Faith in science

"Do you feel all right, in that sense, because you don't look great."

"I've been better, no question about that. But be that as it may, I'm still perfectly sanguine about the fact that we are going to get through this little problem in a matter of a few more minutes. This too shall pass Casi."

"This blackout?"

"Yes. I have faith, you know why?"

"Why?"

"Because I am twenty-three years old and in those twenty-three years science has never let me down. And it's not going to let me down now. Two years before I was born was the last time we had one of these, at least on this scale, and you cannot seriously expect me to believe that for the duration of my entire life Father Science has not adequately investigated and prospectively remedied the deficiencies that occasionally cause us to become cloaked in unnatural darkness."

"Forgive me but isn't the strongest proof there's been no prospective remedy what you currently see when you look out the window?"

"But I have faith, faith in science."

"Okay."

"Faith."

— from A Naked Singularity, by Sergio De La Pava.

Naked, singular notes, part 2

The more it goes, the more I'm liking this novel, A Naked Singularity, by Sergio De La Pava. I mean, I liked it from page 1, but it just gets bigger and better, and more, and funnier, as it goes. It has seeped into my real life, as all the best books do.

A Naked Singularity is about a lot of things. The story, in a nutshell: Casi, a public defender, at age 24 is somewhat disillusioned, both with the system he works within and more generally with all he's managed to achieve (or not) in his time on this planet. A colleague tries to enlist him in committing the perfect crime. There will be swordplay!

But it's also about Beethoven, boxing (more specifically William Benitez), coffee, The Honeymooners, empanadas, the nature of reality, genius, perfection, God, genetics, free will, the nature of justice and morality, perception, and more. Also there are Casi's cases, and in particular the appeal he's working on for a young death-row inmate in Alabama.

Casi's sister Alana — I love her, I wish there were more of her. Somewhat ironically, although she's an artist, and lives a lifestyle, and comes off as flaky in some ways, she's also extremely grounded and sensible, emotionally and otherwise. I get a real sense of how much Casi loves her and why he turns to her.

Alana raises the point during a family dinner early in part 2 about "who the real me is. Who the real any of us is." It's a callow kind of exercise, but I find myself engaging in it this week, because I honestly don't know the answer. Do I feel most myself when I am with the family I grew up with (like Alana, I hate going there, yet I love being there), or with the family I created? When I am working (no!, though I am a certain person, and I like being that person, when out foraging for coffee or lunch, or just shooting the shit, with certain coworking friends), or with old college friends? Online, cultivating personas that are at once not-at-all-me and intensely-and-completely-me, or when I'm entirely alone? Weirdly, although I may be happiest when engaging in now moments (y'know, the stuff going on in my life today), I feel most real when the situation is loaded with history, memory, and yes baggage — I think because it combines weight, weightiness, with a sense of potentiality, whether ever realized or not, the what might've been melded into continuity with my current potentiality. (Actually, Dane brings me back to this in his pep talk to Casi on p 511, about possible worlds, and that on one possible world, these guys do this, and doesn't it make you mad it's not you.)

Some may argue these are merely different facets of the same person, but — and I suppose it reflects poorly on my mental state to admit this — they can feel like very different people to me. (Thanks, Alana, for making me think about this, and sparking some interesting conversations around here.)

Alana goes on to claim that all her good qualities are innate, the product of genetics, and that all her bad qualities are self-generated as a result of environmental factors, the product of circumstance. Very convenient.

And then! The neighbours! If God exists, why the suffering in the world? At what price heaven? And! "Because whether God exists or not, there is still such a thing as justice. Justice exists [...]." Casi doesn't quite seem convinced.

Casi procrastinates at work by making lists. "Because everything is susceptible to discrete, unproblematic listing. Anything can be ranked. Subjectivity has nothing to with it. If something is ranked higher it simply is higher. Better. Understand?" (p 357). Let us quantify the universe and our place in it!

