I'm re-reading Neal Stephenson's
Cryptonomicon (for probably the forth or fifth time). It's not that it is a particularly deep book. I just find its style appeals to me on a level few books do. There is an early sentence that I have always adored. It is early on, when Lawrence Waterhouse starts to spent time with Alan Turing.
One day a couple of weeks later, as the two of them sat by a running stream in the woods above the Delaware Water Gap, Alan made some kind of outlandish proposal to Lawrence involving penises. It require a great deal of methodical explanation, which Alan delivered with lots of blushing and stuttering. He was ever so polite, and several times emphasized the he was acutely aware that not everyone in the world was interested in this sort of thing.
Lawrence decided that he was probably on of those people.
And later...
Alan and Rudy's relationship seemed closer, or at least more multilayered, than Alan and Lawrence's. Lawrence concluded that Alan's penis scheme must have finally found a taker.
