I missed this the first time around, but apparently “President Bush wrote a poem”:http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/10/03/bush.poem.ap/index.html. It’s not clear whether he actually submitted it to The Missouri Review, but in any case they have taken the trouble of writing him a “very nice rejection letter”:http://missourireview.org/index.php?genre=Editorials&title=Dear+Mr.+G.W.+Bush+%2F+Re%3A+Your+recent+submission that deconstructs (in the technical sense) his lyrical effort. A short excerpt:

We first observe this ambiguity in the third line of the poem: “Oh my, lump in the bed.” The placement of the comma forces the reader to hesitate. In the context of the opening couplet (“Roses are red/Violets are blue”), we expect the comma to follow the interjection�as follows: “Oh, my lump in the bed,/How I’ve missed you.” Note how this would allow the lines to fit the traditional rhythm of a “rose poem.” Had the line been punctuated in this manner, we might be able to read “my” as a possessive adjective, the speaker laying claim to (or reclaiming) his lover, which would be in keeping with the dramatic situation. But given the punctuation and awkward placement of the comma, we must ask, does this instability in the phrase signal instability in the relationship? His lover recently returned from the arms of another, is the speaker himself uncertain now of his claim to her love? Or does it indicate a healthy obsession with the morning salute of a “little Commander-in-Chief” (as one staff member suggested)?

Via “Bookslut”:http://www.bookslut.com/blog/.

“Do you seriously think Neal Stephenson is within shouting distance of Thomas Pynchon as a prose stylist?” Friend and reader Christopher DeJong tossed that question my way after reading my review of Quicksilver, where I briefly compare that novel to Mason Dixon, noting that “Pynchon still holds his ground as a prose virtuoso, but Stephenson has closed that gap considerably.”

I’ve been chewing on the question of the relative merits of their books for a while: if Pynchon’s prose is so good, why do I enjoy reading Stephenson’s books more? Because style isn’t everything, of course, and, as I’ve noted a couple of times before, Stephenson pays a good deal more attention to the telling-a-story part of storytelling, much to his credit. Literary fiction has suffered in the past several decades from a couple of trends: in traditional fiction, the emphasis of character over plot, and in experimental fiction (a la Barth, Barthelme, Pynchon), the deconstruction (using that term loosely) of narrative. Neither trend is intrinsically bad, but the de-emphasis of plot amounts to a selling-short of the very core of literature. In the long run, stories will always win out against character sketches, metatales, and rootless bursts of dazzling prose.

But I digress. The question before us today is much simpler. Nobody’s arguing that Stephenson is the better stylist—the issue is whether the difference between them exists Pynchon is that much better all around, or because they’re trying to do different things. Let’s look at a couple examples.

From Quicksilver, here’s a paragraph from the 1713 storyline, which describes Daniel Waterhouse boarding the boat that will take him back across the Atlantic:

Daniel leaves America, becoming part of that country’s stock of memories—the composted manure from which it’s sending out fresh green shoots. The Old World reaches down to draw him in: a couple of lascars, their flesh and breath suffused with saffron, asafoetida, and cardamom, lean over the rail, snare his cold pale hands in their warm black ones, and haul him in like a fish. A roller slides under the hull at the same moment—they fall back to the deck in an orgiastic tangle. The lascars spring up and busy themselves drawing up his equipage on ropes. Compared to the little boat with the creaking and splashing of its oars and the grunting of the slaves, Minerva moves with the silence of a well-trimmed ship, signifying (or so he hopes) her harmony with the forces and fields of nature. Those Atlantic rollers make the deck beneath him accelerate gently up and down, effortlessly moving his body—it’s like lying on a mother’s bosom as she breathes. So Daniel lies there spreadeagled for a while, staring up at the stars—white geometric points on a slate, gridded by shadows of rigging, an explanatory network of catenary curves and Euclidean sections, like one of those geometric proofs out of Newton’s Principia Mathematica. (p. 69)

And from Mason Dixon, a scene where the ship on which Mason and Dixon have booked passage comes under attack:

Altho’ Dixon is heading off to Sumatra with a member of the Church of England,—that is, the Ancestor of Troubles,—a stranger with whom he morever but hours before was carousing exactly like Sailors, shameful to say, yet, erring upon the side of Conviviality, will he decide to follow Fox’s Advice, and answer “that of God” in Mason, finding it soon enough with the Battle on all ‘round them, when both face their equal chances of imminent Death.