Dane gives an intense exposition on the Beastly Burden Channel, and an incident between a cheetah and pack of hyenas. Animal nature, and the law of the jungle! Actually, I find this passage beautiful, because it's loaded with judgement as the hyena morphs into mangy mutt, filthy dog, rat, weasel. (p 403)

"Of course it can also be quite sad. As a matter of fact just before coming here I was home crying it was so damn sad. It seems a pride, has there ever been a more apt word, of these gorgeous cats had fallen on hard gastronomical times. Anyway one of these famished felines had managed to secure a tasty meal, but is eating alone without catty support. Suddenly it's surrounded by goddamn hyenas, those mangy mutts. Turns out they want the cat to share. Share! Can you imagine? This majestic, sexy, sleek beast giving even the slightest bit of its lion's share to those ratty mouth-breathing pieces of shit. Now if you know anything at all about the situation, you know there's not a lioness in the world that is going to lose to a fucking single hyena, is going to let a hyena take even a morsel of its food. And don't kind yourself, the pussy hyenas know this as well. Of course we're not dealing with a single hyena here, we're dealing with like twenty of the bastards and, as I said, one cat. They surround the cat, these filthy dogs. But the cat, like the viewer, knows that twenty dogs can kill it if they need to. It takes one last bite of its zebra dinner, a zebra it fucking acquired when no one else could, through its feline will and sense of self, a zebra rightfully bestowed on it by the cosmos, then leaves it to the mutts. Well if that doesn't make you cry then you're just an unfeeling bastard and I take my leave of you. The cameraman had to gall to stand there and film these lowly furry rats stuffing their faces, knowing that not one of these weasels would've had the balls to so much as look at our cat crossly if not for their overwhelming numbers."

There's this other theme that resonates with me hugely, and it's related to genius, or at least, fulfilling one's potential. Only now that I'm looking back, I can't really find anything to sustantiate this reading, it must be all in my head. But I'd decided I can relate to Casi, I too was once young and thought to be, if not exactly a genius, then at least very, very smart. And then very suddenly it just didn't pan out for me. But I still check the gauges, that so-and-so accomplished whatever by age twenty-something, and whosit published whatsit at exity-ex years of age, to measure my (lack of) progress. As if it's not too late for me. As if I could be both the prodigy I once was and a late bloomer. I feel for Casi, but he's only 24. Just wait, boy.

I was like that Benitez. I had maybe not always put the appropriate work in and had therefore messed up. I too had lost. But likewise I would rise again. Everyone I saw around me looked like they were were in my way and I was sick of walking around these people and would start to go through them if need be to get what I wanted, needed. (p 492)

And the heist. Free will, striving for perfection, the slipperiness of morality — all very interesting. How this aspect of the book represents subject matter of obsessive interest to myself?: what makes someone walk away from their life?

Part 2 leaves two great mysteries unanswered: 1. What did Traci draw in the condensation on the window? Once Casi saw it, he couldn't unsee it (p 405). Does it matter what it was, and I wonder if De La Pava had a specific image in mind even if he chose not to tell us. 2. Casi had the energy to call either Dane or Toomberg, not both, before heading to the airport, and he had finally decided, and the decision surprised him, but finally the phone didn't work (p 455) — what had he chosen?

The Big Read continues at Conversational Reading, and if you're at all interested in knowing to what degree these themes play out in the novel, I urge you to explore the discussions there.

I'm onto part 3 of the novel, which puts me well ahead of the reading schedule — I can no longer help myself. I am saddened to be nearing the end, relieved to count at least 150 pages to go. I find myself laughing out loud quite regularly, and in public places, and that's a good thing.

A Naked Singularity is highly readable, and I highly recommend it.

"Life is nasty, malevolent, toxic, evil, and brutish. And you know the worst part? The part that really sticks in my craw, whatever a craw is."

"What?"

"It's too short."

Cinnebula

"I believe I'm in the mood for some coffee, would you like to join me?"

"No, I'm never again leaving this office."

"Well I'm going to get some, would you like me to bring you back some form of beverage?"

"Yes."

