Writing

Writing that rocks – Fermat’s Enigma

Cathy LaGrow 4 Comments

Classification: Science, non-fiction

You cannot imagine how excited I am right now. I get to tell you about one of my very favorite non-fiction books of all time, Fermat’s Enigma by Simon Singh.

I often find myself recommending this book to anyone who will listen. I try to shoehorn it into conversations whenever I can – which sometimes requires great topical leaps. You visited Guatemala last month and went cliff-diving and ate snake kabobs and met a long-lost cousin? That sounds exciting! You know what else is exciting? Fermat’s Enigma!

And so on.

I first heard of the book when I read a glowing review about it in the New York Times, some eight years ago. The next day I went out and bought a copy. It didn’t take much longer than one sitting to read; it’s that mesmerizing. The book follows the quest to solve a centuries-old mystery, and is full of suspense, and wonderfully eccentric and whip-smart characters, and prize money; there are dead-ends and setbacks and close calls.

Oh, I might as well tell you right now. Please remain in your seat and keep the aisles clear.

Fermat’s Enigma is about advanced mathematics.

I’m sorry, are you looking for your mouse so you can click yourself elsewhere? Well, I hid it, and I’m not giving it back until you’ve finished reading this. Trust me – the story is a thriller, and you don’t have to be a great mathematician to love it (I’m certainly not one.) This is no textbook; it’s one of the most exciting adventure stories I’ve ever read.

Here’s a summary:

In the early part of the 17th century, a delightful and mischievous Frenchman named Pierre de Fermat started fiddling around with mathematics as a hobby. He had no formal training, but he quickly proved to have a natural genius for the subject and made some interesting discoveries. For example: he figured out that 26 is the only number in existence that comes between a square (25) and a cube (27.)

In 1637, Fermat came up with the following theorem: “It is impossible for any number which is a power greater than the second power to be written as a sum of two like powers.” In other words, the equation “X(n power) + Y(n power) = Z(n power)” has no solution when n>2.

Pretty straightforward – but mathematics is all about proof. Fermat wrote his theorem in the margins of his math textbook, and then he scribbled something that would haunt generations of scientists:

I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.

He was claiming that he’d found the proof to his theory. And that was his last, enigmatic word on the subject.

For the next 360 years, Fermat’s theorem was the most famous unsolved math puzzle in the world. The theorem was believed to be true, but when nearly every top-tier scientist in the field tried to find the proof that Fermat had dangled in front of them, they all failed.

Three hundred and sixty years, people. And then, in the 1990’s, along came Andrew Wiles.

Wiles looks exactly how you expect a brilliant mathematician to appear (if you don’t mind employing wild stereotypes): enormous glasses, crooked teeth, distracted smile, far-away look in the eyes, hair flying up in every direction. And man oh man, what a beautiful mind.

As a ten-year-old child, Wiles had been captivated by the world’s most famous math riddle, and dreamed of solving it. While he was growing up and starting his career, momentum had been building toward a proof of Fermat’s theorem – indeed, at various times, people had announced they had a solution, only to have other researchers discover flaws in their work. Wiles was determined to succeed where everyone else had failed.

After seven years of mostly solitary effort, he finally believed he had found his proof, and in June of 1993 he gave a lecture to a packed house at Cambridge University, detailing his solution. When he finished, he laid down his chalk and said simply, “I think I’ll stop here.” Two hundred of the world’s finest mathematicians erupted in applause. Publications the world over celebrated his accomplishment

Of course, as in all good thrillers, there was one final set-back before ultimate triumph. When research “referees” pored over Wiles’s 200-page proof, they found an error. Although crushed, Wiles doggedly went back to the drawing board, and after another year of labor, he found a way to fix the hole in his work. This time, the proof was flawless, and it was accepted as one of the most significant achievements in modern-day science.

In Simon Singh’s hands, throughout the book, the most complicated math equations and theory all make beautiful sense. You cannot stop turning the pages. Imagine, for a moment, just how much talent a writer has to have, to pull off that trick. Singh (himself a physicist) turns the story into a cross between Number Theory for Dummies and The Bourne Identity – he makes the hunt for a mathematical proof read like the hunt for Carlos the Jackal. (Who is still alive, by the way, which I did not know. You learn something new every day.)

Singh’s little book, like the event it details, is stunning. In fact, writing about it has made me want to read it all over again. Just for kicks.

(If you remain unconvinced, take heart. My next book post will cover a fun work of fiction. I’m trying to decide between several, right now.)

Writing that rocks – Life of Pi

Cathy LaGrow 10 Comments

Classification: Fiction

I will concede right off the bat that Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, will not appeal to everyone. But I’ve got to tell you – dude can write.

The book was a best seller when it was published, and won a bunch of awards and other critical praise, but I resisted reading it for years. I got the impression, from the cover illustration, that the book involved a guy and a tiger that sat in a boat and talked to each other. I have nearly zero tolerance for “magic realism,” as it is called in literature – a dislike that probably revokes my literary credentials. (I once eagerly bought and read the fanatically acclaimed One Hundred Years of Solitude – and I hated it.)

