Skeptics and storytellers

One of the interesting aspects of Quicksilver is that Stephenson has fairly seamlessly integrated fake facts and people into a true historical context. He's incorporating more than historical embellishment; Stephenson introduces the entire Waterhouse and Shaftoe families and inserts them into history -- Daniel Waterhouse as a personal friend of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, for example, and Lawrence Waterhouse as a friend of Alan Turing. He also creates the island nation/province of Qwghlm, which I spent two or three days believing in until I thought "... no! that has to be made up."

This reminds me of the old James Michener novels like Space where the author would invent characters and even states (I remember a state named Fremont or something?) who would go interact with important points in politics and national history.

But somehow Stephenson's inventions are so well fleshed-out that they serve as an interesting object lesson in history and research: just because it's a good story doesn't make it true. I have a bad habit of learning history and science from books like this one, but Quicksilver (not to mention Cryptonomicon and -- more to the point -- Snow Crash) serves as a lesson in not trying to pick up facts just by osmosis. (Snow Crash in particular has some very bad science in the linguistics digressions, but it's very appealing -- I have a story about a late night with a bartender who wouldn't be convinced it was malarkey that I'll tell later.) But I find myself really wanting to fact-check his ass. He's a smarty-pants who feels no compunctions about dropping in fake people, nations, or facts about the universe just because it's a good story. I'm often guilty of the same thing, but he does it so brazenly that it's kinda fun to spot them and say "how could he think he could slip that one by?"

I imagine a reading group or even a high-school lit or history class that might tear its way through one of these books trying to figure out what parts of it are historically justified, what parts are possible but for which there's no evidence, and what parts are demonstrably false. Woo -- wouldn't that be a fun class? You could read Quicksilver and call it "History of the Scientific Method/Science applied to History", and take the story itself as the subject of the method.

Actually it would be more appropriate if you cut out all the sex bits from the novel, which -- quite frankly -- aren't very sexy and seem to be in there by contract with the publisher ("Mr. Stephenson agrees to put in at least one discussion of sex per chapter, and at least every other one will involve painful innuendo and/or implausible attraction or description of sexual organs. The publisher agrees not to edit these sections.") Cutting these out would shorten the novel by ten to fifteen percent, making it lighter-weight and easier to inflict on unsuspecting highschool students, because it would avoid shocking parents, it would improve the novel, and it would stick to what Stephenson does well -- making 17th century science politics readable and interesting.

Oh, and chase sequences. He does those well too.

rob the bartender

I went out on Saturday night with thevorak and imtboo at St. Clouds (yes, beckyb's stomping grounds) to hear thevorak's (ex?)-boy friend C. play drums for a very good Cowboy-Junkies-ish four-piece band (bass, guitar, drums, vocals). It was a relaxed evening for me and imtboo, but thevorak was kind of panicky around talking with C., because she's not sure how they should relate.

That's really why we were there: we were backup for thevorak. But things seemed to be okay, and we sat around and socialized with some of C.'s friends who were also there, and with other people who were there. imtboo knows somebody everywhere; I'm very impressed. One guy got up to play a couple of duets with the lead singer, and her reaction was "hey -- it's R! I was in a rock musical with him last year." She knows everybody.

The bartender --although very slow in actually getting drinks/food -- was sociable and started off trying to impress us all with his various knowledge. thevorak and a friend had been folding fancy shapes out of their napkins, and he came over and started talking origami shite and took every opportunity to talk about all the crazy ninja training he had. Actually it was one step up from saying "I am trained in ways to flip out and kill people" because he claimed that ninjitsu was all American nonsense (probably true) and that he was training in the real thing (possibly true, but what a weird thing to say -- it reminds me of this).

We were all heavily irritated. And then he started talking about languages. Most readers of this journal are aware that (unlike ninjitsu) I know something about languages. (imtboo and I had been speculating about his accent.) Turns out he's Welsh (he was very excited to learn that imtboo was from Breton Brittany/Bretagne) but he wouldn't believe that Gaelic and Welsh and Bretagne Brezhoneg were all Celtic languages. He got really aggressive about how Gaelic was really different ("it just has a different cadence, and I couldn't understand it"), which was making me progressively more and more shut down and backed off, but I kept saying "I dunno, but I think I know something about language, and I'm pretty sure that they're in the same family."

After declaring that his next languages would be Arabic and Japanese, and dropping "casually" that he knew Swahili and Hausa, he finally settled down (I don't know why -- imtboo said it was because I kept not taking the bait) and decided that we could have a real conversation. (Did I mention that during this entire conversation, he was ignoring his customers by sitting at our table and calling imtboo and thevorak "luv"?) Then, he decided he wanted to talk about the linguistics in Snow Crash (which I may have mentioned are crap) and how they had to be right.

What's really amazing to me is that I finally left the bar thinking "that guy's frustrating -- but I could imagine being a regular where I show up once or twice a week to have a drink and a sociable argument." I actually introduced myself; turns out his name is Rob.

Today, that reminds me of the relationship between Vary and the professor in Mystery Date (ah, I'm always flacking for Carla Speed McNeil, aren't I): the professor isn't seeking any of the things from Vary that she's used to offering, especially to men: sex, dance, art, music. Instead, he really wants someone to argue with. She finds an unusual way to provide that.

It's making me think about my own relationships -- what do I seek in people around me? am I looking for people to argue with? Is that a good thing? I think (for both) the answer is yes.

And among those I can safely argue with, and still be confident of trust and honesty, I am happy to include imtboo. Thanks for being there, D~.