Neal Stephenson is Awesome

So, after another day in the tech support mines (seriously, we're inside a cave inside an old loft-converted warehouse inside a really nice neighborhood), I walked down Madison and Hawthorne to the Bagdad Theater to see Neal Stephenson, author of Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle (which I prefer to refer to as "The M*therf*cking Baroque Cycle" because it's so hardcore... it's like the Samuel L. Jackson of Historical Fiction). He was there to read a bit from his new book Anathem followed by a Q&A and book signing. I was slightly disappointed that it wasn't more of a formal talk, but it was still fun and interesting.

There's also apparently an actual talk that he had done regarding the ever-changing world of technology and how it's affecting science fiction online. He had brought it up when someone had asked a question regarding this, but his succinct answer to it, other than "linking" us to the talk online (even referring to fora.tv as "a thinking person's youtube"), was to state that science fiction permeates the world more than other genres. We see it in books, movies, video games. Also, he made a rather witty aphorism (perhaps I am not thinking of the right term) regarding technology. I will attempt to paraphrase (albeit badly in comparison to what he probably did say):

"Technology is whatever was invented after you were born and is so new that it doesn't work yet. The buttons on your shirt are not technology to you since you're familiar with them... and they work."

But I'm already sort of getting ahead of myself.

Stephenson (I don't know, calling him "Neal" seems a bit too casual) opened up with the literary equivalent of opening a 40 and pouring some of it on the corner for David Foster Wallace, who killed himself recently. He said that Wallace was "the best of us" and highly recommended that we read his work, especially seeing as how there will no longer be any more of it. I'm not sure if it is a sad or a good thing that when I looked at Powell's Online to find the links for the above books that David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest was in the top five.

After peering around the theater and saying something to the effect of, "You all have beer. I would have come here sooner if I had known that we could have beer at these things." in bemusement, he read a bit from Anathem, which I think was from somewhere near the beginning where the main character Fraa Erasmus (Raz) and Fraa Orolo interact with an extramuros (someone who lives out the math/monastary), called Artisan Quin. It got a few good laughs, particularly due to details that seem like they would fit well in our world, but we take them granted as such. The fact that Fraa Orolo has to have a questionnaire for the saecular world in order to navigate it for apert (the rare time when the math opens and allows outsiders in and when the Fraas and Suurs get to leave for ten days once a year, decade, century or even millennia depending on the math).

I guess I ought to pull over and provide a summary of Anathem. If you were to boil it down to really reductive basics, it's about monks in the future who devote their lives to science as opposed to faith because the world around them is so politically and socially unstable that they have to cloister themselves off. The world is divided into the avout (the science/philosophical-minded) and the saecular (everyone else). This whole premise reminds me of what's going on in our country right now and the tried-and-sadly-true strategem of the GOP of "disparage and devalue intellectualism." Not to mention all the hoopla and "what's the point" regarding the Large Hadron Collider. Would it be all that hard to believe that the world will split off into two such groups?

During the Q&A people lined up and asked their varied questions. Of course, I had expected the sort of crowd that surrounded me, mostly geeks. One of them even came up and plugged an event they were hosting, asking Stephenson if he would make an appearance. I think it was some sort of cyborg-related convention. Stephenson politely declined, claiming that he already had commitments that weekend.

When it came to more literary questions, it ranged from the polite/not-so-polite version of "Why are your books so damn long?" to a really wordy question asking about the effects of the world on his writing or how he thinks sci-fi writing affects the world. The answer to the first question was rather astute, just saying that he writes until he's done. Someone next to me commented that it was the dreaded "ending" question, especially considering how he writes endings that tend to completely screw with people. The answer to the second question was pretty much the one mentioned above, "linking" to a talk online regarding the subject.

I particularly liked his answer to a question regarding how or if he takes "literary" angles into consideration. He basically said that if you think too much about what grandiose aims you mean to prove or how to sell something, you'll never get anything done. This is similar to advice other authors have given to me. The guy in front of me in the signing line was another writer was also a writer, so Stephenson stated that he (and I) should just keep writing. He said to just write, keep going and then throw it away... not throw it away, but just put it down. By the time I had gotten through the line, he had already signed over 200+ books, so I understand how some of the communications wires can get crossed. I sheepishly confessed that I'm not good at revision, to which he replied that even that will get easier if I just do it more often.

It's pretty much what everyone, writer and non-writer has been advising me to do, just to keep trying. Or, more accurately, keep doing. It does me no good just navel gazing and having existential crises. Even shitty writers who do that and still manage to crank out a few novels get paid at least some of the time. In other words, I will not get any satisfaction, let alone compensation for novels or short stories that I don't write.

What is interesting is that Stephenson also recommended writing an hour a day at most. In the back notes for The Baroque Cycle, there are scans of the longhand manuscripts that he had handwritten. It's one thing to write a book that is 1000 pages. It's another to have handwritten it first. So, I may have to be a bit more focused in my approach, as opposed to rattling off a few pages on google documents here and there when I have breaks at work. I suppose it's sort of like how I used to practice the piano every day for at least an hour (sometimes much more than that during festival season).

Well, I don't play the piano anymore (though I did just start the dulcimer), so I'll have to rehone my focus elsewhere.

Also, in the mean time, I have quite a bit of reading to do.

On a closing note, when I get to meet an author or performance artist I admire, I usually go blathering psychotic fangirl. I suppose I went sort of quiet fangirl who was cautious about keeping the line moving instead this time. Maybe I wasn't as giddy as a teenager at a boyband/emo/whatever the hell it is those damn kids are listening to these days concert, but maybe I'm finally starting to see my sort of "heroes" as real people. I mean, I've hung out with enough Guests in Residence at Allen Hall to realize that fate doesn't just tap some people on the shoulder and tell them that they're either going to fight the power, help change the world and/or just tell a damn good story. You (and by "you," I really mean "I") really need to work your ass off, even just to stay afloat.

Also, I think I'm at the stage where I'm not so much in awe of an author like Stephenson for "making it," by being able to draw crowds at readings, sell a good number of books, be relatively recognizable and well-known in the sci-fi/literary world, etc. Instead, I deeply appreciate the fact that he does as previously mentioned, tell a damn good story and tell it well. He creates characters that I would like to meet in person, whether it's someone like Hiro Protagonist from Snow Crash, Eliza or "Half-cocked" Jack Shaftoe from The Baroque Cycle who live in worlds I'd either like to see or worlds that don't seem that much different from my own.

Ok, before I completely go off the deep end of ceasing to make sense, I ought to call it a night, hit the showers/hay/what have you.