My feelings about Neal Stephenson and his writing style range from ambivalent to complete irritation.  I’m always looking for the story amongst the cruft.  There is so much cruft in Anathem, that just holding up the book to attempt to read it is physically tiring.  I guess I frequently slog through Stephenson’s tomes because the story usually does develop in compelling ways, despite the cruft.  In Anathem the cruft has become a nearly impassable mire of muck and well,  I am weak.

So what is this cruft?  In Anathem it’s the trappings of an invented world with a completely different dialect.  My reaction to the book (complete anathema for Anathem) is probably due to a few factors:

• I am a borderline Science Fiction fan and a very rare Fantasy fan.

• I do not like J.R. Tolkien.  In fact, I found The Lord of the Rings to be insufferable.  (The movies were ok, mostly because I really like the large walking trees.).  I also hate hobbits and their hairy feet.

• It’s not Neal Stephenson’s best work, albeit possibly the longest.

This is somehow invigorating to actually not finish a book, and to admit that — “Guess what! I work with technology and I’m not a rapid Science Fiction/Fantasy fan.”  I don’t like having to solve math problems to understand all the fricking references.  Instead, I want a world to unfurl itself and surround me.  Perhaps, I’ll need to look up a word now and again, or reread a sentence or two, but the transport needs to be seamless.

It’s definitely not the “complexity of the plot” in Anathem that is inspiring my anathema.   Thomas Pynchon counts amongst my top ten favorite authors and I read and thoroughly enjoyed Infinite Jest (RIP DFW).  It’s the cruft.  The extraneous and tiresome plot devices coated in the black tar-like cruft bubbling out of Anathem.

Set in the Australian outback (I guess it’s the outback) a mysterious man buys a giant ranch and then proceeds to plant Eucalyptus. Every type of eucalyptus. Rare, common etc. His daughter — Ellen the speckled beauty soon arrives and thus becomes so beautiful that it becomes necessary to find her a husband in the interest of averting some sort of catastrophe. Ellen has a fondness for slick traveling salesmen and others of their ilk. Her father announces that the only successful suitor is the one that can name every eucalyptus on his property winning the hand of the speckled beauty and the very large ranch.

Eventually many try and many fail until one man looks like he might just finish the naming. Ellen, somewhat upset because she isn’t being wooed, comes across a man lying under a tree (eucalyptus of course) who begins to tell her human interest stories in lands near and far. Personally, I thought he was something of a lousy story-teller.

Generally this sort of novel appeals to me — I love the stories of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and others within that genre. Eucalyptus failed to transport me to the that bit of land sighing with Eucalyptus trees. The plot is an old story which is not really unusual, but with an old plot the key is to weave a many textured world with well-drawn characters. This book also had the “readers club questions” in the back — which I find irritating (other irritants include the Oprah seal of approval and lengthy introductions.)