The Big U

Rating:
Summary: Bring Your Tank to the Food Fight!
Review: The Big U is Stephenson's send-up of college dormitory living: colliding monster stereos, hazing taken to the extreme, diddling tenured professors, cafeteria food-fights complete with Uzis and tanks, computer geeks, BMOC's, fraternal cliques, ineffectual student governments, and a myriad other things that seem to be part and parcel of the entire college 'experience'. Many of his apparently totally outrageous situations and incidents were (happily or unhappily, depending on your point of view) all too common in the colleges of the mid-80's when this was written and continue, with little change, today. Parents of college-bound teens, be warned!

Unfortunately, the book shows his inexperience at writing, this being his first published novel. The humor that he handles so well in Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon is very inconsistent here. Many of his satirical points are presented a little too baldly, and the barbs sometimes take the aspect of a diatribe rather than a succinct observation of human foibles. His depiction of a near-rape, while obviously intended as an extended ironical comment on the non-limits of courtship behavior as practiced by all participants within the hot-house atmosphere of the confined close order living of a co-ed dorm, comes far too close to reality, a very horrifying one, and far away from the humorous tone that he was trying for. In the later stages of the book the plot line becomes an exercise in the surreal, from Dungeons and Dragons played for real (not that such things did not happen, but Stephenson's portrayal reads more like fantasy at this point) to a plot by the janitors to take over everything.

Characterization is somewhat flat, at times stereotypical. Of course, some of the stereotypes are intentional, as in any decent satire, but here some of the main characters come off the same way, when they really need some good development as individuals to further the story line in a (semi) logical manner.

Definitely good for a few laughs, and several more smiles and chuckles, but with too little control over plot, character, and level of humor to make this a first-order book. A good first effort, which any Stephenson fan will appreciate if only for its historical interest, but nothing great.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd...

Rating:
Summary: If you loved "The Diamond Age"....
Review: I have read all of Mr. Stephenson's books and my favorite is the Diamond Age. The Big U was better than I imagined. You do not need to be an alumni of Boston University to enjoy this book, as a previous reviewer said. If you have been to college at all you will enjoy the commentary, and evens if you have not you might really be able to get into the world created in this book. I was suprised at how this book got better as it progressed, and If you are a fan of N.S. its interesting to keep in mind that this is his first book. At first the book seems as though it will be very down to earth and "realistic" but it soon becomes as fantastic and imaginative , like one would expect from Mr. Stephenson. I Think you will really like this book.

Rating:
Summary: This book is a pisser
Review: If you're a fan of Stephenson's other works (Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash, Diamond Age), definitely read this. Easily the smoothest read, less muddled with the huge expansiveness of the storylines in his later work. The characters are funny without being outwardly so (it would make a great movie!)

Most people who knocked this book would bash his others as well, since his style generates bipolar disorder in the literary public. But if you like his other stuff, DEFINITELY pick this up.

Casimir rules.

Rating:
Summary: Highly Entertaining First Novel
Review: It's not a masterpiece, but it's enormously fun. It's based on Boston University of the early 80's and contains several inside jokes that only someone who attended B.U. (as I did) would catch. The version of John Silber is especially funny because he didn't exaggerate him at ALL. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Boston University's high-profile President, you only need to know that he actually talked and (within reason) behaved JUST like his alter-ego in the novel.

It's a goofy, funny, light, and entertaining SciFi book. A great beach read for anyone who ever lived in a dorm or any fan of silly, surreal science fiction. If you like your SciFi serious, then you should skip it.

Rating:
Summary: Not His Best
Review: This is the fourth novel by Stephenson I've read, but the first novel he wrote. Part of my problem stems from not going to college in the 80's. Still, I remember hearing about people that got so far into Dungeons and Dragons they crawled through air ducts in their dorms. Not all things have changed so radically. I went to school with plenty of airheads, computer geeks, and obnoxious people on a four-year party vacation. I can relate to going into various offices on campus, like financial aid and get the run around or being treated like a file in a drawer of thousands. So its not difficult for me to appreciate the parodies and satire of college life. It's the second half of the novel, which gets away from me like a huge stone on a hillside. Granted The Big U is not a novel to be taken literally, but the all out war that occurs at the end of the novel. This conflict overwhelms the entire ending with a gaping hole in the ground, instead of a more developed finale with the characters changing in a significant way. If you want to read a better novel similar to this one, then I recommend Jane Smiley's Moo. As for Stephenson, Snow Crash is his best novel.

Rating:
Summary: Slapdash
Review: I liked it, although like many of stephenson's books, the ending seemed to leave me with a "huh> it's over already" feeling - definitely a scattershot work, but pretty entertaining. At times I had trouble telling the different characters apart, but it had the "psychedelic trip" feeling of attending big state U - for those of us who did. It wanders around the different cliques and interactions with a slightly different twist (humourous) on them.

Rating:
Summary: You weren't the only psychotic in the dorm.....
Review: I read this book for the first time shortly after it's publication in '84. I remember that I literally laughed until I cried. I had just escaped the university environment after studying and teaching at several of them in the Midwest. There were so many weird coincidences concerning people,events,and environments in my own life that it just boggled my mind. You see, like all really good comedies it has the strong ring of truth. If you've ever wondered if you were the only one that the university environment was driving nuts, read this book. It is cheaper, and more enjoyable than therapy. Then read _Killing the Spirit_ by Page Smith- you'll laugh a little less, but you'll understand the fundamental absurdity and insanity of the university environment much more....

