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The Half-Bound World John Derbyshire

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The Half-Bound World John Derbyshire 2 2 The Half-Bound World John Derbyshire n his invaluable Reader’s of the Cycle with an open mind, ready Manifesto, literary critic B.R. to be entertained and instructed. I IMyers, skewering current liter- was not disappointed. This is a fine ary fads, offers a spoof list of rules for story-telling achievement. serious writers. Rule II is: The Baroque Cycle cannot be dis- cussed without some preliminary Sprawl. Brevity may be the soul of remarks about structure. It is most wit, but contemporary reviewers easily available as three bound regard a short book as “a slender achievement.” So when in doubt, books with the titles Quicksilver, The leave it in. Confusion, and The System of the World. That is just a bookseller’s conve- I naturally had Myers’s mock pre- nience, though. The Baroque Cycle is cept in mind when approaching Neal not a trilogy, but an octology: eight Stephenson’s Baroque connected narratives— Cycle—three damned, Neal Stephenson’s the author calls them thick, square books BAROQUE CYCLE “books”—featuring the weighing in at a total same principal charac- Quicksilver of over 2,600 pages. ters. Quicksilver con- 2003 ~ 928 pp. My better self then tains Books 1, 2, and 3; reflected that some The Confusion The Confusion, Books 4 fine novels, includ- 2004 ~ 816 pp. and 5; The System of the ing some indisputably The System of the World World, Books 6, 7, and great ones, are of com- 2004 ~ 892 pp. 8. In a further complica- parable size; that the tion, Books 4 and 5 are All available in cloth Victorian “three-deck- (William Morrow; broken into pieces— ers” and serialized nov- $27.95) and paper (Harper nine and eight pieces, els, some of which like- Perennial; $15.95) respectively—with wise attained immor- the pieces alternating tality, did not stint on Cryptonomicon through The Confusion. wordage; and there are Avon ~ 1999 ~ 1,152 pp. In an introductory note some stories that can $8.99 (paper) to that second volume, only be told at length. Stephenson says: “It is Allowing these charitable thoughts hoped that being thus con-fused shall to prevail, I turned to the first page render them the less confusing to the SPRING 2007 ~ 79 Copyright 2007. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. JOHN DERBYSHIRE Reader.” This is actually a pun on the documented historical figure. Robert contents of the narrative, of which Graves’s Claudius novels offer out- more in just a moment. standing examples of this “hard” To keep this essentially eightfold sub-genre. The author might, on the structure in my own reader’s mind— other hand, center his story on some to stress that the fact of Stephenson’s invented person, who is then let story appearing in three volumes is loose amidst historical scenery: think merely a consequence of production of Gone With the Wind or Patrick and marketing requirements—I am O’Brian’s sea stories. going to refer to the whole thing as The Baroque Cycle is “soft” histori- “the Baroque Cycle,” rather than by cal fiction, the principal characters all the names of the three individual invented. They move among real his- volumes. When I want to be more torical circumstances, of course, and precise, I shall refer to one of the encounter many real persons. These eight books, keyed to the three vol- real historical figures are mostly umes as above. In fact, though the drawn from the outside, however, three-volume set is the one found in with very little of their inner lives most stores, the eight books can now presented. We see them through the be bought separately. eyes of invented characters, hardly While dealing with these matters ever the reverse—all in accord with of presentation, I should add that the conventions of this kind of fic- all three volumes are supplied with tion. excellent maps, and the first has Most of the action takes place also a good selection of genealogical in England, France, Germany, and charts, and a list of dramatis personae. Holland between the years 1655 (Though that list is at the end of the and 1714. The longest continuous book—vexing for those of us who stretches of action—the entirety of were taught that it is immoral to Books 6, 7, and 8—cover 1714, the look at a novel’s last pages until all year when Britain’s Stuart dynas- the others have been read.) ty, in the person of Queen Anne, So much for presentation. Now, expired, and the first Hanoverian what’s it all about? king was installed, by no means without opposition from Stuart die- s the word “baroque” suggests, hards and schemers like Viscount Athis is historical fiction, a genre Bolingbroke. The earlier crisis of that can be loosely divided into the Stuart dynasty—the “Glorious “hard” and “soft” styles. On the one Revolution”—in the late 1680s and hand, the writer of historical fiction early 1690s forms another major may try to capture the inner life and backdrop; the years 1665-6 of the motivations of some real and well- Great Plague, the Fire of London, and 80 ~ THE NEW ATLANTIS Copyright 2007. