[anonymousisme]

I read it again last year and picked up on a few things that had slipped past my understanding the first time around. I had originally assumed that the present day Enoch Root was the child of Bobby's Nordic girlfriend, but it was obviously not the case upon my second reading. A few web searches revealed the supernatural nature of Root.

I always wondered if Stephenson chose the name "Enoch Root" on a dare, or maybe he has some other story. It's probably something related to an "Enterprise NOC Root" computer account.

[knowaveragejoe]

Enoch is a character in multiple biblical stories:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch_(ancestor_of_Noah)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch_(son_of_Cain)

[mercurialshark]

Yes and when Neal was asked about Enoch during a speaking appearance, he noted that Enoch was one of the first people in the bible whose death wasn't recorded/noted. Apparently, most people early in the bible that were mentioned had both birth/death notated. At some point they stopped bothering with so many new parties introduced and he was one of (if not the) first to not have their story/death brought to a conclusion.

[mark242]

Enoch Root is a pretty interesting guy. You should read the Baroque Cycle series to get a little bit of his backstory.

[robbiep]

He's also in Dodge

[teilo]

Specifically: "Fall, or Dodge in Hell"

The Waterhouses also appear in that novel.

It is the sequel to Reamde.

[egl2020]

"...the child of Bobby's Nordic girlfriend..." does have a role in the modern-day episodes (probably). I didn't figure this out until my second or third reading.