About
Author: Sarah Hart (UK)
Genre: Maths & Literature
Setting
Place: Non-fiction
Time: n/a
My Rating (see what this means)
My Subjective Rating: 3
My ‘Objective’ Rating: 1.63
Introduction
Once Upon a Prime by Sarah Hart explores the several great works of literature which have a fascinating relationship with maths.
Many of the writers that I have read and adore – Perec, Borges, Woolf, Joyce, Tolstoy, Catton, Queneau, etc. – find mention in this book. Knowing now the mathematics of their works makes me want to read them again. Several others were already part of my longlist of books to read – and this book left me more excited to get to them. Better still – it also left me with several recommendations of books I can say we high probability I will like.
All this makes for an entertaining and informative read and a lot of the author’s passion for the topic rubs off on the readers.
Review
Of the writers I mentioned in the introduction – I never really read the ‘math’ in their books. That certainly wasn’t a barrier for me to enjoying those works. Does then, the mathematical structures of these works even matter at all?
When I had first heard of Oulipo – ‘the workshop of potential literature’, my reaction was – this would certainly mean more to the writer than the reader. Say Perec’s book ‘A Void’ which omits the letter ‘e’ – The process of writing it can be enriching/painful depending on one’s sensibilities – the only possibility for the reader is that it would read – at best as anyone other good/bad novel, and – at worst rather jarring (As was the email avoiding ‘e’ that I wrote to Sarah recommending a book). Perec’s – Life: a User’s Manual was a marvellous book which challenged these notions. Sarah’s book finally lays them to rest. ‘Artificial constraints need not come in the way of good art – on the contrary they can be rather enriching‘.
Having said that – ‘One upon a prime’ is not really trying to lay some universal theory on the connection between math and literature – something I look for in good non-fiction. A lot of content in the book can safely be classified as Trivia – admittedly fun trivia – for instance, why the giant spider Aragog from the Harry Potter universe cannot exist, or what the size of Borges’ infinitely large Library of Babel actually is, or the 100 trillion sonnet collection.
Trivia or not – knowing now the math in their art , I know when I re-read the books from the introduction, I will enjoy them a little bit more than I did the first time.
Picture Credits:
- Cover Picture: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/once-upon-a-prime-math-literature-book
- https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/05/04/i-call-this-oulipo-meeting-to-order-and-other-news/
- Harry Potter movie 6
- https://www.designreview.byu.edu/collections/the-library-of-babel-from-gibberish-to-defined-design