The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut

The book I most assumed would be on the list - and one that a number on here have tipped as likely winner. Having left it about 2 days to late to get a NetGalley I ordered it and was waiting until April to read it as I had taken if for granted it would be longlisted.

Yes my first post in August 2020 on the speculation thread said this one was my favourite, and that hasn't changed

(the other ones I highlighted in the same post all failed to make it!)

The author's own take on the 'is it a novel'

The book starts out with an essay which is 99% non-fiction, followed by two short stories and finally a novella. As the book progresses, the fictional content increases, but all the stories are based on hard facts.

Apparently just one paragraph in the essay is fictional - spotter's badge for whoever can work out which one...

This one doesn't release in the states till September. I may not get to it before the prize is awarded.

Very useful interview with the author; https://www.suhrkamp.de/images/sonder...

I have just finished the second part. I’m not sure this qualifies as fiction but it doesn’t matter. What a stunner of a book!

It is very impressive - and it does get more fictional as it proceeds.

I wrote a short review of 'When we Cease . . .' which I ended up not using, so I'll give it an outing here in the hope that it will be of interest to people who haven't read the book.

It is somewhere around page 100 of When We Cease To Understand The World by Benjamin Labatut, translated by Adrian Nathan West (Pushkin Press) that a subtle shift into the open possibilities of fiction occurs, like quiet strings emerging behind a solo voice. Before that point, this unorthodox novel seemed to be a factual examination of the lives and theories of scientists and physicists active in the early 20th century (Einstein, Schwarschild, Schrödinger etc.), threading connections and disputes that obsessed these men, leading some - Shinichi Mochizuki was an especially defiant figure - to renounce all of their work on realising the horrific use to which their insights might be put. As the level of invention increases, we can inhabit their minds in the way only fiction allows and, for example, follow Schrödinger as he becomes infatuated by the dying daughter of a Doctor running a sanatorium at which he is a patient. Unfortunately, this also introduces an unwelcome element of tortured, melodramatic romanticism which is at odds with a very well-constructed elucidation of the ways in which these prodigious lives were tormented by their need to understand the smallest units of matter and the largest questions of existence.

Doesn't sound you were such a fan as myself and Neil (and Robert so far)?

I enjoyed it very much and for a couple of weeks imagined I knew something about quantum mechanics but I did have some reservations. Those strings I mentioned near the start swell a little too insistently at times, I felt, especially within the section in which Schrödinger falls in love with Miss Herwig. But there was an awful lot I liked too and I'm not surprised that it made the longlist.

I just realized this is the same book people have been recommending to me in Spanish for the past six months. The title was changed considerably (original is A Terrible Greenery.

Everyone is so positive about it, but will I hate it if I usually have problems with real characters in fiction? I don't mind if there's a mixture or they are minor characters, but say, Tell them of Battles, Kings and Elephants was pushing its luck on this front for me. Declan's reservations are making me nervous...

Doesn’t sound like it is for you, Emily. Nearly everyone in this book is a real person.

After reading and because I loved it so much, I gave my copy to my sister, who's big into astrophysics. I told her I wished I'd read the afterward first, so she did and then wished she hadn't because she spent a lot of time trying to figure out which paragraph in the first essay was fiction! I think I am going to need to get another copy, as she passed my original on and who knows where it is now!

But did she crack the question as to which was the fictional paragraph?

This changing title thing in translation I always find odd.

The German translation was Das blinde Licht (Irrfahrten der Wissenschaft) - google translate - The blind light (Wanderings of science)

The English title of the whole book does though come from the Spanish title of the last of the novel's sections - "Cuando dejamos de entender el mundo"

The Italian is the same as the English (well except in Italian obviously!), the French and Dutch as the German.

The Portuguese is the only one that seems to follow the Spanish original - Um terrível verdor.

Declan wrote: "I enjoyed it very much and for a couple of weeks imagined I knew something about quantum mechanics but I did have some reservations. Those strings I mentioned near the start swell a little too insi..."

Those Miss Herwig sections really made me uncomfortable.

I loved this book.

