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The Longest Now


The Line (Snowcrash)
Friday January 13th 2006, 3:52 am
Filed under: %a la mod

Stephenson is a fine author.  Snowcrash was a good book.  But
it has one line that is so telling that, when James and I first
discussed the book, long after reading it, he said “Ohh, Snowcrash is
great.  The
Line!”  And I knew precisely what
he meant. 

The book came up twice today, and I was forced to recall the passage
through the haze of a few years.  I sharpened my memory on chapter
thirty-six; to share with you its unadulterated glory:

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that
under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in
the world. If I moved to a  martial-arts
monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family
was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge.
If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to
wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to
being bad.

Devotion and circumstances.  How could mere facility not pale in comparison?

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