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Title: The Mind-Body Problem: A Novel (Contemporary American Fiction) by Rebecca Goldstein ISBN: 0-14-017245-9 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.91 (11 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: As thoughtful as it is funny! !And it is very, very funny!
Comment: This novel is about an intellectually insecure grad student who marries a famous genius mathematician, feeling her worth affirmed by his love and by the status conferred (explicit and subtle)upon her by being married to him. The marriage goes quickly sour as she realizes that an expansive mind is not incompatible with pettiness of spirit and human frailty. She sees only the genius and not the man. This novel is funny, and well-written but at the same time, it poses real questions and I think evidences a genuine human warmth. I think that it would not be an exxageration to say that I learned much from this book. You may as well (if nothing else, it's a good read)!
Rating: 4
Summary: Philosophy, mathematics, and....life
Comment: On a hot summer day over a ramen lunch I've been talking with a friend about Barry Mazur's latest monograph, "Imagining Numbers (2002)," a non-fiction book about mathematical imagination. The talk naturally evolved to as of why there is so little fictional work that writes about what it is like to be doing mathematics. My friend referred me to this book, adding that, though not written by a mathematician, it depicts behaviors of characters working in the field quite nicely.
"The Mind-Body Problem" is in fact written by a philosopher, and really is not about mathematics. It is about an intelligent young lady, Renee Feuer, who marries a world-renown mathematician, Noam Himmel, out of her insecurity: "...In short I was floundering [at Princeton as a grad student], and thus quite prepared to follow the venerably old feminine tradition of being saved by marriage. And, given the nature of my distress, no one could better play the part of my rescuing hero than the great Noam Himmel. For the man had an extravagance of what I was so agonizingly feeling the lack of: objective proof of one's own intellectual merit." Renee, born into an orthodox Jewish family in New Jersey, is self-acknowledging beautiful, and perhaps can be best characterized in her own words: "I had always thought of intelligence as power, the supreme power. Understanding is not the means of mastery, but the end itself (Spinoza)...I am only attracted to men who I believe to be more intelligent than I am. A detected mistake in logic considerably cools my desire. They can be shorter, they can be weaker, they can be poorer, they can be meaner, but they must be smarter. For the smart are the masters in my mattering region. And if you gain power over them, then through the transivity of power you too are powerful."
Embedded throughout the novel were philosophical interpretations of mundane matters, reminiscent in style of Alain de Botton's bestseller "On Love (1995)." However Renee's descriptions didn't feel as slick or polished as the male protagonist of "On Love," and I wasn't so impressed uptil her honeymoon with Noam, which occupied roughly half of the book. Clever indeed, but her observations I felt too naked. I became engaged when Renee started to bare out the hardships -- the logical tyranny of Noam -- she had to face. There her "naked" remarks made her pain, and subsequently the sweetness of her affair with a physicist so palpable that I started wondering whether Renee's was really a story about the author herself. The finale was equally touching, but I choose not to reveal for your reading pleasure. I will simply add that it is about the difficulty of assessing others' hearts (the "Other's Mind" problem in philosophy).
Back to the original question as of why there are so few fictional work by mathematicians. According to Noam, "A mathematician with his powers doesn't have any interest or time to write a book like this [Hardy's "A Mathematician's Apology"]!"
Rating: 3
Summary: disappointing
Comment: Either I'm the only reader who found this book disappointing, or -- and more likely -- folks are less inclined to spend their time writing negative reviews. Once again, Rebecca Goldstein has taken an entrancing concept and fallen down on the execution. The book has some lovely bits, but my major question throughout was Where oh where was her editor??? Not a terrible read, but don't pay full price.
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Title: Properties of Light by Rebecca Goldstein ISBN: 0618154590 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 14 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Radiant Cool: A Novel of Theory of Consciousness by Dan Edward Lloyd, Dan Lloyd ISBN: 0262122596 Publisher: Bradford Book Pub. Date: 01 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Strange Attractors by Rebecca Goldstein ISBN: 0140172467 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 1994 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Mazel (Library of American Fiction) by Rebecca Goldstein ISBN: 0299181243 Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press Pub. Date: 26 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: One, True Platonic Heaven: A Scientific Fiction of the Limits of Knowledge by John L. Casti ISBN: 0309085470 Publisher: Joseph Henry Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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