"Нейл Стефенсон. The Big U (Большое "U", англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

"WHEN I THINK OF THE MEN WHO WERE MY TEACHERS, I REALIZED THAT MOST OF THEM
WERE SLIGHTLY MAD. THE MEN WHO COULD BE REGARDED AS GOOD TEACHERS WERE
EXCEPTIONAL. IT'S TRAGIC TO THINK THAT SUCH PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER TO BAR A
YOUNG MAN'S WAY."
--German political figure Adolf Hitler, 1889-1945 (from _Hitler's
Secret Conversations, 1941-44_, translated by Norman Cameron and R.H.
Stevens.)

----

I am indebted to the following people for the following things:

My parents for providing several kinds of support.

Edward Gibbon, for writing _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_.

Julian Jaynes, for writing _The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of
the Bicameral Mind_.

William Blake and William Butler Yeats, for providing Pertinax with
inspiration.

Kathrin Day Lassila, for numerous and thoughtful disagreements.

Gordon Lish, for the most productive rejection slip of all time.

Gary Fisketjon, for buying me a beer in Top Hat in Missoula, Montana, on July
1, 1983, and other services beyond the call of editorial duty.

-----


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-- The Go Big Red Fan --
------------------------

The Go Big Red Fan was John Wesley Fenrick's, and when ventilating his System
it throbbed and crept along the floor with a rhythmic chunka-chunka-chunk.
Fenrick was a Business major and a senior. From the talk of my wingmates I
gathered that he was smart, yet crazy, which helped. The description weird was
also used, but admiringly. His roomie, Ephraim Klein of New Jersey, was in
Philosophy. Worse, he was found to be smart and weird and crazy, intolerably
so on all these counts and several others besides.

As for the Fan, it was old and square, with a heavy rounded design suitable
for the Tulsa duplex window that had been its station before John Wesley
Fenrick had brought It out to the Big U with him. Running up one sky-blue
side was a Go Big Red bumper sticker. When Fenrick ran his System-- that
is, bludgeoned the rest of the wing with a record or tape-- he used the Fan
to blow air over the back of the component rack to prevent the electronics