Enoch Root PS.
Mar. 10th, 2009 03:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackSee the trailer for Anathem here: http://www.nealstephenson.com/anathem.htm. I would never have tried to film ANY of such a philosophical book, but was surprised it worked pretty well!
There are two hints about Enoch's origin in Cryptonomicon. "Where I grew up, memorising the digits of pi was the nearest thing we had to entertainment" and "My Italian is heavily informed by the latin my father made me learn. I would sound like a 17th century priest to them."
I'm inclined to think that, at this time, Stephenson didn't have specific, secret, plans for where Root did originate, so the lines are not intended to reveal anything.
From the first I infer:
* Enoch is mainly saying "I spent a lot of time with nothing to do and an inquiring mind". All the characters comically exaggerate, it doesn't need to literally be true that they ACTUALLY memorised the digits of pi as entertainment.
* However, if there's any truth in it at all, the biggest hint is that Enoch grew up at all. (And furthermore, at some time after PI was discovered :))
* You could infer Enoch grew up somewhere kind of like an anathem Math. And presumably travelled all the way round the universe in both time and space to get into Earth's past. However, I think this is too specific an inference.
From the second I infer:
* Enoch is mainly saying that he knows a lot of archaic latin. If you know the history in the Baroque cycle, you know the hidden meaning is that he actually WAS a 17th century alchemist.
* The stuff about his father was probably just exaggerated colour.
* If not, it might have been a reference to a priest, or to God, inspiring him to learn Latin!
* If not, and you read it literally, it implies he saw someone as his father. I think that's too specific. But if not, it implies either (a) in some incarnation, he was sufficiently naive to have a father figure or (b) he actually grew up somewhere in a normal-ish family where latin was known.
There are two hints about Enoch's origin in Cryptonomicon. "Where I grew up, memorising the digits of pi was the nearest thing we had to entertainment" and "My Italian is heavily informed by the latin my father made me learn. I would sound like a 17th century priest to them."
I'm inclined to think that, at this time, Stephenson didn't have specific, secret, plans for where Root did originate, so the lines are not intended to reveal anything.
From the first I infer:
* Enoch is mainly saying "I spent a lot of time with nothing to do and an inquiring mind". All the characters comically exaggerate, it doesn't need to literally be true that they ACTUALLY memorised the digits of pi as entertainment.
* However, if there's any truth in it at all, the biggest hint is that Enoch grew up at all. (And furthermore, at some time after PI was discovered :))
* You could infer Enoch grew up somewhere kind of like an anathem Math. And presumably travelled all the way round the universe in both time and space to get into Earth's past. However, I think this is too specific an inference.
From the second I infer:
* Enoch is mainly saying that he knows a lot of archaic latin. If you know the history in the Baroque cycle, you know the hidden meaning is that he actually WAS a 17th century alchemist.
* The stuff about his father was probably just exaggerated colour.
* If not, it might have been a reference to a priest, or to God, inspiring him to learn Latin!
* If not, and you read it literally, it implies he saw someone as his father. I think that's too specific. But if not, it implies either (a) in some incarnation, he was sufficiently naive to have a father figure or (b) he actually grew up somewhere in a normal-ish family where latin was known.