The Trouble with The Trouble With Physics

Troubled Reading

Well, I confess that I did not complete the book. Mostly because it is my ever-lazy attitude, but the book itself contributed to a fair extent. As such, I may not do justice to the book itself, but I can atleast give an idea of what to expect.

The problem is the book talks about real modern-day physics. And that itself is not a problem, but it focuses on those parts that are not yet experimentally confirmed, which according to the author is largely the modern particle physics. Given that any subject's toughest part is its theoretical part, explaining something as tough as particle physics without empirical descriptions is bound to bore a lot of people. For me, lack of flowing prose and impressive explanations turned out to be turn-offs. And I think the writing is also boring!!!

Well, apart from that - actually you can learn a lot from this book if you are patient with the author. It is more like reading a textbook all over again, though :(

Crossed Careers - My Life as a Quant by Emanuel Derman

Crossed Careers

I chose to read this book hoping for some nostalgia about Columbia and NYC. The parallels I share with the author, even though for a very brief period and separated by 40 years of life - Columbia, life at the big apple and some degree of association with wall street made me buy this book, and the author definitely succeeded in evoking some degree of nostalgia in me. I definitely found what I was looking for - beautiful recollections of Columbia, Upper west side and Wall street culture in general.

Physics and Finance are explained in a not-too-complicated fashion, with most of the accounts limited to cursory topical introductions, just enough to give the reader a context. The cultural differences and similarities between academia, bell labs and wall street make for a very interesting read, and is the biggest take-away from the book. The narrative itself is never boring, and the book is very readable.

I guess people familiar with the finance industry obviously have a head-start to enjoy the nuances described by the author, but I don't think this makes it appealing only for them. I am hoping to read a few more such accounts from diverse careers, giving sneak peeks into the world of other careers.

Footnotes on Poochante

Poochante

Kannada literature is crazy about classifying its writers into categories, creating well-defined pigeonholes for every nook and corner of the language. I don't know where we got this culture from, but as a result we have more than a handful of literary movements which make no sense to the amateur reader, who just wants to have a good read. Gladly,  K P Poorna Chandra Tejaswi, or Poochante,  went off the beaten path and rejected all such pigeonholing. He professed that he would not be bound to any one method, and in his own words "started writing whatever came to his mind" (Quote from Annana Nenapu). And just for the record, this is not a scholar's critic, but an amateur's random notes.

The most striking thing in Poochante's Kannada is its style - the man was blessed with a writing style rarely seen in print. His writings are simple, fluid and effective beyond any other contemporary Kannada writer - and I am including people like  S L Bhairappa, U R Ananthamurthy etc in this list.  Add to this the honesty and simplicity of his writing - you won't see Poochante muddling his writings with half-baked convictions. The simple awesomeness of simplicity is that it makes more people understand, and so like, your writing. Truly. After reading and comparing the three authors mentioned above, I have a question: While it may be great to write social treatises and revolutionary essays, what is the point if your reader gets deadly bored, or gets dangerously confused after reading your work?

If we briefly look at the timeline of his works, we see that Poochante started writing in line with the Navya Sahitya (new literature) movement of his time. Starting with a collection of short stories and another collection of poems, wrote quite a few essays, and then moved onto novels, and these form the best of his writing.

In his early works, many of which are essays and critiques, we notice a clear opposition to sanskrit-inspired literature, an active resolution to fight against the traditionalism of the Hindu society. I think at least at some point Poochante had a very active thread against the so-called Brahminical Kannada Literature, and a conviction that such literature is not the true literature. I think he was convinced that literary movements which do not influence society into a transformation, sometimes resulting in a widespread change in a region's outlook to its country - read his thoughts on Tamil movement - were useless. I guess he retained most of these thoughts to the end of his career, but he does not seem to have written so actively, or campaigned for such a literary-societal movement in his later life.

But he did move away from all that, lived a farmer's life in a small corner of Karnataka, interacted with nature to an extent unheard of by other authors, and defined his own niche, where he explores human life and its interactions with mother nature. This forms the bulk of his writings, especially his masterpiece - Karvalo.

