I never finished SnowCrash
I know, I need to have my geek license revoked, but I got bored and never finished it. I still can't figure out what all the fuss was about... Stephenson didn't really do it for me as a writer. Still, this bit on Cafe-au-lait piqued my interest:
Joining the ongoing effort to figure out just what's up with Enoch Root in Neal Stephenson's novel Cryptonomicon, Bill Greve wrote in to note that the new paperback edition of Cryptonomicon contains an excerpt of Neal Stephenson's upcoming novel Quicksilver in which a character named Enoch Root is searching for a character with the last name of Waterhouse in Boston in the early 1700s. He's led through town by a 10-year old Benjamin Franklin. I'll have to get down to Barnes & Noble soon and check this out.
Meanwhile, Pedro Jorge Romero, the Spanish translator for Cryptonomicon, has written up his own thoughts on the matter (in Spanish). He seems to prefer the less science-fictional, "it's all a hoax" explanation and translated accordingly. Still he also notes parallels between Gandalf and Enoch Root; and as all good geeks know, Gandalf the Grey apparently dies in the first book of the Lord of the Rings only to be resurrected as Gandalf the White in The Two Towers. It's also never quite clear whether or not Gandalf is exactly human or not. Various of Tolkien's writings indicate that the five wizards may be a race onto themselves, and they certainly seem longer-lived than typical humans. Anyone know if Stephenson's a Tolkien buff?
Javier Cantero also has some comments on all this in Spanish. He points out that in the Ethiopian Book Of Enoch, Enoch is the father of the famously long-lived Methuselah.
Wow, I had seen a lot of Cryptonimicon on Pedro's website, but I never realized he was the translator for the novel. Holy crap! Man, I need to improve my Spanish - especially when reading quickly. Quicksilver seems interesting as well... hanging out with a young Ben Franklin. Cool!
Suddenly it looks like I have a mission - find these books in English before my 18 hour epic journey across the world next weekend.
-Russ