Customer Reviews

On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I first read the title story of this collection, "On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction" in Paris Review a couple of years ago, I was immediately hit by the opening: "When students here can't stand another minute, they get drunk and hurl themselves off the top floor of the Gehring building, the shortest building on campus." A writer myself, I know very well how difficult it is to find a great opening. Nowadays, many writers-- including some high-profile ones-- seem to seek a shocking effect for its own sake, so it's often forced and unnatural. Karl Iagnemma does not have this problem. His stories are as real as they are impressive. The aforementioned opening passage resonates with my years in MIT where students are as crazy and talented as Karl's characters, yet it sends a strong signal to the reader of a non-boring campus story. Oddly, this opening also reminds me of Ha Jin's award-wining novel, Waiting, which opens with: "Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu." Here, two talented writers "sing different tunes with equal skill," as a Chinese proverb says. These openings simply make you want to read on.

And here's more: none of the stories in this collection disappointed me. I'm a picky reader. At first, I thought Karl's stories attracted me because he and I have something in common: we both are scientists trained at MIT (though I didn't know him), and we both are writers. Soon I realized it's the in-depth portrayal of human nature that resonates the most. In his story "Zilkowski's Theorem", a mathematician writes his girlfriend's Ph.D dissertation. He does it for love. But after his girlfriend is converted to a new religion and becomes another man's finance, she wants to be "honest" and publicize the fact that the dissertation wasn't hers. This "honest" act would put the mathematician's career in jeopardy, in favor of his rival - the girl's husband-to-be. Every character in this story did what seemed reasonable, yet a moral dilemma remained. Different readers may have different takes on the story; "the benevolent see benevolence and the wise see wisdom." That is the beauty of this story.

It's worth noting that, two stories in this collection, "Zilkowski's Theorem" and "the Confessional Approach" were translated into Chinese and published in the prestigious Writers literary magazine in China. Unlike most short stories by unknown foreign writers that went largely unnoticed by Chinese media and readers, China's most popular weekly newspaper <i> Southern Weekend </i> devoted an entire page to reviewing Karl's stories and had high praise. As unusual as this is, it shows, more importantly, good stories go a long way, across oceans and cultures.

Another thing worth mentioning: Karl has a unique way with language and story structure. It's so brilliantly different from other writes I have read. I like to think it's because he is both an artist and scientist. Sometimes, our profession impacts our personality and style, perhaps.

Xujun Eberlein

My fiance bought this book because it was recommended by Amazon as a companion to the new Tom Robbins book. She had no idea what it was about or that it was a series of short stories but liked the romantic nature of the title. Since she wanted to read Tom Robbins first I took this book and read it over the weekend on some long flights we were took together. I found it an incredibly eclectic, yet pleasant, surprise. As a wannabee writer, I think that the author is incredibly talented. His vocabulary is brilliant and his ability to combine early to mid-1800's history and his knowledge of his educational experiences in Michigan together is fascinating. Since I haven't read any short stories since college (30 years), I also enjoyed not being told the whole story, having to project the subjects true feelings myself. I especially liked the story about the girl who looks up the author of one of her college textbooks and the Boston Red Sox ending to the competitive college professors story.

What a versatile writer and story teller. I think you will really like this book if you go in without any preconceived notions. And, of course, if you are a hopeless romantic and like Tom Robbins writing style.

Karl Iagnemma is a research scientist in the mechanical engineering department at MIT, but in his spare time he writes incredibly enjoyable stories about Ph.D. students who describe their love using Venn diagrams, love triangles and sabotage between mathematicians, and a phrenologist and his mysterious traveling companion. There's a rare fictional combination of scientific logic and romantic empathy that makes these stories some of the best I've read in years. Highly recommended.

I've been rereading Iagnemma's magical collection of short stories --I loved it the first time I read it. The stories are about scientists, mostly academics, and one pseudo-scientist, a nineteenth-century phrenologist ("The Phrenologist's Dream"). They try to come to grips with love, but their passion proves resistant to categorization or manipulation by numbers. The title story of this fine collection is simply stunning: a failed doctoral student at a technical institute in the cold northern reaches seeks to pin down the love of his free-thinking lover and to write down a universal formula for the complex, unpredictable maneuverings of erotic love. Iagnemma's prose is lucid and at once coldly logical and fierily passionate. His empathic love for his doomed creatures is apparent; it redeems the book from any touch of coldness. Who would have imagined a scientist, a researcher on robots, would write such human, living stories?

This collection reminders me a lot of a collection of short stories by Anthony Doerr, The Shell Collector. At first this felt connection surprised me since this is a book written with the sensitivities of a scientist and mathematician whereas The Shell Collector is a book of nature, full of natural power. These differences are not as great as I first thought though after I realized that it is the same natural power that Doerr finds in the world of Nature that Iagnemma finds in mathematics.

