I think there is no pain more acute than that of unrequited love, especially unrequited love that devolves from a formerly happy relationship. And the more perfect the love rival, the more painful the love object’s indifference. But what do you do if your rival is the result of a physics experiment gone awry, a stabilized absence in space? What do you do, in short, if your love is seduced from you by a sentient black hole?
Misplaced passion A clever story of scientific obsession
For those of you interested in that queasy period of time when love slips through your fingers in slow motion, I can heartily recommend the novel As She Climbed Across the Table by Jonathan Lethem (Faber and Faber, 1997), the book choice for our next Fiction Lab at the Royal Institution this coming Wednesday evening. This short, tidy, beautifully written campus novel is a lab lit classic about an English professor whose girlfriend, Dr Alice Coombs, falls destructively in love with a space-time anomaly she has dubbed ‘Lack’. But this modern-day Alice is dealing with an entirely different sort of rabbit-hole.
As always, an excerpt to tantalize you:
Alice cleared the room of observers, locked the outer doors, and began the experiments that would etch her name forever in the history of physics.
_The first was a paper clip, I think. Just a curled steel wire. She slid it across the table, pulling her hand away just short of the calibration that indicated Lack’s edge. The paper clip slid across the table, through Lack, and dropped to the floor on the other side. _
Alice retrieved the paper clip and tried again. Again it fell to the floor behind the table. She fished in her pocket, brought out a dime. The dime slid through and fell. So did a penny, and so did a ballpoint pen. Alice emptied her pockets into a pile on the other side of the table, and each item clattered to the lab floor, refused.
Alice went and gathered her belongings. One was missing. She searched the floor, frisked herself, reloaded her pockets, conducted an inventory. It was nowhere.
Lack had gobbled the key to our apartment.
Grr, you have doubly irritated me, Dr Rohn. Not only will I not be able to attend the session, I will now have to go and spend more of the hard earned cash on a book. Sigh.
P.S. On visiting Amazon.co.uk to buy it (it’s here if anyone’s interested) I notice your cover shot is an old edition. This appears to be the current one:
There are about four covers – I liked my old one the best, as it’s quite sexy (I had to crop it unfavorably to fit, above).
I think you can probably afford the 50p some sellers are charging on the Marketplace. Well worth it – but let me know what you think of the ending (not before Wednesday!). I won’t say anything more than that.
Brian – if it’s not too late to cancel your order, you can have my copy of the book (already 2nd hand) after Wednesday… unless of course the ending turns out to be particularly brilliant!
I’m dreading talking about the ending, on Wednesday…
NN says it is on Monday – is that another physics experiment gone wrong?
NN must not be in the loop. It’s Wednesday this time, due to a scheduling error.
(Matt, do try to keep up!)
Are you coming, Scott?
I’m looking forward to it – I’m sure there be no lack of contention in our discussion. Hope you can make it Scott…!
{groan}
I find your humor wholly black.
Thanks for the offer Stephen/suggestion Jenny. I don’t know why (some dark perversion, I suspect), but while I’m quite happy to buy secondhand books to do research from, I really like new books to read cover to cover, so I’ll stick with the one I’ve ordered.
I also ought to point out, Jenny, that you ought, as a published-novelist-to-be, to be encouraging people to buy new copies – that way the author gets a royalty. You don’t get a penny from used sales. 🙂
Brian, it looked like it was out of print on Amazon, which is why I suggested the Marketplace. I must have been looking at the wrong edition. But as a general rule, nearly every lab lit book on the List older than about a decade is unavailable in bookshops and out of print online.
Are you coming, Scott?
I shall be seeing Matthew Bourne’s The Picture of Dorian Gray on Wednesday. I might have been able to make tonight, but hey. Sometime!
Good, because we definitely need to up the GF (Geek Factor) at these evenings.
Oh, Stephen’s coming – never mind.
Someone has to do a futile gesture at this stage of the game. It would raise the whole tone of the war. My God, I wish I was coming with you, Perkins.
Just you wait until your time, Gee.
Speaking of which, elsewhere on these fine blogs I think I mentioned that Henry was going to submit his lab lit novel ‘By the Sea’ to the scrutiny of Fiction Lab. I said, erroneously, ‘next month’ — it is actually in November when the
final reckoningfour horsemen of the Apocalypsefriendly critique will occur. I hope many of you will turn up on the night tojeerthrow rotten vegetablesspeak to this esteemed author about his work.I was going to say ‘Ouch!’ but I realised that I’ve just downloaded a program called ScreenFlow so that I can capture my on-screen video while using the molecular graphics program PyMOL. All this for a little movie that I’m working on.
