Interface: A Novel

by Neal Stephenson

eschatological

synecdoche

“In the 1700s, politics was all about ideas. But Jefferson came up with all the good ideas. In the 1800s, it was all about character. But no one will ever have as much character as Lincoln and Lee. For much of the 1900s it was about charisma. But we no longer trust charisma because Hitler used it to kill Jews and JFK used it to get laid and send us to Vietnam.”

Like the medieval trial by ordeal, the Age of Scrutiny sneers at rational inquiry and debate, and presumes that mere oaths and protestations are deceptions and lies. The only way to discover the real truth is by the rite of the ordeal, which exposes the subject to such inhuman strain that any defect in his character will cause him to crack wide open, like a flawed diamond.

haruspex

We do not have the strength to change the minds of the illiterate multitude. But we do have the wit to exploit their foolishness, to familiarize ourselves with their stunted thought patterns, and to use that knowledge to manipulate them toward the goals that we all know are, quote, right and true, unquote.

moire

infelicitous

puerile.

At a certain point one had to just shrug, stop looking over one’s shoulder theologically, and get on with life.

In the meantime, like everyone else, he had to translate the arcane precepts of his ancient religion into a somewhat looser and vaguer set of rules called ethics, or values.

“Did you hear about the programmer’s wife?” Dr. Radhakrishnan said. “She is still a virgin. Her husband just sits on the edge of the bed every night and tells her how great it’s going to be.”

The humidity condensed around the countless nuclei provided by all of that air pollution, so that when the sun rose, it had to force its way up through a thick cloacal fog, and turned a furious red color, the color of Elvis’s face in his last moments on earth. When it finally burst free of the horizon, the sun simply disappeared and became a mere bright tendency in the burnt-orange sediment of the eastern sky.

Eleanor could see their guilt a mile away, see them trying to delude themselves, like kids who believed that they could make unpleasant things go away just by wishing. The only thing they needed, she realized, was a good talking-to. Which was one thing that Earl Strong could never give them.

“The campaign proper consists of the party’s national committee and all of its hierarchy; the individual candidate’s campaign manager and all of his hierarchy; and all of the pressure groups to which they are beholden, and their hierarchies.”

ketch

Now this weathered, deathless, inexplicable gnome was standing in front of her trailer, surrounded by men that, she now realized, were Secret Service agents. She did not know if she should run away and hide, or welcome him.

“All that Democrat/Republican stuff is bullshit,” he said. “And as far as liberal versus conservative, well, people are very promiscuous in the way they use those words. They don’t really mean anything. Within those two camps there are very wide divisions. And between those two camps, there is a lot more overlap than you think. None of that bullshit really matters. The only thing that matters is values.”

one of the problems we got in this country, not just among black people but with everyone, is that everyone is so easy to offend nowadays that no one is willing to say the things that are true.

fatuous

“Americans may be undereducated, lazy, and disorganized, but they do one thing better than any people on the face of the earth, and that is watch television. The average eight-year-old American has absorbed more about media technology than a goddamn film student in most other countries. You can tell lies to them and they’ll never know. But if you try to lie to them with the camera, they’ll crucify you.

Where had these people gotten the weird idea that the government was going to take care of their problems? The answer to that one was pretty simple: the government had told them as much. And they had been dumb enough to believe it.

“This is an exercise in raw political brute force. You will give Bianca Ramirez treatment in the hyperbaric oxygen chamber or else the Senator, I’m sure, will make it his mission in life to turn this medical center into a smoking hole in the ground.”

If, though unjust, I acquire the reputation of justice, a heavenly life is promised to me. Since then, as philosophers prove, appearance tyrannizes over truth and is lord of happiness, to appearance I must devote myself. I will describe around me a picture and shadow of virtue to be the vestibule and exterior of my house; behind I will trail the subtle and crafty fox

sinecure

“I’m stuck in a party that was once for the individual, and now it’s dedicated to controlling the individual. The Bible thumpers and the single-issue people and all of those other control freaks have no idea of what the United States is all about. And they are going to win. But I will make my contribution. And here it is.”

the rarest thing in life is a person who speaks the truth. The most dangerous thing in life is a person who constantly refers to ‘values.’ If I was going to write down my testament, that is it. None of us has the right to tell anyone else how to live. None of us has the right to hold back anybody else for any reason—race, religion, income, or what have you. The rest of life is an open field, a crap shoot. The role of government is to make it an equal crap shoot for everybody. Not real profound, but real effective.”

“Argus was the mythological figure who had a hundred eyes. With Ogle’s help, and with the PIPER 100 feeding him their emotions, Cozzano becomes the new Argus.”

She had the special status accorded to big girls who know how to drive, are skilled at kissing owies, and aren’t afraid to throw and catch a football.

The rest of the day was completely out of control. It was like being stuck in the middle of a riot in which no one got hurt. It was like the biggest, rowdiest, most drunken wedding of all time, to the tenth power; and instead of a single photographer telling everyone what to do, there was an army of photographers.

fatuously,

“In no particular order, one is the Catholic Church. One is Japan—which

zaibatsus,

sht...

the Network. It is an alliance of large investors, both individual and institutional, predominantly European and American. You might think of it as the legacy, the residue, of the East India Company, the Hudson’s Bay Company, the American railway companies, Standard Oil, and the technological empires of our time. It is the most decentralized of the five entities—really just an effort to pursue investments, and certain other activities, in a coordinated fashion.

arcane

erudite;

most of the people in the vicinity of the President were directly, personally, massively affected by the words coming out of his mouth. They didn’t want to miss anything. Especially since a misinterpretation could lead to summary execution.

He had heard something like this once in Elton. He had been awakened early in the morning by the most frightening noise, a noise that could peel paint from walls, the noise that madmen must hear in their nightmares, and had shivered under the covers for a few moments, thinking it was the end of the world; finally he had peered out under a window shade and discovered that the trees in his front yard had been taken over by a vast flock of starlings, millions of them, all screeching at the tops of their lungs.