A Long Post About a Long Book: Cryptonomicon

I often find it illuminating to read other people's reviews of books, even if I disagree with them. Sometimes it's just fun to see how someone has read a book very differently than I have, and sometimes it makes me think about the book in a new way.

I'm currently re-reading Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson, something I do every few years because I love it. I don't think it's a perfect book, and I can certainly see the validity of many of the criticisms I hear. I can't fault anyone for not liking Stephenson's style, or for finding his endless digressions tedious rather than charming. If you call Stephenson a "self-indulgent" writer, I can't deny it: Cryptonomicon works for me, but he lost me with his very next book, Quicksilver, which I couldn't get through. So when someone gives Cryptonomicon a one-star review on goodreads because they just couldn't keep reading it, I have no argument with that. My tolerance for Stephenson's shenanigans is just a bit higher then theirs.

On the other hand, there are some criticisms that are so off the mark I can only laugh about them. For instance, someone at goodreads claimed she disliked Cryptonomicon because it was so predictable; she saw the ending coming, she said, from 600 pages away.

I don't believe her.  600 pages from the end, we've barely begun to hear Goto Dengo's story, and don't even know Golgotha exists. And yet somehow she already knows that the book will end with the Epiphyte folks teaming up with Goto Dengo to get the Japanese war gold out of the caves by flooding them with oil and setting it on fire so the melted gold flows out via the river? So predictable, right?

There are also criticisms that may be valid, but seem to me like they might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. One reviewer at goodreads was extremely offended by what she saw as a pattern of unworthy men being rewarded with the love of hot Asian women, as demonstrated by Bobby Shaftoe's relationship with Glory Altamira, and Randy Waterhouses's with Bobby and Glory's granddaughter America. I don't quite get this, because I think it's a very simplistic reading of both of those relationships. I also think those two relationships are a very small part of a very large book, and that, for me, a problem like that, unless it's much more egregious than what Stephenson has done here, fall under the heading of "liking problematic things," something I do a lot of.

I love Cryptonomicon, for instance, but I think it's tremendously problematic that none of the point-of-view characters are women, for instance. And that the women, however varied they are, are primarily a part of the story because of their relationships with men, and only present in the story when their men are (Glory Altamira is a part of the resistance during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, which must be a heck of a story, but we only see what happens to her when Bobby's around). And while I don't necessarily agree that Amy Shaftoe is treated as an Asian doll Randy wins as a prize for being a guy the author likes, I do agree that it's hard to believe she'd be interested in Randy, who is a fundamentally passive person whose strengths are a) writing code; b) being in a place with other people without actually interacting with them; and c) going where Avi tells him to go. Randy hot for Amy, who inherited the full measure of Shaftoe competence and adaptability? I believe it in a heartbeat: he's totally looking for someone who will be strong for him. Amy hot for Randy? Ha! Randy is not the only one she reminds of "level-headed blue-collar lesbians he has known, drywall-hanging urban dykes with cats and cross country ski racks."

Then there are bigger criticisms that also seem worth thinking about, things I haven't paid attention to but can't deny are there. Things I can't agree or disagree with without some reflection. For instance:

Another very critical review on goodreads derided the book for being a libertarian fantasy. I have never read the book this way, but this person is not imagining things. Randy's friend and business partner Avi is an increasingly-observant Jew with a perpetually-pregnant wife; he is obsessed with the Holocaust, and his motivation for getting rich is to disseminate the HEAP (Holocaust Education and Avoidance Pod), which includes instructions for making a simple but functional gun. Avi is also, and relatedly, obsessed with privacy and security; he and Randy have this exchange early in the book, when Avi requires a ridiculously long encryption key for their email:

[Randy] has pointed out to Avi, in an encrypted e-mail message, that if every particle of matter in the universe could be used to construct one single cosmic supercomputer, and this computer was put to work trying to break a 4096 bit encryption key, it would take longer than the lifespan of the universe. 

"Using today's technology," Avi shot back. "that is true. But what about quantum computers? And what if new mathematical techniques are developed that can simplify the factoring of large numbers?" 

"How long do you want these messages to remain secret?" Randy asked, in his last message before leaving San Francisco. "Five years? Ten years? Twenty five years?" 

After he got to the hotel this afternoon, Randy decrypted and read Avi's answer. It is still hanging in front of his eyes, like the afterimage of a strobe: 

I want them to remain secret for as long as men are capable of evil.

