When We Cease to Understand the World - Book Group June 2021 discussion thread

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LindsD Jul 2021 12:06pm, 6 Jul 2021 48,224 posts	0 LindsD Oops. Turns out I liked the crazy white men. Yet again I fail as a feminist (see Notes from a Heatwave).
Hanneke Jul 2021 9:52pm, 22 Jul 2021 76,727 posts	0 Hanneke Right, finally finished it. Life stuff got in my way! I really loved it. It appealed to my life long fascination with science and all my favourite subjects were in it but... I really hated the fiction, not non-ficton thing. I kept being distracted, looking up things, picking non-fition books about Einstein et al from the shelf and just not being able to let go and accept it as fiction. It was never one or the other so, although I really wanted to love it and give it an 8, I am deducting half a point for the tenuous fiction and a quarter point for being distracting. 7 1/4
Chrisull Aug 2021 10:14am, 10 Aug 2021 18,224 posts	0 Chrisull Wanted to return to this thread after reading Ali Smith's "Summer", which I think is superior example of how to mix fact with fiction than Labutat's. In fact throughout Smith's sublime Seasons quartet, she blends in descriptions of art and stories about the artists into fictional narratives, leaving you in no doubt which is which. In Summer, Smith, in one thread, recounts the story of Italian Film Director Lorenza Mazetti, first introducing her via a description of one of her films. Mazetti's life was incredible and could easily have commanded much more of the book, from the incident of the Strage di Rignano where Wehrmacht officers assassinate nearly her entire family, while looking for family members of Einstein, and spare her because she didn't share the same name, to her demanding entry into Slade School of Art without the requisite qualifications and gaining it via tenacity, canniness and ultimately talent. No fictionalisation of Mazetti is needed, the story is already incredible enough, and the fictional characters are kept separate from the narrative throughout. The teenager Robert is reading a book about Einstein (a real one, you can Google it) and this is used as a hook back into the Mazetti's story. The fictional character's stories are woven around the fascinating factual stories and musings, without any overt signposting, or attempts to "hoodwink" the reader. I think that's why for many Labutat's book was a great read, but left a bad taste in the mouth, as it felt somehow dishonest and it wasn't certain as to what the fictional interweavings were trying to achieve.
Hanneke Aug 2021 10:22am, 10 Aug 2021 77,481 posts	0 Hanneke Thanks Chris! That sounds like another good read!
Chrisull Aug 2021 3:27pm, 18 Aug 2021 18,269 posts	0 Chrisull Now reading another book that yet again forces me to reframe Labutat's one. I had high expectations of Carlo Rovelli's Helgoland, especially after Rovelli's "Reality is not what it seems" which seemed to be follow a parallel, but more incisive trajectory (and strictly non-fictional). Helgoland actually deals with one the same events as WWCTUTW , Heisenburg's exile/hiatus/trip to Helgoland and yet the book is so far less satisfactory and harder going than WWCTUTW. In this one Rovelli drops a lot of the historical context and background that made "Reality is not what it seems" so completely absorbing, and instead it becomes a rehash of quantum super-positioning, hidden variables, relativity, all subjects covered with greater depth and background in "How the Hippies saved physics" by David Kaiser. I appreciate that it's a difficult territory and each book has to treat its readers as neophytes and that no-one understands quantum physics, but shorn of its background stories, it becomes a slog, and a slightly repetitive one. The whole arc of Labutat's book is indirectly dismissed in two lines "the devastating power of "boy's physics" is there for all to see. Thankfully there is much more than weapons." which feels unusually trite for a considered observer like Rovelli. I expected a drilling down into a short period time that yielded so much, but perhaps there's nothing more there, and that Labutat's fevered imaginings are the closest we'll get.
Chrisull Sep 2021 12:46pm, 11 Sep 2021 18,383 posts	0 Chrisull And finally on this thread, for those who liked the weird and wonderful connections that Labutat draws before departing into fiction, well check out the work of John Higgs, who is very much more popular culture oriented than either Labutat or Rovelli (and a lot less self-importantly serious). I'm a huge fan of Higg's KLF book which takes in invented religions and how they led to presidential assassination conspiracy theories, and the other forms of consciousness, and generally subjects only very tangentially related to the KLF, while attempting to explain why they burned 1 million pounds. His subject matter often seems to be a thread to hang his weird and wonderful digressions on. I picked up his "Watling Street" by random from the library (having read a separate road book the mildly diverting A303 Highway to the sun), and it's roughly a journey up the A2/A5/Watling street but full of the same crazy digressions in one chapter starting from Miss Havisham's actual house and how Rod Hull saved it, to the practice of tulpamancy (related to therapeutic schizophrenia) and the inviting of voices into your head, or creating imaginary sentient beings you can actually hear.
Serendippily Nov 2021 2:38pm, 29 Nov 2021 24,307 posts	0 Serendippily I thought I was going to love this book. I thought the start was sensational. Then I realised there was a fictional element and I was unreasonably annoyed - there seemed too many interesting stories to be told for it all to be reduced to erections and something dark at the heart of mathematics. I kept getting lost about who was who, when they were all geniuses linked together by a thread that handed the baton on from one to the other, and i was no longer sure if it was a real baton or only existed if I looked at it. The night gardener tied a lot of it together and mostly I enjoyed the way maths is an exercise in extraordinary abstraction which can drive you mad. It reminded me of the first page of my sisters A level book and her concomitant despair “by now, students will have realised that 1+1+1 do not always equal 3” At the end, I wondered if the forcing an imaginary structure over the top of some stories was a kind of metaphor. Even if it was, I still found it annoying. Still gave it an 8 because of the first and last chapter and some of the bits in between
Serendippily Nov 2021 2:45pm, 29 Nov 2021 24,308 posts	0 Serendippily Reading back it was the fourth section that really did for me. Good to know not all mathematicians and scientists are sobbing in a room in five day old pyjamas
GregP Nov 2021 3:59pm, 29 Nov 2021 131,000 posts	0 GregP Interesting to compare and contrast Dio’s review and mine. I think we both had the same problem with the book. Still one of the best chozzes of the year mind. Then again it’s not been a good year IMO.
GregP Nov 2021 4:00pm, 29 Nov 2021 131,001 posts	0 GregP Correction: gets my Chozz of the Year, narrowly beating Sprouts. Still got ACC Dickens* to go mind.