<div dir="ltr"><div>Mostly I agree with Dirda; however I think I like it considerably better than he does. I admire and approve of Stephenson's project. I suspect Stephenson really was thinking about the Harry Potter crowd when he wrote this -- some of whom would be approaching the age of the protagonist, Fraa Erasmus, and his friends. I may be reading too much into the novel, but I am convinced that Stephenson was presenting his science-and-math monastery (the Mynster) is a counterpoint to the Hogwarts "school for wizards," replacing the realm of wish-fulfillment fantasy with the realm of abstract theories and ideas. (The novel seems to be geared toward a just-post-YA age group who were thrilled by the steadily increasing page counts of the Harry Potter sequels and thus won't be scared off by this 900+ page monster.) Stephenson is trying to uplift the Harry Potter crowd with a taste of philosophy and science, and offering some positive alternatives to the consumer-driven, intellectually barren, fundamentalism-spawning culture they've grown up in.</div>
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<div>Unfortunately, he's going to lose many of those Harry Potter readers (as he nearly lost me), most likely between pp. 12 and 23, in a long description of the Mynster that far outlasts any curiosity you may have developed about the place by this point. It was while slogging through these pages that I kept thinking about how Wolfe introduces us to Severian's world and implies all sorts of fantastic things about it without interrupting the story to take us on a walking tour of the citadel and the Matachin Tower, pointing out details left and right. But that's just the kind of thing Stephenson does at several points in <em>Anathem</em>, and whereas Wolfe's details are integral to the story, Stephenson's are mostly just flavor.</div>
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<div>But once I forgave Stephenson for not transcending popular fiction with a new <em>Book of the New Sun</em>, I started to enjoy <em>Anathem</em>. I have more to say about the book, but I'm curious about others' reactions to Anathem.</div>
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<div>On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 10:41 AM, Matthew Keeley <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:matthew.keeley.1@gmail.com" target="_blank">matthew.keeley.1@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br></div>
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<div class="gmail_quote">Anyone read Michael Dirda's review of Anathem in The Washington Post?</div>
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<div class="gmail_quote"><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/04/AR2008090402460.html" target="_blank">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/04/AR2008090402460.html</a><br>
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<div class="gmail_quote">Dirda compares Anathem with The Book of the New Sun, which he says is much superior. </div>
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<div class="gmail_quote">-Matt</div></div></blockquote></div></div>