jere7my | If it ain't Baroque

I finished The System of the World today, which is to say I finished Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, which is something of an accomplishment. I read the last 80 pages or so on a bench by the reservoir, looking up from time to time to see autumnal trees wavering upside-down in the water amid coins of gold sunlight. As soon as I slammed shut the cover my iPod chose to play Led Zeppelin's In the Light, which was as appropriate as could be wished, and lasted just exactly as long as it took me to walk home.

Mr. Stephenson is not above spending 4,000 words on a description of the bailey of Newgate Prison, or 500 on a particular padlock, and while I enjoyed every diversion, digression, and divagation it did take some time to tunnel through them all. (Those who complain of the digressions have rather missed the point, I think; there's a reason it's called the Baroque Cycle, after all, and while it could be pared down to a single 3,000-page story it would not succeed nearly so well.) But the book did end satisfactorily, and somewhere toward the end I suddenly realized what all those pages had been about, more because he told me than because I am particularly clever. Most of my questions were answered (including some I had left over from Cryptonomicon), and all the plotlines, as far as I can remember, tied themselves off with a tidy bow. Mr. Stephenson, in fact, added a chapter of Epilogs to this one, to head off the complaints he's gotten re: earlier books and the way they end a bit abru