Benjamín Labatut

This book is really going to bork my knowledge of the science history of Haber, Schwarzchild, Grothendieck, Heisenberg, and Schrödinger, but that’s ok. A dark fiction of nonfictions, it is a book of imagined tails of these giants on the edge of discovery and disaster.

Some will be offended by the male genius trope, but others might consider that these are not heroes, and that science on the edge is, by definition, madness. Most scientists never get to live on this boundary, spending their lives in the cold comfort of existing structures, and Labatut captures this terrifying boundary in dense dark prose.… (mer)

I liked it, but it was forgettable. It is more of a concept than a traditional novel, with many parts that loosely follow the themes of math, early computer science, AI and machine learning. My favourite part was the one about John von Neumann, which is the main part of the novel. The intro and the one at the end were just there to set up and complete the scene.
At times it felt like I was reading a documentary film script, with all those characters close to Neumann talking about him from their perspective. It felt strange to read fictionalized accounts of so many real people. I guess that's the part of the charm, but even though the topic was interesting I wasn't feeling very invested in it.… (mer)

This book both is and is not like Helena Bonham Carter. Like HBC, it is kind of strange and darkly seductive and wonderfully entertaining. Unlike HBC, I’m not sure it entirely stands up to a great deal of scrutiny. As a reading (listening, actually) experience several months ago it was an easy 5 stars. Pondering after a later re-read with it as printed matter, I have a few qualms.

The identity of the book is first of all in Labatut’s idea that trying to grasp the hidden core of reality, what in his view we can’t in fact ever understand, tends to lead to suffering and madness, as demonstrated by the lives of a number of the most genius of scientists, and secondly in using fictional elements in an effort to illustrate this idea in a gradually increasing way through the book, starting from a 99.9% factual first section. This second element I think is largely responsible for winning the book its renown. However, despite being shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker, I would not classify this book as fiction; basically it’s another [b:The War of the Poor|54765614|The War of the Poor|Éric Vuillard|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1596192583l/54765614._SY75_.jpg|67580285] situation and again, for me: not fiction. Rather, it’s using a bit of fiction to try to strengthen its point-of-view in recounting and interpreting actual events - like, you know, history books.

The book does some things quite well, such as pulling the reader along a swiftly moving stream of interesting facts and ideas from science and, particularly, quantum physics. That said, it does so at a superficial level, a good bit away from something like a more standard non-fiction work on quantum physics for the general reader. But that’s fair enough really, because that is not its concern - and perhaps a relief to many a reader. The book doesn’t need the reader to have the foggiest notion of how Heisenberg’s matrices actually work, just know they’re something he created while trying to comprehend the deepest nature of reality. And while going a bit mad.

Characterization is another thing the book generally does very well, quickly giving a sense of the different scientists in its focus. But then here’s where the fictional elements come into play. Labatut makes up scenes to emphasize his view that their scientific efforts were leading them into suffering and madness. How well do these scenes work? Does reading that Heisenberg went on walks during which:

He would shit squatting down as if he were a dog marking its territory, and then root around for stones to cover his filth, imagining that at any moment someone might surprise him with his trousers around his ankles.

add to its persuasive picture?

If Labatut’s thesis is persuasive, why include these made up scenes? If for literary reasons, I don’t think they work that well on further reflection, or at least they aren’t for me. If they’re necessary for convincing readers of his thesis, then maybe his thesis isn’t actually all that persuasive.

In a review of the book, Maria Dahvana Headley writes that, “The men profiled in this volume are certainly geniuses, but they’ve been curated to reflect catastrophe.” That they have. And it’s a darkly seductive curation, to Labatut’s credit. But is it a fair view of the history of humankind in reaching for new and deep understandings? Well.

The book certainly does much to praise. The prose, translated from the Spanish, is terrific. As for my complaint that inserting some imagined scenes does not in itself make a work fiction, perhaps a misleadingly curated book of non-fiction could be said to get there in the end.… (mer)