Regular BOOKGASM readers know that we have a 100-page rule for our reviewers: If a book doesn’t grab our attention by the century mark, we’re free to toss it in the dustbin without obligation. But every rule has its exceptions, and Neal Stephenson’s ANATHEM is one of them.
There are definite caveats, though, especially for people who don’t read books like I do. I don’t read glossaries, appendices, maps — any of the stuff included in the backs of books like ANATHEM or DUNE or what have you — until I’ve finished the main story. I figure if that stuff is so important to the author’s intent, it would be included in line with the regular prose. I like figuring things out by inference, and it doesn’t bother me a bit if I don’t understand a word or an idea for 50, 100, 200 pages if I’m confident that the author will make everything clear when it needs to be.
Not everyone is like this, and if you don’t read like me, ANATHEM will drive you insane. Stephenson has created a world that’s just different enough from our own as to be totally bewildering — the character’s language is very similar to ours (they use words like “dork”), but crucial parts of the vocabulary are different to either illustrate the cultural underpinnings of the planet Arbre or as a joke (and sometimes both).
ANATHEM requires readers to acquire this new vocabulary slowly but surely, and Stephenson builds on the expanding alien vocabulary as the novel progresses. If you can digest it, the effect is mesmerizing, like learning another language and then having to get by solely on your newfound linguistic talents.
The world of Arbre is also culturally different. Secular scholars (think college professors and grad students) live monastic, simple lives with limited access to modern technology in monasteries that are closed off from the outside world for one, 10, 100 or 1,000 years at a time. Outside is a world that’s religious and technologically advanced — with cars, guns, an Internet equivalent and iPhones — but limited in terms of advanced philosophy and somewhat suspicious of the monasteries’ godless, academic world.
As he does with the planet Arbre’s language, so are the monks’ philosophical and scientific ideas introduced and explored in exquisite detail, and it’s these theories and philosophies that eat up dozens of pages at a time and set the stage for the meaning behind ANATHEM’s plot. If you’re not into reading about quantum theory or multiple dimensions in a world that uses very different scientific jargon from our own, again, you probably don’t want to read this novel, or at the very least you’ll be skipping a good 15 percent to 20 percent of the book.
But what starts out as vaguely comprehensible philosophical meandering turns into real-world, life-and-death stuff as all the world-building Stephenson does in the first 300 pages or so turns into a plot. It’s good stuff: The action and political drama counterweight the asides into philosophy and quantum theory, and Stephenson makes all of his points about modern society in ways that get more clever as they sink in.
Our hero, a monk named Erasmus, gets thrust, of course, into events that are wildly beyond his control, and he epitomizes the nerd-as-hero archetype that has starred in so many of Stephenson’s previous works. Yes, he’s a bit clueless when it comes to girls and he spends a bit too much time thinking when he should be acting, but he’s wonderfully relatable.
Erasmus humanizes all the extraneous philosophy, vocabulary and alien-world strangeness, creating a beautiful multithreaded circuit board out of a book that could have been just a pile of extremely gorgeous junk.
ANATHEM is classic world-building science fiction — the closest analog I can even think of when comparing it with other works is DUNE — but it is heavy on the science and philosophy side of things. Readers who take the time to really read it will reap tremendous rewards, but this is no book for an airplane, a commute or a lunchtime escape. So buy some supplies, take a week off of work, lock yourself in a room and devote your time to ANATHEM — it’s tremendous, if you’re willing to put in the work. —Ryun Patterson
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I guess I wasn’t willing to put in the work, because I enacted the 100-page rule on this one. By then, nothing had happened. Stephenson has spent eight pages describing a clock. It was maddening.
However, I did enjoy the two baffling, math-based short stories in the appendix, one of which involves how to properly cut a cake. But you failed to mention the CD of monk chants and “music” that comes with the book! It is singularly awful, and probably made my reading experience worse than it otherwise would have been.
Luckily, the CD was only bundled with advance copies–purchasers of the retail edition can buy it or download the mp3s from the ANATHEM Web site.
I did finish it, and no Neal Stephenson is worthless. However, I think he got bogged down on the philosophy, and the plot meandered as a result. DUNE comparisons are fair, but I’ve returned to Herbert’s classic many times over the years. ANATHEM, I fear, will not hold the same fascination.
I stop reading a book if any of the characters hails a taxi on page 100. Any other page is fine, but not on page 100. That’s when I stop reading.
Also, there should be no mention of Fig Newtons. Ever.
I have always enjoyed long books because I read fast. I also enjoy series. I have never before read Stephenson because he normally does not appear to write in the genres I read.
That being said, I loved Anathem. I thought it might simply be one of the best books I’ve read all year. The blending of monastic life, math, science, philosophy and the real world was to me, awesome. But then, I do have the patience to sit through hundreds of pages of exposition.
Haha acpaul I think you nailed it. Patience is key. This was a killer book for me, one of the best books I’ve ever read.
You need some interest in science. For me, that wasn’t a prob.
You also need quite a lot of patience to learn the proper nouns that Stephenson uses extensively. At first it bugged me a bit, but then I realized: why would an alien planet call Hilbert space “Hilbert space”? Hilbert didn’t live there! If they discovered the same concept, it would be by someone else – Fraa Hemn, hence “Hemn space”. As for the few names of things that aren’t scientific theories like “jeejah”, “sline”, “speely” – there’s so few of these, and they’re based on Latin roots, that they are easy to remember. Aliens don’t have iPhones! They have jeejahs! See? Easy
Personally, both of these things are like candy to me, I LOVED this book!
As others have noted, Anathem certainly isn’t a “casual read”. It takes some work and not a small amount of patience (I think it took me about a week to get through the first 200 pages, and 2 days for the last 700). Having said that, I have found it to be one of the best books I’ve read in the last couple of years. In fact, once I had read through it the first time, I immediately spent 2 days rereading it. There’s a lot of subtlety that doesn’t come through on the first reading (and I didn’t “cheat” by referring to the dictionary in the appendices the first time through). It certainly won’t satisfy everyone (unlike “Snow crash”, which gets more relevant every time I read it – it’ll soon have to be reclassifed as non-fiction), but I highly recommend it.