Tom PetsinisRecensioner

An ode to the skills and spirit of the football club masseur.

A collection of 53 poems, all on various football themes such as players, incidents, match day rituals, the rules and spirit of the game and many others.

It is a winter evening in Melbourne in the premillennial year 1999. Sonya Gore, a schoolteacher turned bookseller has fallen behind with her rental payments and faces ruin. Her bookshop, flanked on one side by a brothel and on the other by a funeral parlour, is languishing. As she awaits the arrival of her landlord with his monthly demand for rent a large gold envelope appears under the closed front door of her shop. This contains the first of eleven dialogues, handwritten in a meticulous and beautiful script, that she will receive over the months that follow. Their author is slow to reveal himself but the dialogues are obviously intended for Sonya for they include minor participants whose names are anagrams of her own or who are marked by her identifiable scars or other distinctive marks. After fleeting glimpses during surreptitious delivery of the envelopes the author introduces himself at last when he delivers the 8th dialogue, between St Paul the Evangelist and Friedrich Nietzschke. He is Theo Besson, a one-time PhD student who never completed his thesis on Dostoyevsky. (In the 6th dialogue, Dostoyevsky converses with Tolstoy.) Theo writes but cannot speak. He drank a cocktail of caustic soda after an unhappy love affair and this alkaline draught, too weak to kill him, scarified his larynx and left him speechless. Sonya begins to fall in love with this strange, tortured creature. His dialogues, in combination with cigarettes, aspirin, coffee and her increasingly feverish fantasies of deliverance sustain her over a long Melbourne winter against an approaching financial disaster. Nemesis makes its appearance in the person of Mark Zitta, a lawyer disbarred and gaoled for fraud, who proposes arson and an insurance claim to rescue Sonya from bankruptcy. He has an arsonist, a ‘torch’, who will burn the bookshop discreetly and professionally. Theo, with whom she can now converse in sign language, urges her to accept the deal: immolation of her beloved stock of books will free her from the slow death of consumerism and dependence on material possessions. His own written dialogues are intended only for her eyes and will never be published. The torch, who soon appears, calls himself Photius in memory presumably of Saint Photius the Martyr, whose body would not burn when cast into the fire. Like Theo he comes with a literary introduction, a typewritten story of his life with a manifesto on purification by fire. Photius is another PhD dropout, who never bothered to submit his thesis on the classical incendiary weapon called Greek Fire.

Theo eventually presents the 12th dialogue on New Year’s Eve, 1999. Unlike the earlier dialogues, the twelfth is not written in ink on paper. Theo has inscribed it on his own body with a tattoo needle. Theo and Sonya consummate their affair at last on a bed of books; Photius arrives with his incendiary devices and sets fire to the bookshop; the flames engult him; Theo recognises Photius in his nimbus of flame as an angel and they die together in a fiery embrace. But Sonya does not burn. She stumbles unharmed from the burning bookshop and the novel ends, ‘Naked, Sonya falls into the third milennium’.

The 12th dialogue, which gives the novel its title, perished with its author. The remaining eleven dialogues, of which the originals somehow survived the bookshop fire, are all enjoyable thought experiments. I wondered whether they might not have been better if they had been published with a less elaborate narrative framework. The narrative we do have is far less engaging than the dialogues themselves. Sonya is repetitive in her interminable state of worried concern about her finances and frankly dull. Her accomplices, Theo and Photius, are too eccentric and too silly to match the millennial aspirations of their final fiery immolation.

Petsinis’ dialogues are another thing entirely. They have distinguished predecessors. In the 19th century Walter Savage Landor published five volumes of what he called ‘imaginary conversations’ between well-known personages from classical literature, history and politics. His description, ‘imaginary conversations’ has become familiar as an accepted description of the genre. Landor included a volume of dialogues with famous women among his imaginary conversations. With the exception of the first dialogue, in which Moses debates with Karl Marx, all of the participants in the Petsinis dialogues are litterateurs and all are men. The absence of women from the dialogues is faintly disconcerting, but explicable by the peculiarities of Theo Besson, their fictive author. The dialogists nevertheless steal the show. The thumbnail sketches which introduce them and their conversations are far more interesting than the interleaved narrative of Sonya and her strange companions. Plato and Homer, a barefoot tramp led by a speechless girl, meet at the gates of Plato’s ideal city of rational enlightenment where Homer seeks refuge. They debate the nature of written and oral communication before Plato announces his decision to deny Homer entry to the city: ‘You don’t belong here….Our constitution forbids poets’. Homer asks if poetry has become an offence and Plato answers, ‘Its very existence is subversive’. Miguel Cervantes and Jorge Luis Borges contest a post-modern reading of Don Quixote while Kafka and Hemingway proceed with considerable good will and the aid of an interpreter towards a state of mutual incomprehension. And yet, towards the end of their conversation, they reach a momentary convergence of understanding on death. Kafka evokes an image of his funeral pyre, ‘stoked by the very paper that one had substituted for the world’. ‘Like a hunter’ muses Hemingway, ‘turning the rifle on himself’.

There is no need to go on. All eleven of the dialogues that we have are works of sympathetic intelligence. Petsinis’ book of dialogues has a permanent place on my bookshelf for the pleasure of revisiting what their protagonists had to say.½

A book about a notable French (in case you'd missed the title) mathematician. Written as a biography cum novel. Our eponymous hero often talks to his "biographer" in the hope that history will understand him correctly. I can't say whether the history behind the story about the French Revolution and those days of July are close to the truth but the scenes are painted very clearly. Other reviews say that there is no mathematics in the book but that isn't quite true, there is the odd mention of schoolboy maths dotted about and then bizarely seven pages before the end we learn about Galois' theory of elliptic integrals. This is not the most easily digested part of mathematics and one would wonder why the author put it in there; still, it doesn't detract from the flow for non-mathematical readers. Galois is not a likeable character but there is so but going on behind the scenes that we can cope with his peevish ways.

