back again
I'm back. A fun weekend, but it accomplished nothing. My monkey even stopped eating and starved to death. Several times. Good riddance.
I found a book to read, finally. I bought it last week and started reading it on the train. I had heard that Neal Stephenson had vowed that The Big U would never be reprinted. This made me kind of sad because I like Neal Stephenson (although I havnen't yet managed to break page 50 of Cryptonomicon and I thought the ending of Diamond Age, when I finally got around to it, was supremely disappointing. I don't know why I wanted to read it so badly. I just did.
After I managed to find and read Kampus (It's back in print?! Bizarre.), I had a bit of a yen for dystopic, university-based morality plays. The Big U in large part reminds me of that book. The difference being that, while the characters in Kampus are more or less caricatures, I can honestly and truly relate to the characters in the Big U (nearly 100 pages in). I'm a little nervous about it, though. The Big U is hitting a little too close to home in spots. I point out one of those spots on one of my other pages. It's making me recall things I'd otherwise forgotten. It's probably good, then, that I didn't find it while I was at university, when I first went looking for it.
I'm not entirely sure why Neal Stephenson wanted The Big U buried. Maybe it was just a typical "everything I did before yesterday sucks" artist attitude. But maybe, and here I am egotistical enough to think he might have shared the same thought I've had for the last couple years, maybe some things are just meant to be left buried in the past. His reluctance might account for the $22.50 price tag. Whatever the reason, I'm glad to have the chance to read it.