Paul wrote: "This changing title thing in translation I always find odd.

The German translation was Das blinde Licht (Irrfahrten der Wissenschaft) - google translate - The blind light (Wanderings of science)
..."

I'm thinking Verdor must translate inelegantly in most languages (except apparently Portuguese). I quite like the German title.

But yes I think I'll have to leave this for the moment, unless my library gets it...

In UK at least, this is on Netgalley. (I thought they'd taken it off Netgalley, but may have added back post prize listing)

Is the last para of the first section the fictional one? The one about his one deathbed regret being his contribution to over population. It’s not that I think it’s fake - more that I don’t know if it’s true and everything else seems fairly well established Wiki-verifiable info - much /most of it general knowledge.

There is a paragraph on nitrogen sources which seems to me at one step to misunderstand why bones were /are used for fertiliser (surely primarily Calcium and Phosphorus rather than Nitrogen) but that’s only a sentence or two in an otherwise long and accurate paragraph.

Really impressed with this although I think it’s in many ways the darkest novel on the longlist

For those who enjoyed it have you (other than Paul who has watched it with me) seen or read Michael Frayn’s “Copenhagen” - in some ways I could see it as a sequel to this novel or in particular the part where Heisenberg cannot tell Bohr of the terrible vision he saw - Copenhagen rests on different interpretations of a seminal meeting they had in 1941 where the very thing this vision represents is at the heart of their meeting and their subsequent disagreements over what the meeting was about and what it says about Heisenberg’s war time “failure” also covered in this novel.

Gumble's Yard wrote: "Really impressed with this although I think it’s in many ways the darkest novel on the longlist

For those who enjoyed it have you (other than Paul who has watched it with me) seen or read Michael..."

I loved Copenhagen. Now more than ever I'm looking forward to the arrival of When We Cease.

This a lot wider in range

This seems so much stronger than the rest of the list I have read

Its taken me an age to write a review and I feel like I only captured a few ideas.

My only gripe would be with the title

Anyway my thoughts here

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Excellent review. Of an outstanding book, I think.

Agreed on the book.

Currently of 7 who've ranked it, 6 have it top.

Although that still doesn't make it top overall on one of the two systems. The one labelled "Paul-style" however gets the right answer :-)

Loved your review GY. I read this at the end of the year with Neil put it on this groups favorite reads for 2020. I was mesmerized by it. Nothing I've yet read on the longlist comes close to it, in my opinion.

I am not ranking books because I have only read three (prior to the list announcement) and I don’t intend to read any others on the list. But, if I ranked the three I have read, I would put this top.

Thanks LindaJ

Sometimes I enjoy reading a book but have nothing to really say in the review. I think Summer Brother may end like that.

Sometimes I don’t really enjoy reading a book but find them fascinating to review - Shadow King, Burnt Sugar, This Mournable Body all fitted that template.

This was great to read and review.

It is your second place that put In Memory of Memory on top of the first table Paul, so you can't complain. As soon as somebody else ranks it a little lower, it will drop. I don't usually put penalty points on longlist rankings.

We need Tony to post a ranking of In Memory of Memory as he wasn't impressed.

I haven’t been impressed with In Memory of Memory, but I’ve read less than 50 pages so I can’t rank it yet.

WndyJW wrote: "I haven’t been impressed with In Memory of Memory, but I’ve read less than 50 pages so I can’t rank it yet."

Interesting, as this is one I've had on my TBR but others have felt the same as you.

I am halfway through it and stunned by it. So far, it is, for me, head and shoulders above the other books on the list I have read. I am also halfway through the audio book of Minor Detail but it is not doing much for me yet, which has surprised me.

I think you are aligned with many of us - but I don't think that is necessarily a criticism of the list (its head and shoulders above most books)

One of the many things I am marveling at is that it does not read as translated even a little. So not only is the author gifted, the translator is as well.

Cindy wrote: "One of the many things I am marveling at is that it does not read as translated even a little. So not only is the author gifted, the translator is as well."

There is a lengthy interview with the author and translator recently posted to the Booker site

https://thebookerprizes.com/internati...

