Cleverness
A few days ago I finally finished reading Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver, several months after starting it. Surprisingly, I’m actually thinking about buying the next one in the trilogy; it seems I got attached to the thing after spending so damn long with it. It might not be great literature, but with so much incidental history-of-science stuff it can’t fail to stimulate my nerdular cortex.
One big criticism I have is that almost all of the characters seem remarkably clever and articulate, including vagabonds [ignorant & poor] and poseurs [rich & inbred]. It’s the same beef I have with [otherwise excellent] shows like Buffy and Gilmore Girls, so full of snappy dialogue with which everyone somehow manages to keep up. The effortlessness leaves me cold– communicating just isn’t that easy in the real world, and to portray it so implies a homogeneity of mind that is just creepy.
Yeah like, totally.
Except that Xander never got it.