Does every family have some touch of mental illness? Think about parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins. In my family there's a fair share of issues, of which I'll only mention one. I have a relative who announced, sometime in his early forties, that he was cutting off all contact with the family, not because of a crime, an argument, or even a slight. He hasn't been heard from since. The conclusion is inescapable that the cause is in him, in his own psyche. All of these people in my family who have revealed mental demons have another thing in common: they are very bright.
Ethan Canin's novel follows the thin wavering line that separates genius from mental illness, the particular genius in this case being a rare ability in mathematics. The first half of the book features Milo Andret, a midwestern youth who happens to have a facility with numbers and rules of mathematics, including an ability to visualize in more than three dimensions. Not really visualize but understand the application of rules, regardless of the number of dimensions. I brushed up against this thorny branch in a Linear Algebra class--lambdas, Eigenvalues--in which I was able to mimic the calculations, but felt very ungrounded. Milo Andret would see it as child’s play.
Milo lands an assistant professorship at Princeton, and looks around for an unsolved math problem to take on. Like proving that every even number is the sum of two prime numbers. How would you prove that? Milo chooses a century-old conjecture, and manages to prove it, mathematically, to be true. On the strength of this stunning achievement he is awarded the Fields Medal, the math equivalent of a Nobel. Mixed in with the mental high on the beauties of mathematics are sexual highs with multiple women and a growing dependence on alcohol. Gradually things deteriorate as he is frustrated in further attempts at lasting achievement in his academic field, and he shows up more frequently on the insane side of that wavering line. Somehow, on the downslope, he marries and has two children.
The second half of the story, which is told in first person by the son, Hans, is where the book gets interesting. Hans and his sister Paulette have both inherited Milo’s genius, and the wavering line that comes with it. Hans in turn fathers two children, both of whom also carry it. The real richness in the book is not about math genius, but about family and the infinity of relationships that members struggle to sort out and seek a measure of peace, of mental solace. A universal theme.
The writing is well researched, laced with references to mathematicians and theorems, both real and fictional. Canin is imaginative with his similes, as when he likens the tear forming in the corner of his sister’s eye to a drop of solder. Anyone who has assembled a Heathkit will picture that swelling little sphere of silver. Parts of the book seemed to drag, and editing out a hundred or so of the five hundred pages wouldn’t detract from the power of the story. It’s a book that makes you think, which is a notion that I would take as a fine compliment if I were a writer.
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