Jewish books: Joshua Cohen’s Book of Numbers is a high tech epic

What happens when a down on his luck luddite novelist is hired to ghostwrite a memoir by a math whiz tech mogul who shares his (and the author of this novel’s) name? …At close to 600 pages of dense prose Book of Numbers is not light reading. I close my NYJB review by recommending it to “readers as ambitious as it is.” — from Jewish books: Joshua Cohen’s Book of Numbers is a high tech epic Also see my New York Journal of Books review. Overall, a challenging but fun and rewarding read!


Jewish books: Joshua Cohen's Book of Numbers is a high tech epic

What happens when a down on his luck luddite novelist is hired to ghostwrite a memoir by a math whiz tech mogul who shares his (and the author of this novel’s) name? That’s the basic premise of Joshua Cohen’s novel Book of Numberswhich was published last month by Random House.

My New York Journal of Books review opens by comparingBook of Numbers’ many allegorical layers to three dimensional chess. The novel is divided into three sections. The first and last feature the ghostwriter who is also the narrator, while in the middle section the tech mogul who calls himself Principal narrates his life story and that of his company to his ghostwriter.

There is a division of opinion among critics as to whose story and which section(s) of the novel is/are more compelling, including between The New York Times’ daily and Sundaybook reviewers. I side with those reviewers who favor the ghostwriter and his sections of the novel. The fictional novelist is more emotionally complex, whereas Principal is an obsessive compulsive, anal retentive, high functioning autistic person whose narrative doesn’t reveal much of an inner life.

One detail many book critics get wrong is the name of the ghostwriter's wife. Early in the novel she is introduced as Rachava and is referred to thereafter as Rach. Numerous critics assume Rach is short for Rachel, but they're wrong; Rach (rhymes with Bach) is short for Rachava.

In interviews in Bomb Magazine and Vice Cohen revealed that to mimic Principal’s obsessive compulsive fixation on numbers each section of the book has an even number of paragraphs in which each paragraph contains an even number of sentences in honor of computer languages’ base 2 binary code and the base 4 employed by search engines .

His ghostwriter, on the other hand reveals himself to be a word maven with a vocabulary exponentially richer than even Norman Mailer’s. When I read Mailer I have to look up a new word every second or third page. For the first 90 or so pages of Book of Numbers I had to look up two or three new words on every page! So is he just showing off? More often than not after looking up the word and then rereading the sentence in which it appears it turns out that the word in question is indeed le mot juste.

The fictional novelist also has a very high degree of Jewish literacy and is authentically comfortable in his Jewishness. That and the fact that like me he writes book reviews and has translated from Hebrew to English makes me predisposed to like him, though that is tempered by his clueless ambivalence towards women.

At close to 600 pages of dense prose Book of Numbers is not light reading. I close my NYJB review by recommending it to “readers as ambitious as it is.” For a fuller discussion of the novel see that review. 

Milan Kundera's new novella The Festival of Insignificance

"... likewise 86 year old Czech-French novelist Milan Kundera’s new work of fiction, The Festival of Insignificance, which was published last week by New York based publisher Harper in Linda Asher’s fine English translation from the Kundera’s French, is a 128 pp. novella that revisits its author’s recurring themes but in a shorter format." -- from my examiner article (see below). Also see my New York Journal of Books review.

My review appears in New York Journal of Books. Read that review first. Additional excerpts and remarks that appeared in a different and now defunct publication begin with the next paragraph.

Books: Milan Kundera's new novella The Festival of Insignificance 

Elderly writers tend to write shorter books than they wrote earlier in their careers. Why start a project you might not live to complete? In the decade prior to his announced retirement Philip Roth wrote several short novels; Norman Rush’s most recent novel Subtle Bodies is a fraction of the length of his earlier novels; Amos Oz returned to the short story in his two most recent adult fiction books after decades of writing novels; Lore Segal’s most recent novel Half the Kingdom is under 200 pp.; and likewise 86 year old Czech-French novelist Milan Kundera’s new work of fiction, The Festival of Insignificance, which was published last week by New York based publisher Harper in Linda Asher’s fine English translation from the Kundera’s French, is a 128 pp. novella that revisits its author’s recurring themes but in a shorter format.

One of those themes, Communist politics, is handled with humor based on anecdotes concerning Soviet dictator Josef Stalin as recalled by Nikita Krushchev in his memoir. In one such anecdote Stalin tells his politburo underlings a hunting story in which he found 24 partridges in a tree but had brought only 12 bullets, so he shot 12 partridges, brought them home, got 12 more bullets, returned to the tree and shot the remaining 12 who had not moved from the spot. But Krushchev and his colleagues assumed Stalin’s story was a tall tale and failed to laugh not realizing that Stalin meant it as a (dark allegorical) joke (the partridges representing the politburo members).

Later the politburo members adjourn to the lavatory down the hall except for Stalin who has his own private bathroom. There in supposed privacy they express their revulsion at the callousness of Stalin’s story. But again the joke is on them since the room is bugged, and Stalin is listening to their every word. Readers may wonder where was their indignation when millions of Ukrainians starved to death in the early 1930s or during the purges and show trials of the late 1930s.

Kundera was a member of the Czech Communist party from late adolescence until his expulsion in 1970 when he was in his early forties. His preoccupation with Cold War themes may seem like an anachronism, or perhaps not in view of Russia’s current antagonism towards Europe and the West. Other themes in the book include the virtue of simple living, philosophy, and sex.

In my New York Journal of Books review of the novella I write, “The Festival of Insignificance is being marketed by its publisher as a novel, but this invites unflattering comparisons with Kudera’s previous longer, richer, and more complex novels. On its own terms it is a very good novella, one that extracts and summarizes many on the themes of Kundera’s previous work and offers readers intimidated by philosophical fiction or novels of ideas an appetizer after which they can decide whether to order a main course.” For a fuller discussion of the novella read that review.