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Life as Prose or Equation
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A Novel
I seldom read novels 📚; I read so much philosophy and political analysis that there’s little time or room for them. My spouse often says that she needs a story; so she reads many novels, always deep and usually obscure novels. She knows how to savor the tales they tell and live within the worlds they paint.
Another reason I seldom read novels is that my spouse, while reading those many novels, delivers ongoing reports about the plots and characters of the world in which she is currently traveling. Pausing my tasks to hear her reports can be inconvenient at times but they are always enlightening. Plus, it’s always endearing to partake in her eagerness to share these worlds with me, a sign of her love of beautiful writing and of me.
Sometimes she will insist I read a particularly good novel, or I will — intrigued by her reports — ask her to stop her reports and reading of passages so I can travel to these worlds 🌎. Such a sequence of events has led me to the world of Spaceman of Bohemia by Czech author Jaroslav Kalfař. It’s a highly original, deep, complex philosophical story. There’s a movie transfiguration of the novel that is now out, but the combination of Netflix and Adam Sandler gives me no confidence that the adaptation is faithful to the original. The book is very much…