Avi is obsessed with evil, and with the victims of evil. He wants to set up a data haven, and take control of the Japanese war treasure buried at Golgotha, because he sees these as steps to preventing another Holocaust, by keeping both information and money out of the hands of men who are capable of evil. But, of course, getting into the data haven business means forming alliances with people whose motives are less exalted, like Randy and Avi's libertarian-survivalist business partners, John Cantrell and Tom Howard. And like the men at their meeting with the Sultan of Kinakuta:

There is a delegation of Filipinos. One of them, a fat man in his fifties, looks awfully familiar. As usual, Randy cannot remember his name. And there's another guy who shows up late, all by himself, and is ushered to a solitary chair down at the far end: he might be a Filipino with lots of Spanish blood, but he's more likely Latin American or Southern European or just an American whose forebears came from those places. In any case, he has scarcely settled into his seat before he's pulled out a cellphone and punched in a very long phone number and begun a hushed, tense conversation. He keeps sneaking glances up the table, checking out each delegation in turn, then blurting capsule descriptions into his cellphone. He seems startled to be here. No one who sees him can avoid noticing his furtiveness. No one who notices it can avoid speculating on how he acquired it. But at the same time, the man has a sullen glowering air about him that Randy doesn't notice until his black eyes turn to stare into Randy's like the twin barrels of a derringer. Randy stares back, too startled and stupid to avert his gaze, and some kind of strange information passes from the cellphone man to him, down the twin shafts of black light coming out of the man's eyes. 

Randy realizes that he and the rest of Epiphyte(2) Corp. have fallen in among thieves.

And this is when we realize that Randy, for all that he is a brilliant systems admin and hacker, and for all that his grandfather may well have been one of the inventors of the digital computer, is not very bright. Because Avi certainly knew they were falling in among thieves; Avi almost certainly went looking for thieves, thieves being the kind of people who most want a data haven. Avi has a mission: to protect people from the forces of evil, and he is willing to cut some moral corners to carry out his mission. Or maybe he doesn't see this as moral corner-cutting; we don't know enough about Avi to be sure. But Randy doesn't have a mission. Randy has just been following Avi.

Here's what I can say about the libertarian thing: it's definitely there, and it's bigger than the hot Asian girlfriends thing, and it's bigger than the no-women-as-POV-characters thing, and if it bugs you, it's going to be hard to overlook, and no wonder the book didn't work for you, goodreads reviewer. I'm still thinking about it, myself, and it's got me reflecting on Randy Waterhouse, who feels in so many ways like the protagonist of the book, even though Lawrence Waterhouse, Bobby Shaftoe, and Goto Dengo all have their own chapters as well. Randy is not a libertarian; he is not, like Avi, obsessed with anything. He is not driven; he is a drifter. He is so loosely anchored that Avi can nudge him in any direction he wants him to go:

This is how Epiphyte Corporation came into existence: 

"I am channeling the bad shit!" Avi said.

The number came through on Randy's pager while he was sitting around a table in a grubhouse along the coast with his girlfriend's crowd. A place where, every day, they laser printed fresh menus on 100% recycled imitation parchment, where oscilloscope tracings of neon colored sauces scribbled across the plates, and the entrees were towering, architectonic stacks of rare ingredients carved into gemlike prisms. Randy had spent the entire meal trying to resist the temptation to invite one of Charlene's friends (any one of them, it didn't matter) out on the sidewalk for a fistfight 

He glanced at his pager expecting to see the number of the Three Siblings Computer Center, which was where he worked (technically, still does). The fell digits of Avi's phone number penetrated the core of his being in the same way that 666 would a fundamentalist's. 

Fifteen seconds later, Randy was out on the sidewalk, swiping his card through a pay phone like an assassin drawing a single edged razor blade across the throat of a tubby politician. 

"The power is coming down from On High," Avi continued. "Tonight, it happens to be coming through me—you poor bastard." 

"What do you want me to do?" Randy asked, adopting a cold, almost hostile tone to mask sick excitement. 

"Buy a ticket to Manila," Avi said. 

"I have to talk it over with Charlene first," Randy said. 

"You don't even believe that yourself," Avi said. 

"Charlene and I have a long standing relationsh—." 

"It's been ten years. You haven't married her. Fill in the fucking blanks." 

(Seventy two hours later, he would be in Manila, looking at the One
Note Flute.)