"Coffee?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"I'm easy, just get me one of those I think it's called a fatslap-push-push-on-the-bush-consigliere-capillary-freezy-supremicious or something, extra non-decaf please. Now when the guy pours the espresso into the foamy milk please make sure that he pierces the smallest possible area of the upper foam. The result should be akin to a brown pin prick on a sea of white. Moreover, when he pours the espresso in he should do so at such a deliberate rate that the espresso and the milk, which incidentally should be foamed to no more than a seventy-five percent congealment status, will not mix but rather will form two distinct levels featuring two different colours, with a great deal of wavy quantum action taking place at the border where they conjoin. Once that's done I shall like a fair amount of cinnamon sprinkled atop of the now pierced milk. Now when I say a fair amount of cinnamon I do not mean the the entire surface area should be covered. Rather the appearance of the cinnamon should be not unlike that of a distant nebula, such appearance with which I'm sure you're familiar. Remember, a cinnamon nebula is the goal. A cinnebula if you will. As for sugar, enough should be added to combat the inherent bitterness of espresso coffee but not so much added that it overpowers all the other competing flavors the beverage brings to the table. Also do not stir the beverage, as such a stirring would undoubtedly compromise the dual-level system I just mentioned. Instead add the sugar at a rate where each individual sugar granule will have its component molecules sufficiently bombarded by surrounding molecules, traveling at a high rate of speed due to the extreme heat of the beverage, as to occasion the dissolving of the granule before it reached the bottom of the cup. Lastly, please take care to walk the drink over with minimal bipedal concussion so as to not disrupt the dual-level system. Thanks man."

"I'm just going downstairs to the gentleman with the newsstand so do you want from the orange-lidded dispenser or the brown?"

"Brown."

Sweet silence.

— from A Naked Singularity, by Sergio De La Pava.

I would grow wings and shed the shackles

I thought all that but mostly I thought about ten million dollars. I thought about each of those dollars all the way back to the office. In the warmth of that office, with Swathmore in front of me all animated and sounding like a Peanuts adult, it was the money I thought of. At my current rate, it would take me a little over two centuries to gross ten million dollars. Patience, it seemed, was all I needed. With ten million dollars I could return all my phone calls and answer all my mail without my heart tightening.

I would never ride the subway again and even if I did it would feel different. I would do very little I didn't want to and lots I did. I would feel joy and relief.

I would have a library.

Well, first a house to put it in, not a glorified closet. And there I would sit, in a crazy regal chair made of fine Corinthian leather smoking a pipe for no good reason while draped in a crushed velvet robe. I would read until my eyes failed and my head overflowed. Any book that sounded even mildly interesting I would buy. And not cheesy paperbacks either, hardcovers only. Leather-bound collector's editions if possible and appropriate. I would read everything of note ever written. Gilgamesh to Grendel, Gibbon and Gass, Goethe and Gödel, Günter Grass and non-G works too. I would devour them all. And when I tired of reading I would swim in my pool, parting the azure blue water like a veloce human knife. Or I would visit the equally lush home of my mother and her others, now swimming in the knowledge that I singly moved them out of their cramped quarters.

I would grow wings and shed the shackles that kept me tethered to this place and day. Thus freed, I would soar up and through the air, above the Earth, to exotic locales where I would be pampered beyond my wildest dreams. Venice, Paris, Rome, Sydney, Tokyo, Rio, Athens would be my homes.

No, better yet, I would be homeless. Owning and owing nothing and no one. I would exist well outside the norms and concerns of society, my only concern my personal advancement and evolution as a human being. As such I would only intake the very finest our tepid species had been able to produce. Only the finest foods in my shell, which shell would be subjected to only the finest medical care. Through my repaired ears and into my melon only the most angelic music would pass, which by now you know would include a healthy dose of live Ludwig. And along with those notes only the finest thoughts, arguments, theories, hypotheses, assessments, deeds, proofs, actions, creeds, kudos, slogans, phrases, sayings, limericks, and memories. Okay that last one's tricky but beauty in, beauty out, as I would be transformed into a timeless yes evanescent superbeing who didn't know what anything cost.

— from A Naked Singularity, by Sergio De La Pava.

What would you do with ten million dollars?

Naked, singular notes, part 1

A Naked Singularity, by Sergio De La Pava. People are gushing over this book. Big Read at Conversational Reading.

Chapter 1, I felt rushed along, perhaps much like bodies are rushed through the system of night court, but while the voice was literate and articulate and witty and knowledgeable and competent, this was very bleak and depressing.