The biggest complain about his literary career I have is that he wasted a lot of effort into bringing out translations from English into Kannada. For a man of his originality, this was indeed a wasted effort - not that the output was in any way less than excellent - his translations of Kenneth Anderson's experiences hunting down man-eaters remain arguably the most vibrant record of hunting in Kannada. Many of his later books are collections of essays about geography, science and history - a far cry from the indecipherable connections created between elephant, man and nature in Krishnegowdana Aane, (Krishnegowda's Elephant) the short story I rate as his best.

But then, apparently he was that type of a person - interested in a lot of fields, curious about nature and man, and impossible to pigeonhole. His experiments at photography, sketching and other forms of expression remain an inspiration to our generation.

Lastly, did I know the man? No, I never even met him - except for a glimpse of him in Shimoga in a function full of people, through a window out of the building, where as a 12-year old I had to ask my father to point him out for me. I know him only through his pen, and some say that is the easiest way to be misguided. But then, his pen has kept my admiration of him alive for nearly 17 years, and basically made at least one 15-year old sacrifice afternoon cricket and pickup books to read and re-read. Well, if that cannot make an author proud, what will?

Remembering Will Durant

Will Durant...he was the man who made philosophy popular, history thrilling, and reading a fascination in the early 20th century. It has been nearly a century since the ever-popular 'Story of Philosophy' came out, but its popularity has not reduced at all - even now from Bangalore to New York, the one book I see that is commonly flashed across in bookstores is the story of philosophy.

True - western philosophy has changed an awful lot, approaches to teaching western philosophy has changed, but the value of enjoying a historical account of some of the greatest people in history has not changed at all - Durant definitely has a penchant for studying people more than theories - that, and the wonderfully absorbing English of Durant is what makes this work a must in every bookshelf.
Durant has written somewhere that if we read Spinoza's ethics carefully, we will forever remain lovers of philosophy.Read the story of philosophy at leisure, and you will remain forever a lover of reading.

One great criticism of Durant's 'Story' is that he did not mention two of the most original philosophies of all time - Indian and Chinese. Well, some say he forgot to mention the motherland of philosophy when he omitted Indian philosophy. He sort of made amends to that in his 'Story of Civilization' series, though - his detailed account of philosophical thoughts is a rare thing to see in a volume dedicated to history.

Unlike the story of philosophy, this 11-volume set is no longer being printed - I had to buy a collectible edition for a small fortune to add this to my collection - and the later volumes are co-authored with his wife, Anne Durant. But the first volumes are just as lyrical, and make as compelling a reading as ever. Being a study of world history, Durant looks at history's major personalities, does not give us a list of events to read through, paints a rare picture where he tries to view history through its major people, not events. After all, isn't our society what we, the people, make it?

Agreed that after nearly 40 years of the last volume being published - and 70 since the first volume - much has changed. Both history and philosophy have grown, and the modern student needs to know more than what these books can teach us. But for those of us who want to sit back in an armchair, who can read just to enjoy reading, Will Durant remains a perennial favourite.

The Pickwick Papers

After a long break from literature, I returned to the good old classics - after a completely satisfying two weeks, I finished the Pickwick Papers - or, formally, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, today. This being the first true English language blockbuster in printing history, he will be a rare reader who can discern that Dickens was 24 when he wrote the first of his masterpieces.

I remember trying to read this multiple times when I was very young - in my school days - but the work was too big for me back then. That remains true in some measure - This is not a work that has to be read letter by letter, but for most of its numerous pages makes you read it letter by letter.

An incident that occurred in India during the centenary celebrations of Dickens (around 1970) shows the immense popularity of this novel:

Sometime around 1970, marking the centenary of Dicken's death, a Dickens expert from UK visited many colleges in India, giving talks about the works of Dickens and their significance. When he asked about the most popular books by Dickens in these parts, response from the Botany Professor B.G.L. Swamy in the Presidency College of Madras (now Chennai) was this: (translated from Kannada, from his book 'Collegu Ranga') :
"There are many people who maintain a steady habit of reading English literature, both people who teach or study English everyday and make it part of their living, and those for whom English is just an optional pleasure. Many such people maintain their own personal libraries, according to their knowledge of English language. One work of Dickens that all such libraries have in common is the Pickwick Papers."