I am sharing this review for posterity’s sake, this is the very first review I ever wrote and posted online. I blogged this review over ten years ago on December 13, 2001. I meant to post it here on its ten year anniversary but the holidays got in the way. Instead I am posting it today to kick off a new year with. This review is full of spoilers (seriously, it spoils just about the whole book) and is really more of a book report than a review but I can definitely see some of my beginnings in this and so I decided what better way to start a new year than with my start in book blogging. Enjoy!

“The French Mathematician” started out life as a project that was submitted for a Master of Arts degree entitled “A Fictional Biography of the French Mathematician Evariste Galois 1811-1832″. The author, Tom Petsinis set out to link the humanities and the sciences in a piece of writing that would tell the tragic tale of Evariste Galois in such a way so that writing majors might be able understand the type of mathematics that Evariste fathered and also the man himself. Petsinis is a professor who teaches mathematics at the University of Technology. And, he came across Evariste’s story while attending a lecture on Group Theory, a branch of mathematics based on Galois’s discoveries. The book is a well-written three-part biography with an excellent choice in writing style. It is very accurate for a book about whose subject there is such a small amount of information available on. Following is a summary and review of the various parts of “The French Mathematician” in the order that they appear in the book, for the most part.

There is no introduction, just acknowledgements of the support of various professors during the undertaking of this endeavor.
The first chapter is written as though it should be tacked on to the end, but is instead written at the beginning. The conclusion, on the other hand, simply gives what the fate of Evariste’s discoveries was to be.

Part one summarizes Evariste’s introduction and love affair with mathematics, his undying faith in the “x” and the power of that “x” to replace the cross and change the world to a place of order. Something Evariste believed would come about with the (French) Revolution. That the revolution would lead from chaos to mathematical precision. He believed in the power of mathematics.

Part two shows Evariste’s change of loyalties as he is swept up into the revolution. With the death of his father on his conscience and a need to prove himself and make himself great after being locked behind school walls during the outbreak of violence in the streets of Paris. He forsakes mathematics for the sword and the flame, wreaking buildings and joining various Republican organizations. He seems crazed at this point, thinking violence and a complete rebuilding of the French empire will be the only path to a Republican era.

Part three illustrates Evariste’s slow return to mathematics. He still clings to his Republican ideals but he begins slowly coming around to recognizing and nurturing his love of mathematics. He begins to write and submit works again and even holds a series of public speeches where he lays out his theories and proofs for his work. Throughout this section you watch as he is torn between mathematics and republican ideals. And he never really decides either way when he is arrested and imprisoned for six months for his part in the revolution. While in prison he becomes very sick so he is transferred to a hospital where he meets and falls in love with the Doctor’s daughter. Unfortunately she is only flirting with him and when her fiance (one of Evariste’s good friends) returns to Paris, his friend is forced to challenge Evariste to a duel.

I find that the writing is reminiscent of the style of writing popular during Evariste’s time (1811-1832). Prone to detail and more advanced diction then what is commonly known today, the book could almost pass for the diary/notebook the author “claims” it is. Unfortunately when referring to acts of a sexual nature the writer approaches the subject more blatantly than a writer of the nineteenth century would and uses far less subtltey. “The French Mathematician” is an excellent read that is recommended for English and Math majors alike.

I did not care for this book at all. I persisted reading in the hopes it would get better, but that never happened. It's not that it was poorly written, it wasn't, i just found the idea unoriginal and pretentious. I don't think there was enough of a storyline to keep my interest, it was very simple and left alot to be desired.½

First, a word of warning for people who might read this novel hoping to also get some insights into mathematics - there is no mathematics in this novel.

'The French Mathematician' is a fictional memoir of Evariste Galois, the mathematical genius who made innovations in algebra before his untimely death in 1832. He founded a branch of mathematics that still bears his name, the study of Galois fields. They're in use everywhere today, from the nearest cell phone or DVD to the most distant interplanetary probe. But the book barely mentions his mathematical achievements and certainly doesn't describe them, so let's move along.

Galois tells his own story, addressing himself to an imaginary biographer who shadows him throughout the book, experiencing events as he does, all in present tense. While this type of narration can be off-putting, Petsinis utilizes it respectably and often with great drama. He describes how he sought solace in "the order and certainty of geometry" during the social and political upheaval in France at the time. The book chronicles his adolescence, his growth as a mathematician, his political awakening, and his death in a duel. Galois adeptly conveys to the reader information that the self-absorbed and oblivious protagonist himself misses.

Galois has all the makings of a great romantic figure. However, egotistical and insolent, he is difficult to like at the outset. It's a matter of historical fact that he was a mathematical prodigy, with important work published during his short life. It's also true that he died in a duel at age 21, after spending his final night organizing his mathematical notes for posterity. That, plus simply living through a time of intense political upheaval, let alone being involved in it, makes him a character quite able to capture the imagination.

The author is an Australian university mathematics lecturer.

A one-time hero of my youth, Evariste Galois was a brilliant young French mathematician, who died tragically in a duel before his genius was recognised. Petsinis tells his story, as a first-person narrative. Sometimes a little heavy going, because, lets face it, Galois was pretty obnoxious (probably autistic, possibly schizophrenic). However, the story is interesting enough and the book well written, so it holds the attention to the last page.