Rating:
Summary: Extremely dangerous reading
Review: Perhaps it is due to my own college experience as an engineer (aka basement lab dweller) or the constant feeling that I could have been any of the lead characters if my life had zigged instead of zagged, but this book quite literally caused me to laugh until I hurt myself. I spent most of a Sunday night doubled over with laughter, desperately trying to finish each page so I could stop laughing and BREATH.
This book definitely shows the early Stephenson style, much more farsical and less reserved humor, but none the less it is the literary equivalent of a sledgehammer to the funny bone; incapacitating and unexpected. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Campus life by way of Dante
Review: What is a university? Is it a place of learning and academia? Is it an avenue where one develops skills and abilities to better face our ever-more-complex world? Is it a microcosm of life on earth, with all the various factions and bigotry, be they religious, racial, or something more sinister? Is it all of the above, or none? A university is what you make of it, and in the eyes of Neal Stephenson, it is a very dark and hellish place indeed.

THE BIG U is an ode to everything good, bad, and insane about campus life. From the byzantine maze of class registration, to the LORD OF THE FLIES-like atmosphere of a co-ed dormitory, Stephenson clearly has a love/hate relationship with post-secondary education. It is an avenue ripe for satire, and Stephenson delivers on this issue in spades. Unfortunately, what Stephenson has in talent, he lacks in control.

THE BIG U is set on the fictional campus of American Megaversity, an apocalyptic creation of academic madness. Into this highly-charged, insular world, Stephenson thrusts Casimir Radon, a thirty-year-old junior with ideals of miraculous feats of quantum mechanics. What he realizes is that a university is the last place one should go to develop any form of creativity. In Stephenson's world, a university is an undiscovered circle of Dante's inferno, where no hope can possibly go unpunished.

This is fertile ground, one that many authors have trod upon. Stephenson excels at capturing the minutae of dorm life; the bizarre cliques of the female student body, the terrifyingly infantile antics of the male. When Sarah Jones (a student who possesses more than her fair share of common sense) points out that being assaulted by the male factions in the name of 'good fun' can be akin to rape, she is greeted by the puzzled blank stares of women who cannot comprehend how being an individual is more satisfactory than being a member of the mob.

Stephenson also manages, in short bursts, a near-brilliance in his explicit descriptions of extremely small events that somehow grow to immense proportions in the minds of his participants. In his opening chapter, Stephenson details the rivalry the develops between mismatched roommates and their stereo systems. As they proceed from mere annoyance to complete auditory warfare, Stephenson writes with frantic abandon that is a pure joy to behold. Witness this passage concerning the competing blasts from their respective sound systems:

"The Systems would trade salvos as the volume controls were brought up as high as they could go, the screaming guitars-from-Hell power cords on one side matched by the subterranean grease-gun blasts of the 32-foot reed stops on the other. As both recordings piled into the thick of things, the combatants would turn to their long thin frequency equalizers and shove all channels up to full blast like Mr. Spock beaming a live antimatter bomb into Deep Space. Finally the filters would be thrown off and the loudness switches on, and the speakers would distort and crackle with strain as huge wattages pulsed through their magnetic coils."

And it goes on like this.

Stephenson, however, like the professors of his novel, cannot control what he has created. Unlike CRYPTONOMICON, Stephenson's frankly brilliant tale of cryptography, THE BIG U eventually erodes under its own weighty themes. As madness slowly takes over the campus, and dorm life becomes all out warfare, Stephenson swiftly crosses the line from precise satire to overblown parody. Crazed janitorial staff, armed secretarial pools, and nuclear waste are forcibly combined into what Stephenson likely intended to be a educational APOCALYPSE NOW, but instead results in a haphazard mishmash of style over substance, leading to a very real headache in the reader.

THE BIG U is a first novel, and as first novels go, it serves to show the promise of a talented newcomer better served by later efforts. While it never captures the awe-inspiring heights of such first-novel classics of ludicrousness as John Kennedy Toole's A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES or Joseph Heller's CATCH-22, it presents enough talent in its raw form to prevent it from being yet another exercise in first-novel self-indulgence. Stephenson has proved himself a gifted lunatic of a writer, it just took him a little time.

Rating:
Summary: Status Quo Crash
Review: Neal Stephenson's ethnological imagination makes hash of the usual campus clans, clones and clowns in The Big U. A month by month deconstruction of the not-so-typical academic year in a very typical Midwestern University, The Big U is probably most interesting to three different groups: Neal Stephenson's readers, readers of academic satire, and anyone traumatized by a college experience in the '80's.

Stephenson readers may be most disappointed in the tenor of the book. Although it doesn't live up to the standards of his later novels, however, The Big U is a microscopic look at the germs of ideas that Stephenson more fully developed in Snow Crash. Most notable of these: the Worm, a powerful computer virus that only one Ubergeek can successfully battle. But the very elements most interesting to Stephenson fans may baffle fans of academic satire, who would probably prefer a straightforward romp, such as Jane Smiley's Moo U.

This novel cannot be evaluated outside of the context of the 1980's, when the words "date rape" were just beginning to be uttered. In colleges across the midwest, the world was divided between the Reaganites and those who lived in constant awareness that Missouri housed at least 165 nuclear missiles. Something called AIDS hit the news, and there were some projections that huge numbers of the general population would be dead in 10 years. Anybody who knew what a mouse was was automatically a geek and proud to be one. The Big U is probably most valuable for its sociological grasp of all the factions and campus groups coming to a head in that time.

Because I am a Neal Stephenson reader, a fan of academic satire and a survivor of the '80's, I found The Big U a wonderful read, and couldn't put it down. I liked the characters all the way through, stayed interested in the plot, and couldn't wait to find out what happened. I wasn't disappointed, but did find some of the scenes a bit violent. Thus, the four-star rating.