprawling 900 page block of a novel, but in order to fully access it, the reader must spend a few hundred pages cloistered with Erasmus and his fraas and suurs as the history, philosophy and, yes, the vocabulary of their world are spun.
In another cosmos and another time millennia from now, on the planet Arbre, the avout of Saunt Edhar's cloister themselves within concent walls, as have generations of avout before them. Fraa Erasmus, along with his brothers and sisters, live according to the Cartasian Discipline, a strict path they must follow in their pursuit of truth in the realms of math and science. The discipline dictates every facet of their lives, from the bolts and chords they wear like monk's robes to their very separation from extramuros, the world outside of Saunt Edhar's.
The length of an avout's commitment to the discipline varies according to the "math" they've joined - there are unarians, decenarians, centenarians, and even millenarians. When Anathem begins, Fraa Erasmus, a "tenner" or decenarian, approaches his tenth year and with his decenarian fraas and suurs prepares for the celebration of Apert, an opening of the concent gates for ten days, during which sightseers from the outside may enter and the avout can venture extramuros.
Anathem centers thematically around this divide between the avout and the saeculars, the pure pursuit of truth in the mathic world and the ugly consumerism and warring arks (churches) outside. There is much more than this to Neal Stephenson's sprawling 900 page block of a novel, but in order to fully access it, the reader must spend a few hundred pages cloistered with Erasmus and his fraas and suurs as the history, philosophy and, yes, the vocabulary of their world are spun.
This is where Neal Stephenson, the master world-builder, lives and thrives. As with his previous three novels, Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World, a trilogy of meticulously researched and arduously wrought historical fiction, Stephenson revels in methodically and intricately detailing every aspect of his universe, elaborately setting the stage for any action that is to play out.
Once set, Anathem tackles such heady topics as cosmology, the nature of consciousness, and parallel universe notions inherent in string theory. The story, involving mysteriously Arbre-like visitors from another cosmos, unfolds at a glacial pace and oftentimes seems to serve mainly as a platform upon which the author can unfurl his more theoretical ideas. Put simply, this is not the Neal Stephenson of page-turners like Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. Anathem is at times densely philosophical and would not feel out of place on a shelf of works by philosopher-mathematician Kurt Gödel and a few quantum physics texts, which is what I suspect fills the shelves in Stephenson's writing room.
Once set, Anathem tackles such heady topics as cosmology, the nature of consciousness, and parallel universe notions inherent in string theory. The story, involving mysteriously Arbre-like visitors from another cosmos, unfolds at a glacial pace and oftentimes seems to serve mainly as a platform upon which the author can unfurl his more theoretical ideas. Put simply, this is not the Neal Stephenson of page-turners like Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. Anathem is at times densely philosophical and would not feel out of place on a shelf of works by philosopher-mathematician Kurt Gödel and a few quantum physics texts, which is what I suspect fills the shelves in Stephenson's writing room.
Long philosophical discourses between the characters frequently forestalls the novel's forward motion, and while these are eventually tied into plot, they oftentimes failed to hold my attention and left me wondering if perhaps I wasn't smart enough for Anathem.
.
Fortunately, Stephenson's powers of description and wry sense of humor in satirizing our own world make the journey through Arbe largely a pleasurable one. In the opening scene of the novel, in which Fraa Orolo interviews a handyman from extramuros, we get a sense of the divide between the avout and the saeculars:
"Do your neighbors burn one another alive?" was how Fraa Orolo began his conversation with Artisan Flec.
Embarrassment befell me. Embarrassment is something I can feel in my flesh, like a handful of sun-warmed mud clapped on my head.
"Do your shamans walk around on stilts?" Fraa Orolo asked, reading from a leaf that, judging by its brownness, was at least five centuries old. Then he looked up and added helpfully, "You might call them pastors or witch doctors."
The embarrassment had turned runny. It was horrifying my scalp along a spreading frontier.
"When a child gets sick, do you pray? Sacrifice to a painted stick? Or blame it on an old lady?"
Now it was sheeting warm down my face, clogging my ears and sanding my eyes. I could barely hear Fraa Orolo's questions: "Do you fancy you will see your dead dogs and cats in some sort of afterlife?"
.
Fortunately, Stephenson's powers of description and wry sense of humor in satirizing our own world make the journey through Arbe largely a pleasurable one. In the opening scene of the novel, in which Fraa Orolo interviews a handyman from extramuros, we get a sense of the divide between the avout and the saeculars:
"Do your neighbors burn one another alive?" was how Fraa Orolo began his conversation with Artisan Flec.
Embarrassment befell me. Embarrassment is something I can feel in my flesh, like a handful of sun-warmed mud clapped on my head.
"Do your shamans walk around on stilts?" Fraa Orolo asked, reading from a leaf that, judging by its brownness, was at least five centuries old. Then he looked up and added helpfully, "You might call them pastors or witch doctors."
The embarrassment had turned runny. It was horrifying my scalp along a spreading frontier.
"When a child gets sick, do you pray? Sacrifice to a painted stick? Or blame it on an old lady?"
Now it was sheeting warm down my face, clogging my ears and sanding my eyes. I could barely hear Fraa Orolo's questions: "Do you fancy you will see your dead dogs and cats in some sort of afterlife?"
As I plunged through Anathem, I found myself growing attached to Stephenson's avout. After all, it was no insignificant amount of time that I had spent with these young fraas and suurs who, despite their commitment to theoretical inquiry, are driven by the same forces of young adult humans. Ultimately however, I longed for these characters to do more and talk less, which happened mostly in Anathem's latter parts and then in a way that felt somewhat campy and unsuited to a work otherwise thoughtfully rendered.
Neal Stephenson is truly a brilliant thinker and an ambitious author, and reading Anathem is not an undertaking for the feint of heart or mind. I have no doubt that many of his devotees will laud this book as a masterwork and that a number of cognoscenti will find deep satisfaction within its pages. Some readers however, like me, will discreetly breathe a sigh of relief upon the closing of Anathem's covers and look around for something that requires perhaps just a tad less devotion.
( 2008 interview with Neal Stephenson here )
Neal Stephenson is truly a brilliant thinker and an ambitious author, and reading Anathem is not an undertaking for the feint of heart or mind. I have no doubt that many of his devotees will laud this book as a masterwork and that a number of cognoscenti will find deep satisfaction within its pages. Some readers however, like me, will discreetly breathe a sigh of relief upon the closing of Anathem's covers and look around for something that requires perhaps just a tad less devotion.
( 2008 interview with Neal Stephenson here )