Anyway, my oldest brother and I were at Powell’s, an independent bookstore that takes up an entire city block and goes on for days. (Every time I go in there, I’m tempted to tie a bell and a rope around my ankle, in case I need to be hauled out like an Old Testament priest.) We were in the main lobby, hanging out by the bargain table, which is my section of choice these post-income days. My brother saw Life of Pi on the table and said that I should get it.

“I don’t do talking tigers,” I said. I pointedly turned to a different book.

“I don’t think that’s what it’s about,” he protested.

I scowled and sighed, then picked up Life of Pi and flipped through it. I started reading passages aloud to my brother. Within minutes, we were bent double over the table, chortling madly while the other customers gave us a wide berth. The plot isn’t a comedy; the writing is just that marvelously clever. Who was I to resist? I bought the book.

Life of Pi is separated into three sections. (The author divides it up differently than I do. I’ll give you my version.) The first part sets up the main character (Pi’s) childhood in India. It is part narrative, part philosophical conversation. The story tracks Pi as he learns about animals from his zookeeper father, and it follows his childish attempt to embrace three very different religions at once. The author’s descriptions of zoo animal habits and treatment are fascinating. The appealing qualities of Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism are all presented with equal clarity and tenderness. There are many wonderful passages in this section. At one point, Pi muses:

I’ll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we…But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

The second section is the book’s tour de force – and it is sensational. Pi’s father closes down the zoo and decides to take his family and all the animals to North America. Their ship goes down in the Pacific Ocean. Pi makes it onto a lifeboat; the only other survivors are a small group of animals, which includes a large tiger. The tiger quickly kills the other animals, and Pi survives on the lifeboat, with the tiger, for 227 days. This sounds really bizarre, I know – but Martel’s writing is so elegant and rich in detail that you would swear that all of this had actually happened to him. It’s simply riveting. By the end of this part, I felt I knew precisely what it would be like to be set adrift on a small boat with a large tiger for a long period of time.

And then, in the third part, the story takes a swan dive into a sea of surrealism, and loses me completely. Pi takes refuge on an algae island that has trees that come alive and consume creatures at night. There are – oh, I don’t even know what there are. This section is mercifully short. I’m quite sure it is supposed to symbolize something, but I’m either not smart enough or not weird enough to figure it out.

At the end, there are five chapters of wrap-up that turn the story on its head. There is a major twist that may or may not be real. My oldest brother, who is a good deal more sophisticated than I am, enjoyed the ending very much, when he borrowed the book. So there you go.

Wait – is this a recommendation, or not? Well…yes. Although the story itself is more than a little peculiar, and it gets macabre, the prose is so lovely that even the most dreadful parts are not disgusting. The book is a treat for writers, because Martel’s writing is exceptional. As for non-writers – if you don’t mind some strangeness, Life of Pi tells a terribly interesting story.

Just watch out for those ridiculous magical trees.

Writing that rocks – Serena

Cathy LaGrow 2 Comments

Classification: Fiction

Great writing is one of my top five favorite things on this earth (it’s actually probably #3, just below God and my family, and just above sunshine and a good plate of fettucine alfredo.) There are so few truly great writers, compared to the vast number of people who publish books. The Great Ones convey information in such a lovely way, you don’t even realize how much information they’re conveying.

Serena by Ron Rash is a beautifully written book. (Small wonder that Rash is an established poet – this is his first novel.) I’m going to give you the book’s first paragraph in a moment.

Here is the information that Rash is going to convey in that first paragraph:

The setting is the early 1900’s.
The protagonist is a man named Pemberton.
He has relocated to the South.
He is wealthy, and has just inherited a large estate.
He is an important man, with underlings.
He is a hard man, careless with those “beneath” him.
He has gotten a young, poor girl pregnant.
The girl’s father has a wary loathing of Pemberton, and intends to kill him.

Now, here it is:

“When Pemberton returned to the North Carolina mountains after three months in Boston settling his father’s estate, among those waiting on the train platform was a young woman pregnant with Pemberton’s child. She was accompanied by her father, who carried beneath his shabby frock coat a bowie knife sharpened with great attentiveness earlier that morning so it would plunge as deep as possible into Pemberton’s heart.”

Can you see how he gave all the information I listed above, in a gorgeous way, sometimes with just a word or two? All of these details are fleshed out in the pages that follow, but you already know them after the first paragraph. A far clunkier writer (like me) would have laid out the facts with a great deal of rambling, relying way too heavily on workaday adjectives.

(Plot, briefly: the book follows Pemberton as he brings home his new wife, Serena, a tough and cruel woman. She helps him run their timber business and won’t let anything stand in her way. Not even Pemberton.)

This book was an absolute pleasure to read, interesting and suspenseful and so rich in details. And that writing! On one page, Rash signals that it’s twilight by referring to “a pale moon impatient for the night.”

In Heaven, I will write like this. God and I have already discussed it.