Dissolution, Noise, and Fear. Below-decks, reduced to nerves, given into the emprise of Forces invisible yet possessing great Weight and Speed, which contend in some Phantom realm they have had the bad luck to blunder into, the Astronomers abide, willing themselves blank yet active. Casualties begin to appear in the Sick Bay, the wounds inconceivable, from Oak-Splinters and Chain and Shrapnel, and as Blood creeps like Evening to Dominion over all Surfaces, so grows the Ease of giving in to Panic Fear. It takes an effort to act philosophickal, or even to find ways to be useful,—but a moment’s re-focusing proves enough to show them each how at least to keep out of the way, and presently to save steps for the loblolly boy, or run messages to and from other parts of the ship.

After the last of the Gun-Fire, Oak Beams shuddering with the Chase, the Lazarette is crowded and pil’d with bloody Men, including Capt. Smith with a great Splinter in his Leg, his resentment especially powerful,—“I’ll have lost thirty of my Crew. Are you two really that important?” Above, on deck, corpses are steaming, wreckage is ev’rywhere, shreds of charr’d sail and line clatter in the Wind that is taking the Frenchman away. (p. 38)

The most obvious difference here is that the Pynchon passage, like the rest of the novel, is filled with superfluous capitals and archaic spellings that are appropriate to the period (in this case, mid-18th century). But that’s only the surface of it—all the elements of his diction and sentence structure work together to achieve this effect. It’s not a pure pastiche of the way people wrote back then, though—there is something unmistakably edgey and even Pynchonesque about it. The style of Mason Dixon is a synthesis of old and new that hews remarkably close to the old. Stephenson, on the other hand, writes in a much more modern style, only occasionally dotting his prose with historical flourishes (none in the example above). This is, without question, the grounds on which Pynchon can claim indisputable superiority—he develops an idiosyncratic voice for the entire novel, unnatural, historical, but still readable, and sustains it with nary a gaffe for the entire novel. The number of people writing in English today who could pull that off convincingly could probably be counted on one hand, but we’ll never really know because so few authors would have the guts to even try.

Historical techniques aside, Pynchon is a lot more florid than Stephenson. His sentences tend to be longer, and are definitely more complex. The Quicksilver paragraph quoted above is unusually lyrical for Stephenson; usually he’s a good deal more prosaic. Both paragraphs demand close attention and access to a good dictionary from readers, but Stephenson rarely becomes difficult to follow because of the way he writes—rather, it’s because he’s tossing out so many unfamiliar historical descriptions, scientific terms, or what have you. Pynchon will do this too, but more often than not, if I have to go back and reread part of Mason Dixon it’s because I’ve lost track of the flow of a sentence that started two pages ago.

The distinction here is an old one; classical rhetoricians spoke of Asiatic versus Attic style—the former is ornate, lush, and detailed, while the latter is lean, clean, and direct. Stephenson is a master of Attic style—a fact that’s often obscured because, while his sentences are direct and elegant, their substance is often convoluted and complex. You can see it more clearly in his nonfiction—look at his explanation of the Metaweb for an excellent example. Pynchon, as an Asiatic writer, will elicit more “oohs” and “ahhs” for the power and grace of his prose, but will tend to lose his readers when he’s trying to be florid and tackling difficult material at the same time. Obviously, both authors will tend toward the Attic or the Asiatic at different points, but in general, Stephenson wants his language to transparently convey his message, while Pynchon demands a certain amount of attention for the language itself.

This makes it difficult, ultimately, to compare their level of accomplishment in terms of prose style. Even when we keep their different aims in mind, though, Pynchon still gets the edge, if for no other reason than he almost never hiccups. Stephenson still hiccups—look at that last sentence of his passage again. The rhythm of the sentence dances elegantly until it runs smack into “Newton’s Principia Mathematica”—a messy cluster of short syllables that clunks the sentence to an awkward close.

What’s remarkable about Quicksilver is how rarely Stephenson hiccups, in comparison to his earlier novels. His prose is consistently better despite the fact that his subject matter is considerably more demanding. There’s no question that Pynchon’s the better stylist, but, to get around to Chris’ question, if they’re not within shouting distance of each other, it’s partly because they’re playing on different fields.

