The Bookshelves Project

Cryptonomicon

Two days ago, not feeling very well, I asked David to go into the office and bring out a good book for me to read. I thought he'd grab me a sci-fi novel, and I was sort of right: He brought out Cryptonomicon. Now, I've read Cryptonomicon probably as many as five, or even six, times since we first brought home a copy from the library a few years go, and each time my plunge into this 900-page novel has been life-encompassing. I start reading it before I get out of bed in the morning, read it on the toilet, at the breakfast table, while I'm dressing (if I do). I'd read it in the shower if I had a Ziploc bag big enough; as it is, I usually just skip the showers until I've finished the book. I read it until I fall asleep over the pages at night, and I drool on its dust jacket until the first light of morning calls me back to my task.

I love this book, as you may have guessed, though after this many read-throughs one starts to notice small inconsistancies. I'm in awe of Neal Stephenson's ability to control his complex plot, so I'm not complaining about things like Enoch Root's introduction to Bobby Shaftoe, during which Enoch says, "Call me Brother," a nickname that is never mentioned again. I'm just noticing them.

And I still don't understand the giant lizard on Guadalcanal. Real? If so, from where? Hallucination? If so, how induced? What did Bobby witness that is hidden by the lizard? Comments and theories welcome.

This time through, my favorite moment in the book, and the real climax of it for me (though the river of gold that ends it is pretty good, too), is the end of the penultimate chapter. Rudy has just committed suicide in the air bubble in the bow of the sunken V-Million, incinerating himself along with the piece of paper containing The Coordinates, and Günter has escaped through the submarine's hatch and is being pulled to the surface by a life ring. He does not think he will survive; the submarine is lying on the surface, very deep. The chapter ends as he is still rising through the water, and this is the last we hear of him.

I can't decide whether I think Günter survives or not. The image is a hopeful one: the sun is shining, and its light gets brighter as he rises. And the reference to his knees hurting puts me in mind of Goto Dengo's escape from Golgotha; as he walks away from it, he can't believe that his biggest problem is that his knees hurt from his rise through impossible depths of water. If that is a parallel we are supposed to notice, perhaps we are supposed to think Günther survives, too.

Also: major characters in Cryptonomicon don't mostly die in water. They die, if they're going to, in fire, like Bobby and Rudy.

But this time around, the book didn't strike me as being very hopeful, even though it has this ending in which all the various major characters have come together to liberate an enormous stockpile of war gold and do good with it. I've always read that as a mostly happy ending, though the characters themselves are troubled by their success, even Randy, who isn't a war survivor but who ends the book sitting on a rock in the jungle enjoying what he believes will be the last private moment of his life as molten gold begins to flow into the river at his feet. This time around, one of the book's themes seemed to me to be about the inevitability of failure, even in the face of great hope. And so, perhaps, we are meant to think that Günther, who like so many others in the book ought to have been dead several times over before this, finally dies in the sea with the light of the sun he will never reach on his face.

Cryptonomicon is a big, complicated book. I'm not sure you could make any single assertion about it that couldn't be countered with compelling evidence from a half dozen different chapters. So I'm not saying it's a sad or a hopeless book, only that this time around, the fun and adventure and world-travel and cryptography and hilarious digressions on the subjects of eating Cap'n Crunch and distributing heirloom-grade furniture to descendents were less striking for me than the streak of sadness that must run through any decent story about war. This is the first time I've read Cryptonomicon and cried.

Posted by Su Penn at September 3, 2003 10:34 PM | TrackBack