The Esphahnians
From the Quicksilver Metaweb.
The Esphahanians (from the Persian city of Isphahan) are an Armenian family one of whose members, Vrej Esphahnian, is a member of the Ten in The Confusion, and others of whom are resident in Paris, and who run a coffee house, the Cafe Esphahanian which sounds like a seventeenth century Starbucks; it's also where Eliza meets Samuel Bernard (p.374ff). The family has trading links at least throughout Europe, and perhaps throughout the world, but what's interesting is the way in which this whole development is seeded in Quicksilver (p.420), when Jack and Eliza first arrive in Leipzig, trying to sell the ostrich feathers and silk they looted at the fall of Vienna:
There were Eastern men in felt hats with giant rims of rich gleaming fur, talking to long-bearded Jews about racks of animal peltsthe faces of small nasty critters gaping blankly at the sky. Chinese carrying crates of what he had to assume was China [sic], coopers repairing busted casks, bakers hawking loaves, blonde maidens with piles of oranges, musicians everywhere, grinding hurdy-gurdys or plucking at mutant lutes with huge cantilevers projecting asymmetrically from their necks to support thumping bass halyards. Armenian coffee-sellers carrying bright steaming coper and brass tanks on their persons, bored guards with pikes or halberds, turbaned Turks attempting to buy back strange goods that (Jack realized with a shock) had also been looted from the Vienna siege-camp
and so on. Grammatically, there's no need to give the Armenians a fresh sentence; two long list-sentences that could either be joined, or split in other places; rhetorically, it's a very faint hint they are to stand out from the rest of the scene.
What fascinates me about it is the level of care and detail that seems to have gone into, not simply each book, but the set of books/novels as a complete, ordered plot. In Cryptonomicon, practically every change of locale/chapter included a link to the previous locale/chapter, notwithstanding their separation in time and space. In the current cycle of novels (or supernovel) the links seem somewhat more tenous, perhaps simply because of the larger expanse.
Submitted by Jon Paul "I have not yet begun to write" Henry