It was desensitizing, first to Crime — it happens all the time, over and over again, and while it's somewhat sobering, it's also hard to be shocked by it, it's a state of normal, kind of like how I feel when I follow the news too closely. It's mostly sympathetic to the "criminals" but I felt desensitized against their plight as well, it's just a hopeless and persistent way of being for them, they're all in bad situations, and it shouldn't be that way, but that's just the way it is. So sympathy, but hopelessness and also apathy, that I or anyone would be able to change the world in any meaningful way. Had the book gone on in this way for much longer, I don't think I could've stuck with it.

Chapter 2, the neighbours. "The three of them were good customers of Columbia University. Alyona was purchasing a doctorate in Philosophy [...]." I love how this is put, showing education as commodity. (Isn't Alyona a girl's name?)

The project: to play all episodes without commercial interruption on a continuous self-propelling and repetitive loop, and by so doing turn Ralph Kramden into an actual human being. Why The Honeymooners? Feels wrong for 20-somethings in this day and age. (And Charlie's Angels, Three's Company, Herb Tarlek.)

Casi had a black and white set (p 51). (I remember Grape Ape, by name anyway, but I've never heard of Magilla Gorilla.) That puts him in my generation, maybe a couple years younger than me. So if he's 24, the novel is set in the early/mid-90s? Mention of e-campus puts it a couple years later, maybe? [Later... Alana remembers the record player, and has a 50-disc CD player (p 129). Someone mentions Spandau Ballet (p 177).] Oh, I get it — it's contemporary with about the time De La Pava would've started working on this novel.

Chapter 3, the office. Casi is "almost tragically late," and the morning I read this I am myself already tragically late, so whatthehell I stop for a leisurely coffee on my way into work and read some more. Casi learns he messed up with Ah Chut (p 73).

I stared at the jacket and just like that wanted be Leon Greene, Esq. I wanted those life moments of highest suspense and relevance to be in my immutable past. Wanted to have been at that desk for thirty-five years and not find the slightest thing wrong with that. And in those years would not once have worn casual clothes to work even if I wasn't going to court or meeting one of my clients, all of whom incidentally I would give the benefit of the doubt despite decades of empirical opposition, and in all that time I would never have raised my voice or used salty language at the office either. And I would bring that quiet dignity to the office every day without fail by the sharpest eight-thirty and would remove it no later than four-thirty, with the same forty-five minutes excluded for the lunch Helen would pack, and allow myself only one glass of wine a night with my light dinner five-thirty and maybe trade some words about our kids and their kids and draw steadily increasing paychecks and save for retirement and talk about pensions and never produce any evidence of having noticed that every square inch of the third inhabitant of that square, one Julia Ellis, was skin-raisingly gorgeous and at precisely that moment I realized I no longer wanted to be Leon. [p 64]

Chapter 4, no one grabs the shooter (p 106), no one minds the purse snatcher (p 108).

Chapter 5, family. Alana. I start to think about this as a book about Beethoven.

Chapter 3x2x1 (it's a perfect number!) features the neighbours again, discussion about the Second Coming, would Jesus use Television as a medium, Pascal's Wager.

Chapter 7 starts with the courtroom underwear anecdote, and, well, maybe cuz I'm a girl, but was that really necessary? Then there's the guy with the third ear, Richard Hurd (get it?) — now that's got to be a metaphor or something... Over lunch, Dane explains to Casi the War on Drugs, and now he really starts to pick at our morality and our sense of justice. Dane leads us, via perfect numbers and Pythagoras, through the concept of perfection and his attempt to achieve perfect legal representation.

Casi keeps trying to interrupt Dane to ask how he knows he's Colombian. For some reason I find this very funny.

Chapter 8, a blind date, preceded by a lot of daydreaming:

But why limit myself? Forget those puny living types, I could have dinner with fucking Beethoven! Ludwig van Beethoven my friend. I would ask him about Antonie Brentano, what went down there. Then I would say, between the appetizers and the main course, something like my sister Alana contends you didn't really create music. Particularly with the late string quartets, she says, there's no way any mere human could have created that stuff. Instead what you did was more like discover notes that had already been celestially arranged to optimal psyche-rattling effect. In other words, your function was not unlike that of a receiver picking up radio waves that could never be heard with the naked ear. Which theory, I would say, would seem to be belied by the apparent painstaking manner of your compositional process. What say you Lud? [p 217]

And there's the question again: How can you represent someone you know is guilty?