Polytropos was happily free from comment spam, until just a few minutes ago, when half a dozen Viagra ads popped into recently posted and referenced entries. Now I feel all the anger and frustration that other bloggers have been going on about recently. Not surprisingly, “Making Light”:http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/ is the place to go for good info on dealing with this. Grrr…

I’m back home after a weekend of baby showers and, while somewhat overwhelmed by all the baby gear, none the worse for wear. The first shower was a candlelit evening affair with friends; the second a luncheon party with family. Both were delightful in their own way. It was at the second one, though, that I started to become aware of the seismic changes in disposition that this whole impending-fatherhood thing is wreaking on me.

Consider the evidence:

I spent the afternoon at an event where the theme was “duckies” and the recurrent exclamation during the opening of gifts was “Oooo! That’s adooorable!” And yet, far from finding the proceedings maudlin or bathetic, I found it all quite adorable myself.

In the past, as my college friends will attest, I have only suffered the presence of stuffed animals that have a suitably detailed background mythology and a psychopathic temperament. Now even a glimpse of a Pooh Bear or a fluffy yellow duckie makes me burble with excitement.

I’m not sure where this will end, and I must confess that I find the transformation not unpleasant. However, I fear that ere long I will lose any ability to engage in circumspection, and so I say to all who hear my call: If I ever praise Barney, shoot me.

Blogging will be light over the weekend; Suanna and I are in Grand Rapids for a couple of baby showers. En route from the airport, we stopped by at my aunt and uncle’s place to borrow their old beater car while we’re in town. It doesn’t take me long to get back into West Michigan mode, but fresh off the plane as I was, it struck me as incredibly bizarre that someone would have an extra old car just laying around, with ample space to park it in and no problem with annual inspections or vehicle taxes.

As I slid behind the wheel, deja vu smacked me across the face, just as it did “not too long ago”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/2003/07/deja_smaug.html. Not only did this old car _smell_ like the legendary Smaug, but it had the same huge plush front seat (none of this “bucket seat” crap) and grumbling engine. Cruising down Kalamazoo Avenue in it felt peculiar, to say the least. Mind you, this car didn’t have Smaug’s power, or the constant feeling that at any moment it might burst into flame and launch itself into the air, but it handled just like the old rig did.

Now I’m sitting in the familiar room that was mine through most of college, staring at the pile of baby clothes my mom has been gradually accumulating for her first grandchild. Time is pulling in both directions, and I’m caught in the middle, reminding myself that it’s not a dream.

(No spoilers here—this is a straightforward book review. Look for spoiler-laden commentary in a week or two.)

Baroque: Of, relating to, or characteristic of a style in art and architecture developed in Europe from the early 17th to mid-18th century, emphasizing dramatic, often strained effect and typified by bold, curving forms, elaborate ornamentation, and overall balance of disparate parts. (American Heritage Dictionary)

Neal Stephenson is nothing if not ambitious. Cryptonomicon, his previous novel and until recently his best, juggled interweaving plotlines in two different time periods, providing equally memorable portraits of Bletchley Park circa 1943 and Manila circa 1999, just to name a couple. In both theme and substance, the novel hewed pretty close to its titular subject of cryptography.

The Baroque Cycle—of which the 916-page Quicksilver is only the first third—is already vastly larger in scope. Cryptography still figures prominently, but only as one aspect of a work that encompasses the entire history of science, politics, and economics in late 17th century England and Western Europe. It is a historical novel in which the ancestors of Cryptonomicon’s protagonists stand side-to-side with real figures from Isaac Newton to Gottfried Liebniz to Louis XIV. We have Daniel Waterhouse, a young natural philospher and Puritan overshadowed by the likes of Newton, Hooke, and Wilkins, thrust unwillingly into the swamp of court intrigue. Later we are introduced to Jack Shaftoe, the quintessential Vagabond, and his traveling companion Eliza, both of whom find themselves caught between the decadent court at Versailles and the birth of capitalism in the markets of Amsterdam. And of course we have the alchemist Enoch Root, by all accounts the selfsame person as the one who appears three centuries later, none the worse for wear, in Cryptonomicon. And these are just the principles—Quicksilver is the sort of book that has a Dramatis Personae section at the back that you will need to refer to in order to keep track of everyone.

