"The Confusion"

[stoutfellow]

A few days ago, I took a deep breath and dove into The Confusion, the second book of Neal Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle" trilogy. Stephenson continues to delight me with his weird mixture of comedy, horror, erudition, and satire. I may or may not review it when I'm done - I may hold off until I've read the whole trilogy - but I have to put up the following passage. The year is 1690; the speakers are an Armenian named Vrej and an Englishman named Jack, both of whom have been captured and enslaved by the Barbary corsairs. They are discussing a plan, currently in progress, which should end in freedom and a modicum of wealth. (The first speaker is Jack; both are speaking Sabir, a Romance-based pidgin which was widespread in the Mediterranean at this time.)

"Then what do you mean when you say you understood his plan?"
"I understood his basic principle: that a group of slaves who, taken one by one, were assigned a very low value in the market, might yet be worth much when grouped together cleverly..." Vrej rolled up to his feet and grimaced into the sun. "The wording does not come naturally in this bastard language of Sabir, but Moseh's plan was to synergistically leverage the value-added of diverse core competencies into a virtual entity whose whole was more than the sum of its parts..."
Jack stared at him blankly.
"It sounds brilliant in Armenian," Vrej sighed.