Chapter 9 brings the case of Ramon DeLeon, and it's clear when he meets with the DA and others that Casi is (and knows himself to be) the smartest guy in the room. I guess this quality was always there but slightly obscured by smart-assery and/or not entirely giving a shit, but now it's evident. And he gets to thinking what if a truly talented person focused his efforts on the sort of scheme DeLeon has in mind.

Also, there's some announcement with respect to the Human Genome Project, which should dat the events of the novel to 2000, but it's winter in the book, and I don't see a date matching up. And here comes this spectacular digression on being liberated from one's genes, no longer being told what to do, and being able to create superhumans

Chapter 10's a bit weird, the bridge, Uncle Sam and the chimp, and the Kramdens get a new neighbour. We hear a bit more about the appeal for Jalen Kingg who's due to be executed. "It was no longer a matter of choice or free will once the candy appeared. We were dealing with a genetic makeup, namely mine, that was incapable of dealing with matters of this nature. (p 262)" And there follows the story of the rainbow candy, which is really, really sad.

But mainly it's about the Hurtado case, how he won't take 2 to 4, over the 3 and a half to 7. But Hurtado wants to fight it, and Casi can't sleep, and it's like he's caught a bug, some inspiration to win this case, and he's being very clever but "I should have been kissing her ass from the outset." "Why didn't you?" "I don't know, genetics?" (p 262) and meanwhile Dane is tugging at the desire, need to achieve perfection in the form of a crime, whose monetary value keeps increasing from paragraph to paragraph. Casi loses the case. The effect of which is chapter 11, in which Casi says yes to Dane's scheme.

****************************

Some stylistic quirks I was having a hard time getting over:
- "my" for "am I" — why not " 'm I" or even " 'mI" if you want to get the full slurry rushedness of it?
- d'know for don't know — what's wrong with the conventional dunno?
- the lack of commas, particularly in the vicinity of names when people are being addressed — I've encountered several garden path structures, where a name could be taken for the object of what's going on in the sentence rather than being immediately understood as being used in a vocative sense

Given that this novel was originally self-published, I'm not surprised that there should be copyediting-type glitches of this sort, and apart from the above-mentioned deviations from established convention the writing is otherwise fluid and clear. Not sure if there is less of this as the novel goes on, or if I'm just getting used to it.

Motifs

• ears — Casi's ear pain, the man with the third ear, hearing above the din, auditory hallucinations; Beethoven's deafness; possibly related, niece Mary refuses to speak
• genetics, DNA, the Human Genome Project — lot of little throwaway mentions (e.g., in conversation with his sister, wrt id-ing people, a stamp of who you are, why'd you do it, see mentions above
• Beethoven
• genius — the nature of; Eddie van Halen, Mary Wollstonecraft, Wilfred Benitez, all gifted and accomplished at a younger age than Casi (p 61); Mozart, Eistein, Pascal, Nietzsche, Wagner (p 209)
• perfection — the perfect chess opening: "Sixteen hundred years they been playing this game and it took a homeless brother in the park to come up with the perfect opening." (p 23); extreme beauty (p 91); perfect attendance (p 92); the perfect crime (p 93); mathematical, but also the perfect crime. Practice (p 45) makes perfect?