It’s difficult to convey just how much stuff this novel has in it. This passage, about Newton’s Principio Mathematica, may be a bit of coy self-reference:

APTHORP: My word, is that the cornerstone of a building, or a manuscript?
RAVENSCAR: Err! To judge by weight, it is the former.
WATERHOUSE: It explains the System of the World.
APTHORP: Some sharp editor needs to step in and take that wretch in hand!

On every page you’ll find an unexpected cameo, the basis for a now-taken-for-granted scientific principle, a fascinating historical footnote, or the origin of an English word. Stephenson has a strong track record in nonfiction, especially as a historical and cultural commentator. The same skills are in play in Quicksilver, where he manages to highlight the unexpected quirks of history while simultaneously grokking the zeitgeist.

Even though Stephenson’s work has nothing to do with fantasy, I can’t help but thinking of Tolkien’s notion of “recovery,” as described in “On Fairy Stories,” when looking at the way Stephenson handles his settings. For Tolkien, recovery meant a “regaining of a clear view”; he felt that one role of fantasy was to reinvigorate our perspective of everyday things by putting them into new contexts. (For example: once you’ve read about the Ents, you don’t ever look at that old tree in the backyard in quite the same way.) Whether he’s writing about WWII-era Sweden or Amsterdam in 1685, Stephenson accomplishes something like recovery by bringing out the teeming diversity, the barely-controlled chaos, and the messy beauty of each of his locales. The real world, as described by Stephenson, gains a large measure of the madcap energy present in the imagined future societies of Snow Crash and The Diamond Age.

Impressive as the setting of Quicksilver is, Stephenson’s greatest step forward as a novelist is the quality of his prose. While it has always been serviceable, in this novel it is consistently strong, and punctuated with moments of brilliance, such as Daniel’s insight into the mind of his friend Issac:

Daniel saw in a way he’d never seen anything before: his mind was a homonculus squatting in the middle of his skull, peering out through good but imperfect telescopes and listening-horns, gathering observations that had been distorted along the way, as a lens put chromatic aberrations into all the light that passed through it. A man who peered out at the world through a telescope would assume that the aberration was real, that the stars actually looked like that—what false assumptions, then, had natural philosophers been making about the evidence of their senses, until last night? Sitting in the gaudy radiance of those windows hearing the organ play and the choir sing, his mind pleasantly intoxicated from exhaustion, Daniel experienced a faint echo of what it must be like, all the time, to be Isaac Newton: a permanent ongoing epiphany, and endless immersion in lurid radiance, a drowning in light, a ringing of cosmic harmonies in the ears.

But Stephenson is never so good as when he’s being funny, as with this description of the attire of the Earl of Upnor:

Today, walking across Charing Cross, he was wearing a suit that appeared to’ve been constructed by (1) dressing him in a blouse with twenty-foot-long sleeves of the most expensive linen; (2) bunching the sleeves up in numerous overlapping gathers on his arms; (3) painting most of him in glue; (4) shaking and rolling him in a bin containing thousands of black silk doilies; and (5) (because King Charles II, who’d mandated, a few years earlier, that all courtiers wear black and white, was getting bored with it, but had not formally rescinded the order) adding dashes of color her and there, primarily in the form of clusters of elaborately gathered and knotted ribbons—enough ribbon, all told, to stretch all the way to whatever shop in Paris where the Earl had bought all of this stuff. The Earl also had a white silk scarf tied round his throat in such a way as to show off its lacy ends. Louis XIV’s Croation mercenaries, les Cravates, had made a practice of tying their giant, flapping lace collars down so that gusts of wind would not blow them up over their faces in the middle of a battle or duel, and this had become a fashion in Paris, and the Earl of Upnor, always pushing the envelope, was doing the cravate thing with a scarf instead of an (as of ten minutes ago) outmoded collar. He had a wig that was actually wider than his shoulders, and a pair of boots that contained enough really good snow-white leather that, if pulled on straight, they would have reached all the way to his groin, at which point each one of them would have been larger in circumference than his waist; but he had of course folded the tops down and then (since they were so long) folded them back up again to keep them from dragging on the ground, so that around each knee was a complex of white leather folds about as wide as a bushel-basket, filled with a froth of lace. Gold spurs, beset with jewels, curved back from each heel to a distance of perhaps eight inches. The heels themselves were cherry-red, four inches high, and protected from the muck of Charing Cross by loose slippers whose flat soles dragged on the ground and made clacking noises with each step. Because of the width of his boot-tops, the Earl had to swing his legs around each other with each step, toes pointed, rolling so violently from side to side that he could only maintain balance with a long, encrusted, beribboned walking stick.

