Anathem

A funny thing happened while reading Neil Stephenson’s newest (and best) book, Anathem. Over the last year or so whenever I have thought of Neil Stephenson’s work, and I probably have thought about it more than was good for me, I kept seeing him as a contemporary Jules Verne, crafting rip-roaring adventure stories employing technology and ideas that were (or are) on the cutting edge of science. And then hundreds of pages into Anathem, literally, there is a not-so-subtle reference to who else but Jules Verne? This causes me to believe that Stephenson, as well, sees himself as a kind of contemporary Verne, which gave me an even deeper respect for not Stephenson-the-writer, but Stephenson the man. It seems a rare thing for an author to catch a sensible—not grandiose—glimpse of themselves in the literary annals.

Anathem itself cements Stephenson’s place as a great writer. This is the book where he appears to fully break with early Stephenson and the Stephenson that his fans usually allude to—i.e. punk Stephenson with an obsessive love for technology, science, and aerobatic violence. Stephenson had already shown greater range in his strange yet fascinating trilogy of 17th Century Europe, the Baroque Cycle. However, even in these books his penchant for cutting-edgeness (monetary systems and the rise of empirical science) and action (think rapscallions in love, war, and on the high seas) dominate. But in Anathem, despite a number of really good action scenes and the technological descriptions of another world, the focus finally lies elsewhere. Stephenson overcomes technology built in the physical world and the punches also taken there to explore something far more exciting and human—the world of ideas.

Philosophy has taken a beating in the last century with people leaving it aside for the greater ‘certainty’ of religion or science. Those who study philosophy in college are largely looked at by our society as being little more than useless (we, English majors, can relate)—they will probably end up working at Starbucks or Barnes and Noble. Literature, as well, has largely eschewed philosophy. In fact the last great philosopher-novelists I can think of were Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, the latter who just barely saw the 20th Century. Therefore, it is quite daring, for a writer beloved for his speculative fiction and tech-savvy, to take on thousands of years of philosophical ideas. And take them on he does from Plato’s forms to Wittgenstein’s language-games.

Stephenson opens his sprawling novel in an otherworldly monastery—called a ‘concent’—only rather than being devoted to the worship and study of God, the monasteries in Stephenson’s world are devoted to what we might call a liberal arts education, focusing on science, math, music, and most importantly philosophy. It is truly an education Plato-approved. Despite the fact that this monastery system has different aims than our monastery’s (current and past), the two share certain similarities: both are set apart from larger society, members devote their days to study and ritual (here song), strict rules—which change depending on the order—apply, and time passes differently, rather than measured in lunch breaks or sitcom-length, Stephenson’s monastery measures time from years to millennium depending on the members, reflecting the slow and thoughtful life of real monks. Stephenson portrays a beautiful world inside these ‘concents’ where an outside society reliant on technology and materialism is left to focus on something far more profound: the human mind. While technology has a role in Stephenson’s monasteries, it is a largely controlled one, the primary fixation belonging to wisdom and learning.

There are few examples in our world that truly reflect Stephenson’s, although the closest would be the university. Yet Anathem’s ‘university’ is a place where students are more interested in books than beer (but fortunately they still drink); it is a place that lacks materialism, the Internet, television, and debt. Another important distinction: most of us will never have the chance to spend our whole lives in academically hallowed halls (tenure is increasingly difficult to obtain—thank you societal priorities). With the monasteries in Anathem it’s as though Stephenson wondered what would happen if Plato’s Academy had continued indefinitely while shutting itself off from the exterior world.

Currently, I am fortunate enough to be in a graduate program at St. John’s College in the Great Books. St. John’s probably reminds me more of the ‘concents’ than anywhere else I have been and Stephenson’s monks certainly embody the spirit of many of my tutors, enamored with wisdom, education, and the world of ideas. But St. John’s is not a closed society, though there are moments when it feels like it is: such as leaving class when you realize how little the ‘real’ world takes its time to really think about what you just spent any number of hours discussing.

The largest theme in Stephenson’s book is both relevant and largely ignored: what is the role of the educated elite in society? In a great passage, Stephenson explores the multiple ways of how the uneducated world views the educated, using examples from his created universe that directly correlate with Socrates execution, Captain Kirk’s gut-instinct versus Spock’s logic, and the fear of the ‘mad-scientist’, i.e one driven crazy by too much knowledge (perhaps a contemporary recreation of Faust). The book is really about these kinds of stereotypes and conflicts: what happens when the professors leave their academic stations and are forced by events to enter the world as built by those largely unconcerned with philosophy and higher wisdom.

Should philosophers rule, as advised by Plato’s Republic? Or should they hide away and be left to their own devises? How far should science and technology go? What is the role of the religious in society, especially those who may be called ‘fundamentalist’? Can the educated and the uneducated ever live peacefully—can they ever understand one another?

While Stephenson does come down on one side or the other of a couple large philosophical debates, he mostly leaves the discipline where it appears most comfortable—unanswered. The study of philosophy has always been more about experiencing the varied ways in which the world can be interpreted rather than discovering any truth with a capital ‘T’. There may be some suggestion at the end of what the author thinks, but it is a story not a lecture, and Stephenson makes certain to keep the tension between educated-uneducated present even as the novel closes.

The only place where Stephenson perhaps becomes too preachy is his view of the religious in the novel. He appears to forget that most high education throughout Western and Eastern history has been done largely by ‘Deolaters’, i.e. those who believe in a God of some kind. Even today, as society has become more skeptical, many incredibly intelligent, curious, and reasonable people still believe in a deity. While I think Stephenson is attempting to show not the folly of faith itself, but the folly of fundamentalism—or those who are ‘certain’ of their God—the book at times comes across as shaming the religious for irrationality. Still usually this is softened and the critique more reasonably focused.

Stephenson is not a writer of characters or poetic phrases; instead he is a plotter and a lover-of-ideas. His books are page-turners in the same way as 19th Century adventure novels—Dumas, London, and Verne. Unlike most contemporary writers, I would say his greatest influences—despite his largely ‘sci-fi’ aspects—actually come from these writers and others like them (I’d add Charles Dickens to the list) who weren’t afraid of writing terrifically long novels (Anathem comes in at just under 900 pages) and weren’t afraid of creating large sprawling worlds or extraneous details and side-stories, in fact, these great authors felt such details actually enrich the narrative, instead of sinking it.

Rather than write with eloquent and powerful language, Stephenson plays with language, shapes it, pummels it, and makes it into something new, yet still recognizable. For Stephenson usually this works, but sometimes I feel his prose just doesn’t hold up to his ideas. At times, instead of his writing feeling original and punchy, it comes across as juvenile and sloppy. Still, this is a small criticism in a work of literature that isn’t really about the writing. Instead, Anathem is a wonder of ideas and concepts. Like philosophy it makes one feel as though their world has expanded rather than contracted.

There are few writers today whom I feel are really moving literature forward and creating something unique and perhaps even classic (time will only tell). But Stephenson is one of them. Anathem is the kind of book one often despairs of reading in our world where writers appear increasingly obsessed with sounding clever rather than being wise. They forget: cleverness is soon forgotten, but wisdom always stays in print.


Borrowed from a friend.

Anathem

By: Neal Stephenson

HarperCollins, 2008

Hardcover, 935 pages

9780061474095