So I guess, case closed. Or almost – I haven’t subscribed to Friendfeed or Twitter, so my geek credentials are perhaps a little tatty. I think you might still owe me a drink, though.
Embrace your inner geek, Stephen. Nurture him.
A drink, eh? I think that could be arranged.
@Stephen
I just googled ScreenFlow, and thought “Damn, I’m going to have to buy Leopard at last” and then realized it’s a hundred bucks.
So it might have to wait a while.
You two geeks want to get a room?
I once read a book by Jonathan Lethem (as he comes highly recommended by many bloggers I know) but I hated it. I don’t think I could face reading another (given that I have about 500 on my shelves to read, even after a ruthless clear out to the Oxfam book shop last weekend).
Maxine, I am surprised. I have to say that I am completely jealous of his style, at least his style in this particular novel. (I have not read any of his others.) It is light, elegant — and extremely funny and sad. His scientific metaphors in particular are beautifully rendered; some authors try too hard and it shows, but these are effortless, poetic. The whole book is effortless.
Only if you supply the drinks, Jenny. Or at a pinch, Li Kim and her vodka martinis.
@Richard
ScreenFlow is a bit pricey (or were you referring to Leopard?). I bought it to capture a 16 sec segment for a video (which may see the light of day soon). But it’s very easy to use, so I’m hoping I’ll get value for money.
@Jenny
I’m going nowhere. You’ll just have to rename your blog to ‘Mind the Geek’.
@Maxine
Brian’s objections to the fine and long-standing tradition of 2nd-hand book-selling aside, you are welcome to my copy (on 24th Sept?). Either that or I am going to tear it to pieces!
Oh dear, you didn’t like it?
Is it that obvious? Full story tomorrow at the RI… but I’ll try to be nice. And I am interested to hear other people’s reactions.
We haven’t yet a book you did enjoy, have we?
Sounds like a challenge.
No, don’t be nice Stephen! I want to see if I can mount a defence against the onslaught. I finished it last night and thought it was brilliant. I agree with Jenny, effortless is the word. Really intelligent, inventive and funny, without getting into the clever-for-the-sake-of-it thing that other McSweeney’s authors sometimes do.
Also, I’m impressed that Jenny’s arranged to have us all swallowed by a black hole tomorrow just to add to the theme.
(Yeah yeah, I know it won’t. I’ll get my coat.)
I just went to the web to find out which book it was that I read. I think it must have been Motherless Brooklyn because I can only remember two things about it: I didn’t like it, and it was about someone with Tourette’s syndrome. I also see they are making a film of it, due out next year.
Sorry about that, but my reading tastes are quite lowbrow these days. Very little short-term memory, which is quite a hindrance.
BTW, Stephen, tearing to pieces is probably better than giving it to me, given size of my reading shelves and the constant publishers’ review copies that stream into my house. However, delighted that you seem to be intending to come to the BL evening on 24th! Look forward to seeing you. Hope they have chocolate again.
It’s going to be a rousing discussion tomorrow, I can tell. We’ll clear out the central area and Jonathan and Stephen can duke it out like real men. We’ll all place bets — hey! maybe the RI can supply those inflatable sumo wrestling suits.
I had completely forgotten about the LHC going live tomorrow. What beautiful, beautiful timing.
That would be awesome! Oh my goodness, how I wish more of my reading involved sumo suits somehow.
You could wear the literature.
Ha! One of my colleagues, who’s coming tonight, just finished the book and loved it. So it will be 3 vs 1 at least!
But now that we know how eloquent Stephen truly is, we’ll need a clever game plan.
Yes. Yes you will.
Slipping something into your drink might be a good starter.
sigh
It’s been years since anyone has slipped anything into my drink.
Well, that was a good ol’ ding-dong last night. Much variation of opinion and vented spleen – tremendously cathartic!
So where’s the write-up, eh? Come on Jenny, you’re slacking.
My favorite quote was from Stephen:
“How do I hate this book? Let me count the ways.”
Followed closely by Philip:
“If this was meant to be a vehicle for the creation of irritating characters, then it’s a masterpiece.”
Oddly however, it got the highest overall ranking of any book we’ve read, but the polarization was remarkable.
Speaking of which, elsewhere on these fine blogs I think I mentioned that Henry was going to submit his lab lit novel ‘By the Sea’ to the scrutiny of Fiction Lab.
Is there any glimmer of hope for a podcast version of the Fiction Labs? You, know, for those of us who are very, very far away from the RI?
Funny you should mention this. I am not at liberty to say until I get the green light, but I’ll blog about it as soon as I can. A hint: it’s not just a podcast, but something more visual!
good article