Historical fiction must always forge a synthesis between contemporary diction and that of the time period in question; the greatest pitfall is falling into uncomfortable spikes of one or the other. Stephenson finds his balance and sticks to it, writing in his characteristic style but infusing it with a bit of elegance and a penchant for complex metaphors that Donne would find quite familiar. His courtly dialogue is full of actual, honest-to-goodness wit, a rare commodity. He deftly distinguishes each of the authorial voices in Book Three, a big chunk of which is a sort of epistolary mini-novel. And while we’re on literary forms, most of Book Two comprises a classic picaresque novel starring Jack Shaftoe, even as an actual picaresque novel, L’Emmerdeur, is accruing around his escapades. Stephenson retains his penchant for making sudden, even jarring jumps from scene to scene, and filling in the transitional details as he goes. If I had more patience, reading The Baroque Cycle as if it was a serialized novel, a couple chapters a month, would no doubt be a very good fit.

Cryptonomicon was often compared to Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow in reviews, on the rather thin ground of shared subject matter and a certain playfulness in the tone of the authors. A comparison between The Baroque Cycle and Mason Dixon is more apt, even though the historical periods they deal with are a century apart. Both works look to pivotal moments of the past and their role in forming our modern sensibilities; both do so while providing a dizzying array of detail, almost overwhelming the reader. Pynchon still holds his ground as a prose virtuoso, but Stephenson has closed that gap considerably, and maintains the clear edge when it comes to plot, in that he has one, as opposed to a series of disjointed vignettes. Advantage: Baroque Cycle.

Stephenson is fascinated in Quicksilver, and has been in the past, with the nature of genius. Issac Newton represents the ultimate example of this; he possess a once-in-a-generation mind without which, we are led to belief, humankind would have been wholly unable to take the next step in understanding the world. The same principle holds in politics and every other sphere—while shaped to some extent by broader forces, history, for Stephenson, is the story of actions of extraordinary individuals in times of pressure. While none of his protagonists match Newton’s intellect, each of them proves brilliant in their own right, not least because of their adaptability, survivability, and wit. Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon celebrated the apotheosis of the techno-geek as a mover and shaker in world events; Quicksilver shows this to be the case in the 17th century as well. “So now, as then” is a running theme of Quicksilver—the nature of human greed and cruelty, along with the power of dynamic individuals to instigate change, remains the same. It’s the technology that evolves, and while Stephenson is endlessly fascinated with that evolution, the backdrop is always the struggle that Enoch Root described in Cryptonomicon between the forces of Athena and the forces of Ares.

Now for the inevitable question: what of the ending? Stephenson ended Cryptonomicon fine, as far as I’m concerned, save the rather awkward insertion of Andrew Loeb, Jungle Warrior. But his poor track record with endings is a widely shared notion. This time, though, he has an out: Quicksilver isn’t supposed to end. It is, according to Stephenson, a continuous story divided into seven or eight volumes, and only divided into three books for the arbitrary purposes of publication. So we don’t have an ending yet, but even considering that, Quicksilver finishes reasonably well, at a clear moment in history and with definite turning points for two of its major characters, while still leaving plenty of unanswered questions for the future volumes. Stephenson has no interest whatsoever in the modernist aesthetic of the short ‘n’ sweet—he revels in the Dickensian sprawl, and his story seems more likely to take us not to the end of some geometrically arranged plot, but to the ends of the lives of his heroes, or perhaps their children. My criticisms of the novel thus far concern the plot, and thus have to be deferred—they all depend on what’s still to come, on what he does with those loose ends and the characters (one in particular) whose fates are left ambiguous.

Just how good is this book? I’ll reserve judgment until the Baroque Cycle is complete. One thing to remember is that, for all the history and philosophy it draws in, it remains, at heart (as the epigraph to Book One slyly reminds us), a romance: a rollicking tale of adventure and intrigue, a good solid yarn, not a treatise or even a novel of ideas. That Stephenson has been able to sustain such a tale, with this much historical detail and depth, for over 900 pages, is an impressive achievement; if he can keep it up for 1800 more pages, and bring it all together at the end, he’ll deserve to be called a genius every bit as much as the characters he write about.

UPDATE: More on Stephenson and Pynchon visavis prose style in this entry.

