Anathem

Anathem
Author: Neal Stephenson 2008 935 pp
My rating: 4*
Started January 25 2009, Finished February 4 2009.

A challenging novel which could so annoy many readers that they give up well before finishing it, Anathem comes reminded me of good Arthur C. Clarke, Lord of the Rings and, of all things, The Magic Mountain. The book is set far in the future on an earth like planet where those who wish to live a life of the mind are segregated into monastery-like, math-based communities called concents which have almost no contact with the “extramuros” ignorati who comprise the bulk of society. The book is somewhat schizoid as its heart is a rollicking sci-fi adventure (the LOTR/Clarke components) which is rendered somewhat inaccessible by the distracting lexicon of the concent world -- the glossary is twenty pages long -- and frequent, extended, momentum killing discussions about math, logic and philosophy (ala Magic Mountain). The problem for the reader who is more interested in the adventure/plot component of the book is that these often tedious discussions -- one near the climax of the book runs at least twenty stupefying pages -- is that they tend to quickly and obliquely reveal important plot elements, requiring the reader to pay close attention when he/she may be lost, confused or bored.

Ultimately Anathem’s rewards and its ambitious, uncompromising nature won me over, earning it a high rating. In fact, I could see rereading it, mainly to see how much more I would pick up the second time around. That said, here are some caveats for the potential reader:

• The first hundred pages are quite slow
  
• Referals to the glossary are recommended whenever an unfamiliar term is encountered.
  
• Character development continues to not be Stephenson’s strong suit. The four fraas at the heart of the story never seemed to me to be distinct individuals.
  
• The reader has to tolerate and even decipher many, many passages such as the following: “But there was nothing about Evendric or datonomy on the wall of your cell for Fraa Jad to see. Just material pertaining to Orithena, and a chart of the Lineage.” (533)
  

Why do the fraas and suurs of the highly advanced Maths -- where clothing is made of “new matter” which improves upon physics as we know it by reengineering the atomic nucleus -- use the English system of measurement instead of the metric or something even better?

Glossary is 20 pages and is followed by almost 30 pages of proofs.

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About money extramuros: … most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water and bombs. There is only so much that can be scraped together for particle accelerators. (262)

Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs … We have a protractor. (320)

Freedom From Fear

Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945
Author: David M Kennedy 1999 858 pp
My rating: 4.5*
Started January 9 2009, Finished January 15 2009.

Another excellent volume in the Oxford History of the United States, this work is essentially a history of the Roosevelt years with a surprisingly sympathetic prelude on Herbert Hoover’s failed administration, which despite its length could well have been much longer -- perhaps even two volumes one covering the depression years and the other World War II -- as it leaves the reader wanting to know more about FDR. While Freedom From Fear clearly depicts the enormous struggles and accomplishments of FDR’s presidency, the man himself remains something of a cipher as when in describing Roosevelt’s death, the author mentions in passing that he was attended by the mistress he had renounced 27 years earlier. The book’s greatest strength is its straightforward clarity but I docked it half a star for some editorial sloppiness such as incorrect diction e.g. immanent used where imminent was meant and the dubious claim that the Hood was larger than the Bismarck.

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Recent Social Trends, a scholarly report on social conditions commissioned by Hoover and published in 1933 “feared that the old-stock, white, urban middle class would be demographically swamped by the proliferation of the rural and immigrant poor, as well as blacks.” (28)

Together with expenditures for veteran’s benefits … interest payments composed more than half the federal budget through the postwar decade. Expenses for a modest army of 139,000 men and a navy of about 96,000 sailors accounted for virtually all the rest. (30)

Hoover on 25 Oct 1929: “the fundamental business of the country, that is, production and distribution of commodities , is on a sound and prosperous basis” (39)

As the depression thickened in 1931 and 1932, the main purpose of Garner, Robinson, and Raskob [leaders of the opposition Democrats] was to obstruct the president and prepare to reap the political reward in the upcoming presidential election. (62)

Talk was Roosevelt’s passion and his weapon. None of his associates ever knew him to read a book. It was in conversation that he gained his prodigious, if disorderly store of information about the world. (112)

Gross national product had fallen by 1933 to half its 1929 level. (163)

Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1930, Long refused to vacate the governorship for nearly two more years, holding both offices simultaneously. (236)

Roosevelt’s dream was the old progressive dream of wringing order out of chaos, seeking mastery rather than accepting drift, imparting to ordinary Americans at least some measure of the kind of predictability to their lives that was the birthright of the Roosevelts … (247)

[In 1938] Louisiana’s Allen J. Ellender declared: “I believe in white supremacy and as long as I am in the Senate I expect to fight for white supremacy.” (343)

[The New Deal’s] cardinal aim was not to destroy capitalism but to devolatilize it, and at the same time to distribute its benefits more evenly. (372)

“Let us turn our eyes inward,” declared Pennsylvania’s liberal Democratic governor George Earle in 1935. “If the world is to become a wilderness of waste, hatred and bitterness, let us all the more earnestly protect and preserve our own oasis of liberty.” (386)

P430 Refers to 1935 Army Chief of Staff Malin Craig as Malin.

Re US strategic bombing of Germany: Accidents claimed nearly as many airmen’s lives (approximately thirty-six thousand) as did combat (approximately forty-nine thousand) (606)

Only 18.1 percent of American families contributed at least one member to the armed forces. (636)

All told, American war plants delivered some 18,000 B-24s … while building 12,692 B-17s and 3,763 B-29s … (654)

Every American combatant in the last year and a half of war in the Pacific islands could draw on four tons of supplies; his Japanese opponent, just two pounds. (668)

(703) Incorrect diction: use of immanent where imminent is the correct word. “… sensing the immanent vindication of the airmen’s cherished strategic doctrine …”

Wartime cartoons and posters routinely depicted the Japanese as murderous savages, immature children, wild beasts or bucktoothed, bespectacled lunatics. (811)

The Japanese army’s Field Service Code [1941]: “Never give up a position but rather die.” (812)

Okinawa: In early June what was left of the Japanese garrison tried to mount a counterattack. Some six thousand men, armed only with sidearms and bamboo spears, Banzaied forwards. They encountered “millions of shells from the enemy’s formidable fleet, planes, and tanks,” Yahara recorded. “All vanished like the morning dew.” (834)

[Upon notification of final Japanese surrender] Among the American troops on Okinawa, unconditional jubilation broke out. The fired every available weapon skywards. The subsequent rain of shell fragments killed seven men. (851)