Stephenson interviewed in Salon on Confusion

Another one: Salon interviews Neal Stephenson on The Confusion.
Reason notes his historigraphical illness: "I have a perverse weakness for past generations that are universally reviled today".
A nice note about literacy antecedents:

Do you see yourself as part of any particular literary tradition?

I absolutely look to -- consciously, knowingly look back on -- those 19th-century serialized, potboiler novelists as people who are on to something. They got something right. There was something about living in that environment that made these guys incredibly productive. Dickens was the same deal. I do not have the sheer guts that it would take to serialize something. Before you've written the last chapter, the first chapter has already been published, so you can't go back and change anything to make it all work out. I just do not have the sheer chutzpah to start publishing stuff before it's all done. Mine is a pretty risk-averse strategy.

(thanks to Jesse Walker)