While reading this section, I was very confused about Qwghlm and the Qwghlmian people that kept appearing in Lawerence Waterhouse's storyline. I figured out it was close to England, but I didn't know if it was a code (with the mixed up letters, shown in other parts of the book) or what.
Wikipedia, as usual, sheds some light:
Qwghlm is a fictional location, featured in the books Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. Qwghlm consists of a pair of islands, Inner Qwghlm and Outer Qwghlm, off the northwestern coast of Great Britain. The islands are geographically similar to the Hebrides. It is somewhat of a parody of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and their mutual dislike for the others' way of life and religion. According to Stephenson, a very approximate pronunciation of "Qwghlm" is Taggum.
Inner Qwghlm is "hardly an island", being joined to Britain by a sandbar that comes and goes with the tide. By the time of World War II (as depicted in Cryptonomicon), this sandbar has been "beefed up with a causeway that carries a road and the railway line." Outer Qwghlm is about 20 miles off the coast. Qwghlmians are renowned among British mariners for their skill as navigators, a skill they acquired while dodging the treacherous reefs that surround the islands.
according to wiki, kinakuta is a fictional location too.
Hahaha I'm glad to know the pronunciation of "Qwghlm" (my approximation of it vaguely resembled the word "phlegm," which, it turns out, is quite wrong).
It's always interesting when authors mix fictional locations with real ones. I can't really think of why Stephenson created the two Qwghlms, other than to be a parody (as mentioned in the Wikipedia article.) Any one have any other reasons why he might have created them?
I was wondering the same thing. Why would an author juxtapose fictional places with real life characters? He uses Qwghlm, but then makes remarks about Tojo, Churchill, and Roosevelt. Why the fantasy in some parts of the story and not others?