Randy's grandfather Lawrence also has this tendency to let life send him where it will; he manages to remain in a general state of befuddlement while gradually becoming one of the world's most expert cryptographers, privy to information so classified that only a handful of people in the world have access to it. Bobby Shaftoe is competent and capable in ways that the Waterhouse clan can only dream of—he's a Marine Raider, after all, which is "like a Marine, only more so." But from the moment he follows the Wisconsin Shaftoe tradition and joins up, his fate is never in his own hands. He spends the war going where he's told and carrying out orders that only become stranger and less comprehensible once he ends up in Detachment 2702: dressing a dead butcher in a wetsuit and dropping him into the ocean; making a camp that's existed for days look like it's been there for months; and, of course, painting out the numeral 1 and painting in the numeral 2 in its place (multiple long quotes, but I just love this part):

In the next rank of the chart is the name Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse. There are two other names: one is an RAF captain and the other is a captain in the United States Marine Corps. There is also a dotted line veering off to one side, leading to the name Dr. Alan Mathison Turing. Taken as a whole, this chart may be the most irregular and bizarre ad hocracy ever grafted onto a military organization. 

In the bottom row of the chart are two groups of half a dozen names, clustered beneath the names of the RAF captain and the Marine captain respectively. These are the squads that represent the executive wing of the organization: as one of the guys at the Broadway Building puts it, "the men at the coal face," and as the one American Guy translates it for him, "this is where the rubber meets the road." 

"Do you have any questions?" the Main Guy asks. 

"Did Alan choose the number?" 

"You mean Dr. Turing?" 

"Yes. Did he choose the number 2701?" 

This level of detail is clearly several ranks beneath the station of the men in the Broadway Buildings. They look startled and almost offended, as if Waterhouse has suddenly asked them to take dictation. 

"Possibly," says the Main Guy. "Why do you ask?" 

"Because," Waterhouse says, "the number 2701 is the product of two primes, and those numbers, 37 and 73, when expressed in decimal notation, are, as you can plainly see, the reverse of each other." 

All heads swivel toward the don, who looks put out. "We'd best change that," he says, "it is the sort of thing that Dr. von Hacklheber would notice." He stands up, withdraws a Mont Blanc fountain pen from his pocket, and amends the organizational chart so that it reads 2702 instead of 2701. 

As he is doing this, Waterhouse looks at the other men in the room and thinks that they look satisfied. Clearly, this is just the sort of parlor trick they have hired Waterhouse to perform.

***many pages later***

"This the fellow we've been waiting for," Chattan says to Robson. "The one we could've used in Algiers."  

"Yes!" Robson says. "Welcome to Detachment 2701, Captain Waterhouse."  

"2702," Waterhouse says.  

Chattan and Robson look ever so mildly startled.  

"We can't use 2701 because it is the product of two primes."  

"I beg your pardon?" Robson says.  

One thing Waterhouse likes about these Brits is that when they don't know what the hell you are talking about, they are at least open to the possibility that it might be their fault. Robson has the look of a man who has come up through the ranks. A Yank of that type would already be scornful and blustery.  

"Which ones?" Chattan says. That is encouraging; he at least knows what a prime number is.  

"73 and 37," Waterhouse says.  

This makes a profound impression on Chattan. "Ah, yes, I see." He shakes his head. "I shall have to give the Prof a good chaffing about this."  

Robson has cocked his head far to one side so that it is almost resting upon the thick woolly beret chucked into his epaulet. He is squinting, and has an aghast look about him. His hypothetical Yank counterpart would probably demand, at this point, a complete explanation of prime number theory, and when it was finished, denounce it as horseshit. But Robson just lets it go by. "Am I to understand that we are changing the number of our Detachment?"  

Waterhouse swallows. It seems clear from Robson's reaction that this is going to involve a great deal of busy work for Robson and his men: weeks of painting and stenciling and of trying to propagate the new number throughout the military bureaucracy. It will be a miserable pain in the ass.  

"2702 it is," Chattan says breezily. Unlike Waterhouse, he has no difficulty issuing difficult, unpopular commands.

***many more pages later***

Shaftoe is about to brief his three handpicked Marines on what is to come when the private with black paint on his hands, Daniels, looks past him and smirks. "What's the lieutenant looking for now do you suppose, Sarge?" he says. 

Shaftoe and Privates Nathan (green paint) and Branph (white) look over to see that Ethridge has gotten sidetracked. He is going through the wastebaskets again. 