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. THE HALF-BOUND WORLD Isaac Newton’s anni mirabiles, anoth- the London slums, tormented by er; and 1670-73, a time of war and an Imp of the Perverse and by love strategic-dynastic- religious maneu- for Eliza. Alas, after less than two vering among England, France, and years’ acquaintance, he alienates Holland, yet another. Eliza by proposing a slave-trading The books primarily follow business venture to Africa. Eliza has, three main characters, all fictional. understandably, a hatred of slavery. Daniel Waterhouse, born in 1646, Jack’s love is thereafter hopeless, but is thoughtful, scientifically inclined, inextinguishable. In a nice recursive open-minded, and bears little sign of twist, Jack is famous as a picaroon in deep religious conviction (though his the world of the Cycle itself: there is father was a fierce Puritan). Daniel a picaresque novel about him current is at the heart of the book, and likely in 1680s France, we are told. the character, more than any other, Of the real people in the book, three into which Stephenson put his own are by far the most prominent: Isaac thoughts and feelings. Newton, the great mathematical and Eliza, born in 1666 or 1667, is given scientific genius; Gottfried Wilhelm no surname, though she acquires Leibniz, the philosopher and math- several titles of nobility as the story ematician; and Caroline of Ansbach, a proceeds. She is a feisty, courageous, pretty (“high-colored blonde Nordic and worldly-capable woman, with beauty,” according to one of her a special talent for dealing in the husband’s biographers) and clever rudimentary financial markets of the woman who in 1705 married the son time. In Book 5 she gives a room- of Hanover’s ruler. Ansbach conse- ful of French aristocrats an inspired quently became Princess of Wales lesson in international banking—a in 1714 when that ruler ascended passage that could be used today in a the English throne as King George college course on the subject. Eliza is I. In due course (1727) her husband a native of Qwghlm, a fictional archi- became King George II and she, pelago somewhere out in the Atlantic Queen of England. Caroline is best off the coast of Scotland, part of remembered by English people for Britain but with its own peculiar her dying words to her heartbro- pre-Celtic language and folkways. ken husband. From her deathbed she Taken as a slave by Barbary pirates urged him to remarry after she was and shipped off to the harem of the gone. “No,” sobbed George, “I will Ottoman Sultan, Eliza is rescued at have mistresses.” Caroline: “Ah, God! the Siege of Vienna by the Cycle’s I don’t mind that.” third key figure: Jack Shaftoe. The very first incident in Book 1 Born in 1660, Shaftoe is a fear- is a flash-forward to October 1713, less but amoral picaroon, raised in when a messenger arrives in Boston, SPRING 2007 ~ 81 Copyright 2007. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. JOHN DERBYSHIRE Massachusetts, with a letter from yet Newton was obsessed by alchemy Caroline to Daniel Waterhouse, urg- and by hidden messages in the Bible. ing him to return to Europe to patch The contrasts in those other zones up the Newton-Leibniz quarrel. are at least as interesting. In religion, Waterhouse had taken himself off to for example, we are given vivid pic- the Colonies in 1696 to build a primi- tures of the full range of period types: tive computing machine away from stoic Calvinists, militant Puritans, the distractions of London. Newton earnest seekers after reconciliation and Leibniz had famously, and actu- (Leibniz), and everything else on the ally, quarreled about which of them spectrum. That is only to speak of was the true inventor of the calculus. Christians: we also encounter Jews, There is of course a host of lesser Muslims, Hindus, Jains, and Japanese characters, both real and fictional. Buddhists. The birth of the mod- Among the real persons are numer- ern world, though, was midwifed ous monarchs: Louis XIV of France, by the great turning of thought William III of England, and Peter the in Christianity that began with the Great of Russia make several appear- Reformation. That is the religious ances each. We also have glimpses of, topic explored at length in the Cycle.
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