This is interesting on the naturalness of the language

"What did you enjoy about translating When We Cease to Understand the World?"

"This book was an unusual one for me in that the translation was far more collaborative than any I had done before. I received the book in manuscript, long before it was published in Spanish, and once it was decided that the author and I were a good fit for each other, he and I went over many parts of the book in detail together before a final draft was produced. Benjamín in turn was deeply involved in the editing; his English is excellent, and he wanted the translation to have its own touch––to be, that is, its own book in English."

"Described as a ‘nonfiction novel’, did you have to do a lot of research into scientific history for the translation?"

"I double-check everything, perhaps sometimes to the point of being an annoyance to some of my authors (I will never forget the irritation of once whose novel contained a quote from “the Bible” that I found on deeper investigation to be a bit of dialogue from the film Once Upon a Time in America!). Some of the material Benjamín covers I knew well––particularly in the parts pertaining to the Second World War––some of it was new to me, and naturally I tried to get as good a grasp on it as I could. More than research into scientific history per se, I spent a lot of time seeking out original documents; I try to avoid relay translations, and so when he cited a text from French, German, or English, I always tried to find the original source, and this led to some fruitful collaborative moments, particularly in the Alexander Grothendieck section. "

And for me, given I do not like the title chosen compared to the Spanish title (which is translated in the book as "A Terrible Verdure") - this was interesting although not that convincing

"Before the book was published, there was a lot of discussion about the title, with the general feeling that verdure was a bit stilted and greenness just flat. Again, Benjamín made clear that he considered the translations into various languages to be books in their own right, each deserving of its own idiosyncrasies: the German edition, for example, is called Das blinde Licht, Blind Light. "

I have finished the book and am just in awe of it, both the writing and the translation. Thanks to GY for posting a link to the interview. It does not surprise me that the author speaks English and actively participated in the translation process. That explains a lot about why it reads the way it does.

I also particularly liked the author's description of the book:

"This is a book about the limits of science and the borders of thought, a strange book, neither a novel, nor a short story collection, nor an essay, that walks the thin line between fact and fiction, and that uses science as an excuse to speak about those aspects of the human experience that neither words nor equations can tame."

I have been struggling to explain what this book is about to people, and that summary helps tremendously. It finally has a US publication date (September 14).

I enjoyed this, without quite going into the raptures some have felt. It reminded me a little of Luis Sagasti's 'Fireflies', albeit a much more in-depth version. I thought the main story was a bit long, which affceted the balance of the book, and the final piece was rather unnecessary as I suspect most readers would have got the point without needing to be told by by a bloke doing some gardening ;)

Still, in a rather weak year, this has a fair chance of winning.

I finally got a copy and saved it till last, so I am trying to keep my hopes subdued and just looking forward to the read.

High expectations have dampened by enthusiasm for a few books, including for this prize The Dangers of Smoking in Bed,

I did a bit of Wikipedia research and discovered that Carlos Fonseca's "Colonel Tears" is semi-biographical take on Grothendieck's life. I had it on my ebook reader and removed it awhile ago, but I guess it's time to put it back on my TBR e-pile.

Should anyone want to take a look at "La Clef des Songes" wherein Grothendieck discusses dreams and the Dreamer, it can be downloaded from here: http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=A...

There's also "Notes pour La Clef des Songes" double the size of "Le Clef": http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=1...

My review of that one: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I don’t think it as successful as this book, nor Fonseca’a own Natural History. Worthwhile though.

Well, this fell rather flat for me. Especially the Heisenberg/Schrödinger story as it just repeated the well known anecdotes (God and dice, come on!). Stories with less known (to me) characters faired better but I guess it's just because I wasn't familiar with these people. All in all, I didn't mind reading the book and it's a fairly quick read, but it didn't do much for me.

My review: https://tonysreadinglist.wordpress.co...

Another great review, Tony

Thanks - almost there! Two more reviews written, waiting to be posted, but unless a library copy of 'The Perfect Nine' shows up in the next few days, I'll have to finish the journey later in the year :(