"We have all noticed that Lieutenant Ethridge seems to think it is his mission in life to go through wastebaskets," Sergeant Shaftoe says in a low, authoritative voice. "He is an Annapolis graduate." 

Ethridge straightens up and, in the most accusatory way possible, holds up a fistful of pierced and perforated oaktag. "Sergeant! Would you identify this material?" 

"Sir! It is general issue military stencils, sir!" 

"Sergeant! How many letters are there in the alphabet?" 

"Twenty six, sir!" responds Shaftoe crisply. 

Privates Daniels, Nathan and Branph whistle coolly at each other. This Sergeant Shaftoe is sharp as a tack. 

"Now, how many numerals?" 

"Ten, sir!" 

"And of the thirty six letters and numerals, how many of them are represented by unused stencils in this wastebasket?" 

"Thirty five, sir! All except for the numeral 2, which is the only one we need to carry out your orders, sir!" 

"Have you forgotten the second part of my order, Sergeant?" 

"Sir, yes, sir!" No point in lying about it. Officers actually like it when you forget their orders because it reminds them of how much smarter they are than you. It makes them feel needed. 

"The second part of my order was to take strict measures to leave behind no trace of the changeover!" 

"Sir, yes, I do remember that now, sir!" 

Lieutenant Ethridge, who was just a bit huffy at first, has now calmed down quite a bit, which speaks well of him and is duly, silently noted by all of the men, who have known him for less than six hours. He is now speaking calmly and conversationally, like a friendly high school teacher. ... "If some enemy agent were to go through the contents of this wastebasket, as enemy agents have been known to do, what would he find?" 

"Stencils sir!" 

"And if he were to count the numerals and letters, would he notice anything unusual?" 

"Sir! All of them would be clean except for the numeral twos which would be missing or covered with paint, sir!" 

Lieutenant Ethridge says nothing for a few minutes, allowing his message to sink in. In reality no one knows what the fuck he is talking about. The atmosphere becomes tinderlike until finally, Sergeant Shaftoe makes a desperate stab. He turns away from Ethridge and towards the men. "I want you Marines to get paint on all of those goddamn stencils!" he barks. 

The Marines charge the wastebaskets as if they were Nip pillboxes, and Lieutenant Ethridge seems mollified. Bobby Shaftoe, having scored massive points, leads Privates Daniels, Nathan, and Branph out into the street before Lieutenant Ethridge figures out that he was just guessing.

I love all the lead-up to the Stencil Issue, which illustrates perfectly Shaftoe's lot in life: to competently and thoroughly carry out orders which he has no context for understanding. No one is going to tell him—or likely Lieutenant Ethridge either, which is some consolation—why they have to re-paint all their gear with the numeral 2. Shaftoe's story is good, if heartbreaking, and I love that Stephenson devoted the space to telling it. But he is no more an agent of his own fate than either of the Waterhouses. Only Goto Dengo, of the four protagonists, takes deliberate action on his own behalf.

I'm not sure what it says that Stephenson likes narrators who are, in some ways, more observers than participants. Part of it must be simply that he likes people like Randy and Lawrence Waterhouse, and enjoys seeing the world through their eyes. I think, too, that part of it must be that some of what happens in the book would be unsupportable if viewed through anyone else's. Avi, for all of his importance in Randy's life and in the story, is not a very deeply-drawn character; I think it would be hard to like him if we knew him better. The Sultan of Kinakuta, the mix of thieves and rogues at his table, John Cantrell and Tom Howard, and the data haven they're creating: all of these things are softened by Randy's basic decency. It matters that we watch this libertarian fantasy play out through his eyes, that he is the only point-of-view character for the 1990s portion of the book. Randy is in the thick of things, but he's somehow too clueless to be complicit in it, and our sympathy for him, perhaps, colors our reaction to Epiphyte's very iffy undertaking.

It hasn't made me want to fling the book away from me in disgust, but I see the point this reviewer was making. Cryptonomicon is a fantasy: a fantasy where self-appointed heroes can take the law into their own hands, and somehow be trusted to do good with it. Read this way, it's not that much different from an action movie in which a hero outdoes the police, or a superhero story where one powerful and good person delivers justice, sidestepping untrustworthy institutions. I'm only about a third of the way through this read-through; I'll have to see what I think as I continue. But so far, even as I've devoted all this time to thinking and writing about it, I can't seem to get bothered by it. This libertarian element seems irrelevant to whatever this book is to me; I can see why someone else would care, but I don't.