That's the din

I read somewhere that the music I like now is the music I'll like for the rest of my life. My fucking brain or something like that won't find new kinds of music pleasurable from about this point on. What the hell is that? Good thing I like this music. C'mon youth wasn't carefree it was intense and intense is good. It's like this house. I never want to come here but when I do I end up liking it. Just to see everything through that prism again you know? A happy youth I must have had overall. Or was I miserable but with a poor memory? Oh whatever. Remember that old record player in the lime green case, the one with the detachable knobs? I saw it in the garage the other day. In the garage Casi! I put it on and it worked. I mean I didn't have any records to really test it but it was spinning and that was amazing enough for me. I remember the oldsters would start in with the endless clave patterns and you and I would reach for that thing in protest. Then up to your room for a little Reader's Digest Edition of the LVB piano sonatas, remember thinking RD was like good? And remember we would limit ourselves to the pre-Heiligenstadt Testament ones to exclude our runaway favorite, the cataclysmic Appasionata, with you being definitely partial to the Opus 28 Pastorale because it was supposedly after this one that he told Krumholz he would be taking a new path and me arguing that those kinds of ancillary matters were not fairly considerable and that sometimes, just occasionally, overwhelming popularity is warranted and that the second 27, The Moonlight, with its initial melancholia was the greater work? Remember that? Well if you listen to them now I bet you'll be sent up to that room whether you're willing or not. And if you listen the right way then you're forced to actually be that person. Isn't that just the height of weirdness? That's what this house is, a giant green record player with detachable knobs, which is usually fine but can sometimes be opposite. Sometimes it can be the realization that images seem blurrier now, sounds more muffled, and yet somehow we're inappositely picking up speed. We're picking up speed and you and I have been thrown out of the kitchen where we used to make ice cream floats, armed solely with ATM cards that have our pictures on them and a little bar graph in the corner that's somehow linked to our fingerprints but only until they get the DNA coding capability fully functional and maybe your green record player does still technically work but not really and don't pay it any mind regardless because I have a fifty disc CD player that positively compels neighbors to call the police and blast it anyway so that when the opening movement of the C minor Symphony nears its close at allegro con brio tempo I swear Casi that the sky is going to literally open up and forget all of Ludwig's later Ode to Joy crap because now it's God — for want of a better word — surveying the broken to regretfully diagnose a violent remedy then reaching down and doing something about this mess, no longer content to just watch, and you were right about Lincoln Center that time because yet it was great and how could it fail to be but it does have to be louder, or more accurately we needed more money to get closer and make it louder, loud enough that the notes come straight from heaven, replace your bone marrow and you start to question yourself as a physical being and I think the more time passes the louder and louder it will have to be in order to be heard above the din . . . hear that? That's the din."

— from A Naked Singularity, by Sergio De La Pava.

Two things I love about this passage:

How a trigger, in this case an auditory one, can take you back, to be a person you once were. Only it feels here, in its intensity and in the context of the big Honeymooners thought experiment that we're following throughout the novel as a backdrop to this, more like actual time travel, that a loop can make it real.

Beethoven and the sky opening up. Cuz I love Beethoven (and in particular the late quartets, which get mentioned later in the book), and I think De La Pava must too to be able to write about it this way, and that's how it feels to me — like the sky is opening up.

The thing coming after the final straw

Still at the precinct, you are printed, each of your fingers rolled in black ink then onto vestal white paper. The resulting bar code is sent to Albany for the purpose of producing a rap sheet, an accordiony collection of onion paper that means everything where you are. It means everything because sentencing like Physics and other sciences builds on what came before so that the worse your past was, the worse your present will be, and no sane person doubts the rap sheet's depiction of the past since it's based on unalterable fingerprints and not relative ephemera like names or social security numbers. I say no sane person because when once confronted by an individual who steadfastly claimed not to recall in the slightest what I deemed to be a highly memorable conviction on his sheet and one that substantially increased his exposure, I asked him if he planned to launch a Lockean defense whereby he could not be held responsible for something he didn't remember as such act was not properly attributable to his personal identity at which point he gave me the blankest of stares in response then started saying increasingly odd things in rapid succession until I realized that he not only sort of knew what I was talking about, which was weird enough, but that he was undeniably insane and my ill-advised Locke reference was like the thing coming after the final straw to tip him over the Axis-II-Cluster-A edge, as it were, so that I thenceforth stopped doing things like that.

— from A Naked Singularity, by Sergio De La Pava.

A Naked Singularity is this summer's Big Read at Conversational Reading (see schedule). I've been having a hard time not opening it over the last month, and now I'm having a hard time holding back so I don't get too far ahead of the scheduled discussion. So far, so excellent.

Links
Review/overview
A kind of reader's guide
Publication history