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The Mathematician's Shiva by Stuart Rojstaczer

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The Mathematician's Shiva
by

Stuart Rojstaczer (Goodreads Author)

david's review

Nov 17, 2017

really liked it

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Although the word Shiva conjures a Hindu deity, it is also a term used for the seven days of mourning following the death of a loved one, a Jewish coda for they who practice the faith.

'Shiva' is also a word that New Yorkers use to describe the intense cold they feel. At least it sounds that way. But I digress. Apologies.

The Mathematician in the title is a literary device to demonstrate the reactions to a death by people who are personally unfamiliar with the newly deceased family member. The conduit to this person is her son, who perceives the passing of his mother differently than through the eyes of colleagues.

It is also a transparent abstract into the experiences of people, many who tolerate life and its’ chronic yet undefined ennui, by overvaluing their work, their professions. A sort of individuated map to anywhere, until the road ends.

The family that mourns and the people enamored with numbers are corralled together in one house. They share one thing in common: the unparalleled grandmother mathematician who passed, the mother of the protagonist and the icon of the academics.

It is also an homage to women, in general, and ladies who have surpassed their male counterparts, in professions that were once uniquely male dominated.

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Quotes david Liked

“I thought about my family. It was small by any standard, shrunken to a handful by Hitler, Stalin, and divorce.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“But to try to achieve something massively significant in a field where you’re by and large useless after your fortieth birthday—and my father was seventy-seven—is the height of both delusion and optimism.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“Her craziness was happily wed to her intellect. There are no reasonable geniuses in this world, I am convinced.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“It is like breathing to us, and to ignore math in this story would be akin to listening to Frank Zappa without ever having taken hallucinogens, an incomplete experience.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“I didn’t know, even vaguely, the difference between physical deprivation and the emotional loss of one’s child, even when you know that child is healthy and well.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“We aren’t rednecks. We’re European. Big difference.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“But there was a difference between being bright and possessing those sparks of ideas that lead to original thought.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“Do not fall in love with someone when that love is heavily dependent on the goodwill and kindness of your parents.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“But grief always hits hard and somehow lingers longer than exultation in your mind and heart,”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“Shtark zich.” Make yourself strong.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“We expect and demand people to maintain bonds with family. It doesn’t matter whether you love or hate your relatives, even ones you’ve legally divorced. As long as there are children involved, you stick together.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

14 likes

“Tornadoes are a good metaphor for how bad things happen in our lives. They build from small disturbances that usually don’t mean a thing and almost always dissipate. But somehow one particular random bad event attracts others, and all of them together grow and attract more nasty stuff. Once it gets up to a critical size, the odds of it growing even larger are no longer remote.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“Survival, to my mind, implies a finite probability that without luck and cunning, you will perish.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“A Ph.D. big-shot professor. A mother who is a genius. And you shit in plastic bags. Unbelievable”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“Our capacity for love isn’t like a gallon jug that you fill up from rest stop to rest stop as you take a drive across the country. It can swell, and sadly, it can shrink. Less is not more.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“I liken my marriage in my twenties to the ill-chosen shot by a basketball player, done without any thought from an impossible angle and motivated by a mix of pure adrenaline and ego, which his coach watches with complete despair as he involuntarily shouts “nooooo.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“Disappointment for Slavs is always more poetic and profound, as well as more frequent, than it is for Americans.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“To Americans, the outward display of intelligence is considered unseemly. The Donald Trumps of the world can boast about their penthouses and Ferraris, their women can wear baubles the size of Nebraska, and no one says boo. If you have money, you’re almost always expected to flaunt it. But intellect? This is something else entirely. Women, especially, are supposed to play dumb.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“This inability of Americans to value intellect is, to me, maddening. If someone possesses physical beauty, they will not be cloistered or hidden in dark shadows.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“There is no such thing as unnecessary beauty, whether it be physical or intellectual.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“In a country as profoundly anti-intellectual as ours it is predictable that our leaders will do whatever they can in order not to appear smart in public.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“This effort to appear dumb—or to put a positive spin on it, to “be a man of the people”—takes a lot of work that in a better world would be unnecessary. You have to really want to be a politician to undertake it.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“I could insult him for his pedestrian intelligence and whacky ideas, but even I know that there is a bit more to life than intellect.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“While great hair and teeth are a good start to a political career, an ability to pretend at least half convincingly that you have an affinity to all key ethnic groups in your state is a definite plus.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“The dead don’t come back. Not to this world. This world is too cruel for anyone to want to come back.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“Solutions to problems never trespass into anything of real value.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“There is an old joke in Finland, a country proud of its collective introspective character and shyness. “How do you know when a Finnish man likes a woman? He stares at her shoes instead of his.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“Very unusual. American women aren’t like this, typically. They want to be wooed. Sweet-talked. Romanced. They want a big fantasy first. Reality comes later. I never have luck with American women.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“To this day I don’t understand this country well. The cheery optimism. The lack of concern about the past. The openness to strangers who simply show a smile and give a firm handshake”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“I decided to practice revenge in a calmer way, by living well.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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“The love I have given and received has been pure. Driven by loss, I have both used the gift of intellect I possessed and lived my life fully.”
― Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician's Shiva

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