Livre d'Or

I think you're better at reading Stephenson than I am, so this makes me feel more confident in my impression that this is one of his weaker books. I do agree that there is some playfulness in Anathem, but a lot of it didn't work for me or was really overwhelmed by intense earnestness.

I did phrase badly the degree of geek wish fulfilment I see in Anathem. You're quite right that what the Avout are doing is not exactly ruling the world, though that's sort of what I was trying to get at by mentioning that they're excused from the boring bits of ruling like politics and economics. So it's not so much wouldn't it be great if geeks ruled the world, as wouldn't it be great if anyone with a reasonable facility for abstract reasoning was completely excused from any kind of responsibility and allowed to carry on living like a heavily subsidized computer science student for their whole lives.

It's somewhat an extrapolation the standard geek grumble that everybody despises geeks, but really the whole world relies on geek skills. This is sort of a valid point, but it's a great deal more true of people like personal care assistants, cleaners and others in sanitation, and generally I could make a long list of people who are more despised and less materially rewarded than geeks in spite of being more necessary for a functioning society and maintaining the standards of living that rich Westerners expect.

So Stephenson sets up a world where no annoying mundanes make the poor put-upon geeks waste time with boring small talk, clothes, sport or status games (let alone, you know, actually dealing with life maintenance or supporting themselves economically, and let's not even consider for three seconds who's doing the ultimate necessary but low status job, parenting), yet the geeks are so all-powerful that the "Saeculars" can't do anything significant without turning to them. For example, I had a problem with things like the idea that Suur Ala is the best person to be the general of an interplanetary army, because despite having no military training at all she's very good at logic.

I do agree that book questions its own mathic system, and I do like the ending which implies more mixing of the mathic and Saecular worlds in the happy future. The separation of "theors" from "praxics" and the relationship between Avout and Ita I thought was interesting too. I'm absolutely on board with your interpretation that it's saying something about monasticism, too.