Another month, another update. For those of you who regularly read blogs, it probably seems unusual that I’m diligently keeping the links in my sidebar up-to-date instead of letting them fall into disarray. Think of it as leading by example.

Many new blogs this time, but I’m not sufficiently inspired to subdivide, so they’ll all remain in one list for now. The blogroll now includes blogs by people I admire, blogs by people I know, and blogs by people who have graciously linked to Polytropos at some point. Most are a combination of these; I’ll leave sorting them out as an exercise for the reader. As always, there are more blogs in my bookmarks than those I link to here. The Polytropos sidebar ain’t easy — well, OK, it _is_ easy, but it takes time to make up its mind.

Deep in the bowels of Polytropos Labs, I’m putting together an arcane Taxonomy of Blogdom that will be used to organize the blogroll in the future, and hopefully will serve as an inspiration to the rest of the blogosphere. It will be ready . . . someday.

Here, then, are the newcomers:

* “Alas, a blog”:http://www.amptoons.com/blog/ is one of the best-looking blogs I’ve seen; it served as inspiration for some of the changes I made to Polytropos.
* “Bookslut”:http://www.bookslut.com/blog/ has been around since the beginning; I mention it because I was about to _remove_ it from the ‘roll as a result of a very dark time in which people other than Jessa Crispin were writing it. But now she’s back and all is well.
* I knew “Eve Tushnet”:http://eve-tushnet.blogspot.com/ must be a widely-read blogger when her offhand references to Polytropos created record-setting numbers of hits for this site. Turns out she’s widely read for a reason.
* “John & Belle Have a Blog”:http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/ is written by John Holbo, who teaches philosophy at the National University of Singapore. I haven’t been reading enough (or perhaps not closely enough) to know whether Belle gets a word in edgewise. UPDATE: I just realized that the little picture icons by the entries indicate which of them is writing each entry. So actually I’ve been reading plenty of Belle’s stuff all along. Color me stupid.
* “¡Journalista!”:http://www.tcj.com/journalista/ is the blog of Dirk Deppey of the Comics Journal. Readers who stumble here from his links may be fooled into thinking that I’m a real comics blogger, but I’m only moonlighting as one because friends keep giving me comics to read.
* I mentioned “Slacktivist”:http://slacktivist.typepad.com/ in the entry before this one. Electrolite “describes him best”:http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/archives/003709.html#003709.
* “Snarkout”:http://www.snarkout.org/ is one of those blogs (they need a name) which routinely post delightful, informative essays that are apropos of nothing in the news or in the author’s personal life. I wandered here when “this entry”:http://www.snarkout.org/archives/2003/09/07/ was at the top and have kept poking back since.
* Over in “Regular Reading,” I added links to a couple comics I routinely read: “PVP”:http://www.pvponline.com/ and “Doonesbury”:http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/.

“Slacktivist”:http://slacktivist.typepad.com/ has become a favorite blog ever since “Electrolite”:http://www.nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/ called it to my attention. “This entry”:http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2003/10/gary_coleman_th.html says everything that needs to be said about the California recall:

Imagine this, at a noon press conference:

COLEMAN: Thank you for coming. I’ll try to be short. (uncomfortable pause) That was a joke.

I’ve called you here today to say this: Don’t vote for me. I entered this race as a joke. I’m an actor — what do I know about being governor? What does an actor know about funding our public schools, or balancing the budgets? My campaign has been a joke, but if you vote for me — or if you vote for this recall — then the joke is on you.

Look, I never pretended to be qualified to be governor. But I will say this: I never said I admired Hitler. And I haven’t spent the last 20 years groping women’s breasts. I couldn’t reach them. (uncomfortable pause) That was another joke. Jeez, you guys are tough.

So please, don’t vote for me. And don’t vote for this recall. Don’t turn California into a joke. Thank you.

REPORTER: Mr. Coleman, please …

COLEMAN: Look, I told you …

REPORTER: Come on, just once, please.

COLEMAN: I didn’t come here to …

REPORTER: Please?

COLEMAN: (sighs heavily) “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout Willis?”

(Laughter)

Somewhere outside of Bowie, Maryland, at the end of a mile-long dirt road, the warriors gather every weekend. Two trailers bedecked in camouflage and made to look like army bunkers sit alongside the path to the battlegrounds. The combatants file up to a window to register and sign away their right to sue, then collect their equipment at the next bunker. This includes a facemask, an ammo cylinder, and of course the Piranha: a crude piece of piping fitted with a handle, a trigger, a CO2 canister, and a pudgy banana clip that holds a hundred or so paintballs.