Strings of melancholia and beauty run through these stories in which the orderly and rule bound world of mathematics is juxtaposed against the chaos of life. At the same time though Iagnemma parallel a shared since of mystery between these two worlds, as the things that we don't know about each haunt us.

An enjoyable collection of short stories, would recommend it.

In this short story collection, we're witnesses to the clumsy dance between scientific mind and the human heart. Karl Iagnemma's distinctive characters - a failed engineer, a phrenologist, a mathematician, an amateur geometrician, a forester, a doctor, and others - all muddle through the familiar scientific terrain of conferences, scientific journals, equations and experiments, which serve as a perfect counterpoint to the messy relationships and longings in each of their lives.

Iangemma is perfectly qualified for writing stories using these themes; he works as a robotics researcher at MIT by day, and writes short-stories after-hours. His writing talents have been praised and published in prestigious literary journals. Nevertheless, his writing shows that he is clearly part techie. For an engineer like myself, it's refreshing to read someone who knows the science/technological mindset from the inside, and weaves touches of that sensibility into fine set of well-told stories.

However, make no mistake - this isn't science fiction - it's fiction about scientists. For example, in the title story (my personal favorite) the narrator, a "failed engineer," describes the Venn diagrams and coupled sets of differential equations he's created in attempts to describe his love for his girlfriend. Another favorite story of mine, "Children of Hunger" hasn't been mentioned often in reviews here; in it, a medical researcher in a stale marriage asks his lonely wife to make a key sacrifice to further his research, leading to an ending with a clever twist.

Overall, the stories tilt slightly towards the illuminating the human heart rather than exalting the scientific mind. Nevertheless, Iagnemma's characters do discover something -- the emotional texture of their lives outside the lab, and Iagnemma tells their stories in a way few others have. Recommended.

This short story collection piqued my interest immediately - it's not every day you hear of a research scientist who writes fiction on the side. I'm an engineering student and voracious reader, so I finally bought it for myself and recieved it yesterday. I hadn't meant to read the entire collection at once, but I kept opening it up again and again.

Iagnemma reminds me of one of my favorite musicians, Sufjan Stevens. He has the same power to evoke feelings of deep-seated loneliness ("The Indian Agent"), and the same power to disturb ("Children of Hunger"). I strongly recommend reading this while playing Sufjan Stevens' album "Michigan." Many of these stories are set in that state, and the songs and stories are full of similar imagery - misunderstood men, lonely women, and desolate, snow-shrouded winters.

The only quibble I have with the collection is that his female characters are rather one-dimensional. They are almost uniformly portrayed as being incapable of sympathizing with their lovers' relentless pursuit of knowledge. They stand outside of the world of science, not in it. I didn't care for the way the tough female professor of "Kingdom, Order, Species" fell into fangirl mode when she met the academic she idolized for years. I sympathized more with the professor's daughter in the title story, who refuses to fall into the same trap her mother did, and took great satisfaction in the unexpected revenge of the neglected wife in "Children of Hunger."

I don't think any fiction writer has ever plumbed the dark depths of science the way Iagnemma has. I'm looking forward to seeing another short story collection from this fantastic writer.

Karl Iagnemma is an amazing writer as this debut book reflects. His natural talent and ability to create characters that appear to be so real allow the reader to connect with each of them. His knowledge of science combines with his genuine portrayal of love to create stories that hook you in immediately. I was introduced to Karl's writing initially when he won playboy's college fiction contest in 1998. His story entitled "A little advance", was a reflection of what was yet to come. I am so impressed with this book and look forward to more stories written by him. I strongly recommend this book to everyone out there!!

As I am fortunate to work at a university with a great fiction collection, I *buy* almost no books, since I can check out or have the library purchase most any title I want. This book was an exception; I checked it out from the library and loved it so much that I bought a copy so that I could re-read it any time I wanted to. After I finished reading the last story, I opened the book again, hoping that I'd missed a story, that there was one last one to read, or that, somehow, a new one would magically appear when I re-opened the book. I've not had that experience with any other book I've read -- and as a librarian & an English major, I've read a LOT of books. The little nuances of thought and behavior that the author reveals in his characters is at once both powerfully and delicately done -- a very difficult thing to do well. His new book, a novel, is coming out this year

These stories are extended meditations with no shortage of action. The language, the geography, the history - all of it's filtered beautiful through Karl's sharp lense. The science in these stories is precise and engaging, but more than that, it's a metaphor for knowing that ultimate object of knowledge: one's self. Add to your cart now if you care about literary fiction with soul, intelligence and - thank goodness - plot.