Galahad's Blandings

Finally, a Blandings castle novel which I loved just as much as my favorite Jeeves and Wooster novel. Till I read Galahad at Blandings, I had thought of Blandings as Wodehouse's secondary creation - quality comedy lacking the genius of usual Jeeves novels. But Galahad changed all that - Lord Emsworth is as absent minded and pig-minded as usual, Lady Hermione as bossy as other wodehouse aunts, but Galahad exceeds all expectations.

Galahad at Blandings has a very subtle rigor to it - a literary rigor which keeps the plot tightly in line, making none of the twists and turns distracting. The positive character of Galahad gives an extra pace to the novel - something that was missing in Blandings minus Galahad, like Leave it to Psmith. If you read between the lines, you will notice a subtle balance of characters - Wodehouse plots the story in a way where no character is used too much. Well, packed with the usual supply of lovers, tangles, pigs, menaces and of course, lots of love, this ranks right at the top of Wodehouse novels.

Overlook Press page for the book
Amazon Link

India After Gandhi

Well, Ramachandra Guha's India After Gandhi is not a literary masterpiece - nor does it talk about our culture. So what is a work on political history doing in this blog? To point out exactly that - lack of focus on things other than turmoils in post-independent India. The book discusses the struggles of India at great lengths, but does not seem to be interested in its triumphs just as much. Also, the book does not provide even a cursory look at the cultural changes in modern India.

The book is very readable, and does not get boring even for such a huge work - it is nearly 1000 pages long.

The Lost Symbol

Disappointing. Dan Brown's new novel was utterly frustrating. The storyline is dull, and writing lacks the rigor of 'Da Vinci Code'. Only thing I could remember after reading this was an old saying: "It is much harder to stay somewhere than to get there". Dan Brown has definitely not lived upto the high standards set by his previous novel - The Lost Symbol is more in the league of his earlier works, like Angels and Daemons, which were, in my opinion, mediocre at their best.

The identity of the antagonist was not well-hidden, and the plot is very predictable. One of the reasons Da Vinci Code was so exciting, at least for me, was that the whole mystery unfolded gradually, without explicitly forcing a treasure hunt on the readers. It started out as a genuine murder mystery - but Lost Symbol forgets all such pretense and jumps into a treasure hunt from page one, and the ideas he has used for the mystery lack the pull. And the science seems to be a bunch of words :(. Dan Brown's style of emphasis - using impressing statements in italics - works only if the content is powerful. Without that, his new novel is something like poor style without good content.

Thor vs Odin

The second installment of Dirk Gently's adventures, 'The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul', was much more exciting than the first. Full of typical Douglas Adams quips, it was an awesome read.

The last time I saw such humane side of gods was in the great epics - Mahabharatha, Iliad etc etc. Douglas Adams reminds of a lost style of writing - free of all the mundane philosophy into the true imaginations of humans who create the gods. To put it in a nutsehll, there is a difference between talking about imaginations and imagining things - and Adams is a citizen of the latter class :).

It was a pity I lost the book when I had another 50 pages left to finish the book - the first time I lost a book in at least four years :(. Well, pain of losing a book is nearly as bad as joy of buying one.

Douglas Adams beyond the galaxy

Most if us know Douglas Adams as the genius who told us the adventures of Arthur Dent in Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. But you have not explores him fully until you have read Dirk Gently. I read the Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency recently - thoroughly enjoyed it. A pity Dirk's adventures have not come out in a single volume yet - you will have to buy them separately, but it is totally worth it!! Amazon link.

I am yet to read the next volume, The Long Dark Tea-time of the soul. If the first Dirk Adventure is anything of a clue, second must desereve much more than a tea-time glance. Amazon link.