Of the six of us who showed up yesterday afternoon, only one had ever been paintballing before. This showed, in that few of us were wearing enough layers, and none of us were wearing any sort of camouflage, to say nothing of full-on army fatigues. Clusters of people thus appareled were everywhere, some of them with their own fully-automatic guns and big ammo belts to hold extra paintball canisters. Others wore what looked like hockey jerseys with more vibrant, xTreme colors, clearly meant to indicate membership in some sort of paintball team. The vast majority of the crowd were male, and while I saw no older women, there were a surprising number of teenage girls, mostly in the context of what appeared to be school groups.

We waited for a referee to corral us in with a couple dozen other newbies and lead us into the forest. I’m sure we looked like doofuses, but this was probably a step up from all the guys who were trying to look like bad-asses — especially the guys who passionately _believed_ themselves to be bad-asses, despite the fact that what they were about to go do was traipse around amid the trees firing plastic balls that exploded in little spurts of green (machine-washable!) paint.

“This is unbelievable,” I said to Nick, whose impending marriage was the impetus for us being there, as a sort of Bachelor Party Phase One.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Real end-of-empire stuff, isn’t it?”

We were thrown on a team with a handful of others and led to a variety of forest courses, where we played numerous rounds of Capture the Flag, though more often than not the game ended by one team taking out everyone on the other side. Before each round our ref advised us that taking the immediate offensive and charging en masse was the best strategy; it took us a while to realize that this was, in fact, a fantastically bad idea designed to make the rounds go faster.

Paintballs hurt, a little bit, and create welts all out of proportion to the amount of pain they cause. Since the pellets aren’t traveling all that fast, the guns are rather difficult to aim — if you’re firing single shots, it’s almost impossible to hit someone at long range. This means that those who are willing to shell out some extra dough for additional ammo cylinders are at a distinct advantage, since they can pepper an area with shots and hopefully score a lucky hit.

I hesitate to draw any parallels whatsoever between paintball and combat with real guns, but if there’s any lesson to be learned at all, it’s this: communication is everything. The battlefield is chaos; green arm bands are poor identifiers when you’re peering through the trees wondering whether to shoot at someone you can barely see. Most times I had no clue what was going on or even who was winning. The last round, our team had eliminated nearly all our opponents, but since we didn’t know who other folks had killed, we advanced on their position at a snail’s pace when we could have just charged. Given a choice between infinite ammo and a set of reliable headsets for my team, I’d take the headsets.

A day later, my back is sore from all that crouching and diving and general bustling about. The welt on my shoulder smarts. But the reason I’m not in a tremendous rush to try it again next weekend doesn’t have to do with any of that; it comes down to the people. Squaring off against a field of people you don’t even know, several of whom you’re pretty sure are cheating, has its limits — it’s a lot more fun when you know everyone involved. In this sense paintball is very similar to hopping online for a bit of Quake or Battlefield 1942.

Trudging back out after a few hours, sweaty and paint-splattered, we passed by a bunch a guys on the way in who, judging from their haircuts and size, hadn’t needed to pick up their combat fatigues at the local army surplus store. I’m not sure what to make of the fact that they, even they, have an interest in playing the weekend warrior. If nothing else it’s a clear reminder that despite the whizzing projectiles, the frenzied movement, and the fog of war, it really is just a game.

. . . as told by Rakni, an Iranian I recently met who was appalled that I was playing the game without a proper sense of its history.

As everyone knows, chess was invented in India. The King of India brought a chessboard to the King of Iran and taught him to play. “It is a great game,” said the King of India, “Because, as in life, wisdom and logic shape one’s course.” Years later, on a visit to India, the King of Iran brought a game he had invented: backgammon. “My game is a better model of life, I think,” he said to the King of India. “For in backgammon, logic and _fortune_ determine what becomes of us.”

I also learned from Rakni that a 6-5 roll is known as a “shishobesh.” Shish = Farsi for six, besh = turkish for five. He pronounced it “sheeshobeesh,” and explained the ancient rationale behind the term: just as 6-5 is a lucky roll, it’s a lucky thing to see a Turk and a Persian standing happily together.