What struck me about Anathem is the absence of obscenity.
Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon are chock-full of f*cks, sh*ts, and so on, and I figured it was Stephenson’s idiom, time out of mind.
On reflection, I think that Anathem is obscenity-free because it’s a Young Adult novel (for exceptionally bright young adults, of course), and Stephenson decided to curb the obscenity for the occasion.
