August 9, 2002
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If you’re sitting there reading a lot of ‘blogs and trying to figure out how to write something substantial, perhaps these comments from Neal Stephenson can help you.
I know they did me.
(I found them while looking up a subject I read about in one of his books, the massacre of Japanese soldiers in the Philippines in world war two. Trying to determine if it’s history or fiction.)
Comments (4)
So, is this going to be your Site Disclaimer now?
That was Cryptonomicon, right? (my spelling is off, but it has been a few years since I’ve read it). I wanted to like it more than I liked Snow Crash, but I was overwhelmed…made it through, though. I don’t begrudge N. Stephenson his privacy or large chunks of time (I am also a terrible correspondent), as long as he is polite about it (which he appears to be). Kurt Vonnegut protects his writerly privacy, too, but he is incredibly fucking mean spirited about it…But if I was going to be a private writer, I would be J.D. Salinger and I wouldn’t have written Catcher in the Rye.
Good for Stephenson! I’d rather have his novels than an e-mail. I don’t understand why anyone should feel obliged to grant the p2p requests of everyone capable of hitting the Send button or sticking a stamp on an envelope. Or why producing public work, including acting, removes your right to privacy.
Yah, in ‘Cryptonomicon,’ there’s a mass grave of Japanese soldiers who were killed by native rebels in the Philippines. I couldn’t find anything on the web to substantiate it. Quite the opposite, in fact.
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