2012 Book Review #29: Mr g

[jethrien]

Title: Mr g: A Novel About the Creation
Author: Alan Lightman
Genre: Extended physics allegory
Thingummies: 2

Synopsis: A careless god makes the universe, using what we currently know about physics and biology, while dealing with his inexplicable aunt, uncle, and assorted demons.

Thoughts: I'd previously read Lightman's Einstein's Dreams, an elegant little set of thought experiments-cum-vignettes about life in universes with physical constants other than those of our own. It's an intelligent, whimsical, thought-provoking little book.

Mr g attempts to repeat the formula, and fails.

This is a walk through Genesis using the most modern scientific explanations of the origins of the universe. Where it merely describes the origins of galaxies or cells, there's a certain elegance involved. Lightman has a gift for making scientific explanations poetic.

But the framing story, featuring a rather bumbling God, tries so hard at whimsy that it becomes unbearably twee. There's the aunt and uncle of God who are there to do a stereotypical Yiddish couple impression, complete with venial misunderstandings, boastings that make no sense in the context, and complaints about snoring. (Why these are his aunt and uncle and no other relatives appear, I cannot explain.) The devil has two sidekicks whose roles appear solely to be annoying. (If there is a deep symbolism here, it's too symbolic for me to puzzle out.) Most of the interactions between the characters are mostly either repetitive or pointless. I still cannot figure out the point of the devil's appearance at an opera house, other than to point out that he likes to ruin things because they aren't for him. What lesson we're supposed to take from this, I don't know.

There are a lot of big ideas that could be grappled with here--the nature of the soul, the meaning of creation, free will in a universe with physical constraints. But most interesting points are not fully developed, and those points that are developed are hammered home so exhaustively that their exploration is mere repetition rather than unfolding of complex concepts. The science is interesting--the theology is not.

Merely choosing large, grand subjects does not guarantee profundity. In this case, Lightman manages to simultaneously reveal the glories of the universe and still makes them trite.

Comments

[dushai.livejournal.com]

This makes me wonder what you'd think of Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. It's highly technical, and while I'm sure you're all over it, you have to want to read something like that before you dive in. At its best, it's an entertaining romp through several seemingly-unrelated topics that tie together in discussing artificial intelligence. At its worst, the book is entirely too clever and pleased with itself for its own good. I'm curious whether you'd say it was what this book was trying to be (targeting AI rather than physics) or whether you'd think it was similarly both clunky and overdone.

(Just idle thought, not a specific request to review. Unless you want to. For what it's worth, I liked GEB a lot when I read it in high school and college.)

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

It's actually been on my list for some time, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

I don't mind cleverness, but I do mind preciousness. I assume GEB doesn't feature a recurring character whose entire reason to be is to nag God about making her a dress out of stars and a Satan whose height of evil is making an opera singer's dress fall down?