Posted on :Monday, Sept. 06, 2004

Mark Haddon's Curious Incident ...

[pp143]And this is the joke.
There are three men on a train. One of them is an economist and one of them is a logician and one of them is a mathematician. And they have just crossed Scotland...and they see a brown cow ...standing parrallel to the train).
And the economist says, "Look, the cows in Scotland are brown".
And the logician says " No. there are cows in Scotland, of which one at least is brown."
And the mathematician says, " No there is at least one cow in Scotland, of which one side appears to be brown."
And it is funny because economists are not real scientists,and because logician thinks more clearly, but mathematicians are the best.

Finished reading Mark's Haddon first novel: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Found the title from Pak Adib's blog.

This novel is about a fifteen-year-old Christopher's novel about the death of his neighbour's dog.His full name is Christopher John Francis Boone. He is mathematically gifted but socially hopeless. This book is his 'documentation' (chapter numbered with prime numbers) of his investigation. He has behavioural problem and attend a special school for the autistic & spastic children (I think!). He wants to be a scientist and he's taking his A-Level Maths. He wants an A for this exam to enable him to get nearer (to take A-Level Further Maths & A Level Physics, and to attend the university) to his ambition (a scientist).

In my POV, this book is a cross between:

1)Feynman's Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman

2)Clifford Stoll's Silicon Snake Oil

3)Kelley's Complete idiot guide to Calculus

all rolled into one.

There's a bit of everything inside this book; astronomy, physics, probability,Sherlock Holmes,etc.

The only thing that put me off is that the Christopher character was too logical, thus his disbelief in God.

I wished when Matt Damon and Ben Affleck wrote 'Good Will Hunting' they include more geek-stuff instead of focusing on Will's hormonal-induced adventure. Well, Will is not autistic as Christopher. You don't always get what you want. Maybe we should write our own novel ! Like Christopher did.

Links:
http://mostlyfiction.com/contemp/haddon.htm
http://plus.maths.org/issue27/reviews/book4/
http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/childrens/grownups/davidficklingbooks/curious/
http://lantech.geekvenue.net/bookvenue/thebuzz/sharon/bookbuzz/1079820582/index_html

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