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New York

A Doubters Almanac, by Ethan Canin

January 15, 2018 by Site Author Leave a Comment

Published 2016

My take on this book is that it’s a good read but is sometimes difficult to pick up on a daily basis, because the hero, or really two heroes, although highly intelligent, keep doing really stupid stuff that the average person would have better sense than to do, but clearly we are not dealing with average people here. In a big way this is a father and son story, the father, Milo Andret, we find out soon enough, is a mathematical genius. He is able to understand complex mathematical concepts as a teenager and breezes through mathematics at college. He then spends a few years working at a service station but in his late twenties ends up interviewing at Berkeley for a position in the mathematics department with his mentor, Dr. Hans Borland, who believes him to be an exceptional young man, capable of solving math problems that only a handful of people on the planet can even begin to understand. This proves to be true, but there is another side to Milo, a much darker side. He does end up at Berkeley and while there he meets the love of his life, Cle (Cleopatra) Wells, but although she admires Andret, their relationship is difficult partly because of her parallel attachment to Earl Biettermann, another math student who is not gifted the way Milo is. Cle and Earl are into a very open lifestyle with plenty of drugs, booze and loose morals for everyone. Milo is drawn into this world but essentially remains a loner.
Part One of the story is told by Milo’s son, Hans, which he admits to at the beginning of Part Two. We are enlightened to the fact that Hans has been the narrator of his father’s story up to this point, based on what Milo has told him in his later years. Now changing to first person, Hans begins weaving his own and his sister’s story along with that of his mother, not the Cle that Milo fell in love with at Berkeley, but a secretary at the math department, Helena, who seems like a good, decent person, a far cry from Cle, whose beauty and sophistication put her in a realm outside Milo’s reach. During the first part of the novel we see Milo attempt to solve the Malosz problem and during this time he achieves remarkable things, landing at Princeton in a prestigious chair, all the while drinking heavily and carrying on affairs with two of his colleague’s wives. He is at the pinnacle of his career when he is caught in bed with another professor’s wife and things quickly go from bad to worse. In the second half of the book Milo has lost almost everything, taking a college professorship at a small college having married Helena and now raising their two children. Berkeley, Princeton and international fame seem a distant memory.
Although I can’t pretend to know if the math problems and scenarios are accurate I am assuming that someone with more knowledge of these issues would find them so, and interesting as well. The human story of how this man, Milo Andret, copes with his genius seems enlightening to me. And from what I know of the mathematically gifted, the plot does not seem far fetched but sheds light on the seemingly bizarre behavior of the characters. While the term Asperger’s is not used in the book since it was not recognized until later, the main character could be classified as close to the spectrum. If you’ve read The Rosie Project you may recognize this type, although A Doubter’s Almanac is considerably more complex reading.
I kept hoping throughout the book that Milo would see the light, give up the drinking and start work again in earnest. In the end the book is a bit depressing. However, it’s a good read and worth the effort, well written and engaging. The many stops along the way tell a story of a family struggling through addiction and adversity.

The Golden House, by Salmon Rushdie

November 29, 2017 by Site Author Leave a Comment

Published 2017
“On the day of the new president’s inauguration, when we worried that he might be murdered as he walked hand in hand with his exceptional wife among the cheering crwods, and when so many of us were close to economic ruin in the aftermath of the bursting of the mortgage bubble, and when Isis was still an Egyptian mother-goddess, an uncrowned seventy-something king from a faraway country arrived in New York City with his three motherless sons to take possession of the palace of his exile, behaving as if nothing was wrong with the country or the world or his own story.”
So begins Salmon Rushdie’s latest novel, and it continues in like manner throughout the book, weaving the story of Nero Golden and his three sons, Petya, Apu, and D (for Dionysus) who have left their home in India for a mansion in New York City, with current events including a change in administration at the end of the above mentioned president’s two terms. Our narrator, Rene’, lives with his academic, left-leaning parents in Greenwich Village and becomes friendly, and in some cases, intimate with the Goldens while he pursues a career in documentary film making. Much of what we see is framed by the author in screen shots he hopes to create at some point later on. Of course the names are all fictitious but it takes several chapters to understand why they have changed them and left or fled their home country. Shady doesn’t seem to be quite the right word for Nero Golden, yet he is very human in his love for his sons.
This book is a good read. Salmon Rushdie as usual, is ‘out there’ with his comments on current events and telling it as he sees it.

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