That's interesting. I haven't read The Big U, I should pick it up.

For me my enjoyment of his books is pretty close to inversely proportional to the amount of weird sex stuff he puts in them. Anathem has none, and I think its one of his best, Snow Crash goes pretty hard, Diamond Age is mostly good but then the end of the book is randomly a weird sex-powered computer thing.

> After that there's just too much fart-sniffing.

If I'm correctly identifying what you consider "fart-sniffing" in his works, then often those farts are my most favorite bits. The little digressions, the impromptu lessons, the D-plots - love 'em.

Does he hate it? The last thing I saw him say about the Big U was that he tends to omit it from his bibliography because it's not what his readers are looking for. Personally, I read him in chronological order and enjoyed both the Big U and Zodiac -- if nothing else, it was fun to watch him grow (and not) as an author.

As he put it: "The Big U is what it is: a first novel written in a hurry by a young man a long time ago."

It was out of print for a long time and he sort of had to be convinced to make the book available to read again after large demand.

The Big U has it’s faults; but is still an insightful look at the weird people and organizations within any large university.

I'd rate The Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon as his peak -- the mid-to-late 90s.