Book of Numbers: A Novel

Joshua Cohen's Book of Numbers is one I picked up for work, not pleasure. Well, kind of... I mean, reading for work is still pleasurable. But holy moly, was this one a tough dig.This is metafiction, folks. The author, Joshua Cohen, gives us two unreliable narrators, both named Joshua Cohen. The first Cohen is a ghostwriter who gets contracted to write the other Cohen's - known as "Principal" - autobiography. Principal is a successful tech guru, founder of Tetration, a combo of Apple, Microsoft, and Google.Principal wants to tell his version of Tetration's rise to fame and some of the shadier events that happened along the way. Written after the founding of WikiLeaks and around the time that Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning became household names, Book of Numbers is an exploration of the benefits and pitfalls of life in the Digital Era.Who are we when our access to the Internet is stripped away? Spirituality, sexuality, and everything at the core of human nature has been digitalized. Our history, our psychology - it is all right at the tips of our fingers, clacking away on our keyboards.I'm not gonna lie - this is a difficult read. There are a lot of references that you will have to Google - 'tetrate', as it is in the novel. A modest understanding of certain religions (Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam) is necessary for getting through this brick of a book.The highlight and simultaneous low-light of the novel comes when Principal gives his first-hand account to Cohen. His linguistic style is lofty and vague yet computer-esque. Siri might give you a more emotive statement. Since this is metafiction, the reader might liken Principal to real-life examples, namely Steve Jobs.Oh, and Principal is dying of pancreatic cancer. Late stages, incurable by technology. Just like Jobs. The irony of having built a life around technology yet having it be totally unable to save you... Man. Think about that one for a spell.In the end, the reader gets the conclusion they can see coming once Principal starts his narrative. If you are able to sift through the references and endure Principal's often nauseating narrative, then you will likely find the end to be rewarding.Do I recommend this read? Yes, but conditionally. Don't pick it up if you want a quick read. If you get it, have a pen handy, and write away in those margins. (Don't feel bad about doing it; it's a sign that you're engaging with the book!) You will find things you need to 'tetrate'. You will have to rely on Google. And... that's part of the point.

Brilliant, exhausting, sprawling, at times incomprehensible, clever how the Internet had affected--infected?-- the novel. A real rough ride, fascinating but overstuffed and self-indulgent. Mixed feelings, yes?

Everything about Joshua Cohen’s The Book of Numbers makes me want to condemn it as a bad book — from the effusive praise it has received (Norman Rush!), to the nauseating stutter of its pathetic, abandoned, all-too-familiar narrator.But, that isn’t quite fair. The Book of Numbers isn’t — quite — a bad book. In fact, it’s a Pretty Good Book. Within the confines of the blurry, unreal, but nonetheless significant Maginot line that bounds the categories of contemporary American Literature, I predict that The Book of Numbers will occupy a hallowed place: that of a passable early work by someone who will be Canonical, like, Beckett's Murphy or Faulkner's Flags in the Dust.The Book of Numbers has All That Will Be Great, but it fails to collect itself. It has an ambitious, topical theme: the internet. It has an ambitious, topical narrator: anguished Brooklynite. Yet it never seems to grasp beyond the surface of each — either the secrecy, greed that drives the effusive cyborgian world of Silicon Valley, or the anxiety and poverty that drives the hyper-literate contingent of Brooklyn (& upcoming queens).In other words, The Book of Numbers, is ambitiously post-modern. But, unfortunately, to such an extent that the post-modern trope of submerging referents in favor of a tapestry of signifiers, becomes a kind of farce. The Book of Numbers takes Roland Barthe’s famous “The Death of the Author” as the premise for its plot. Joshua Cohen (the author) writes as Joshua Cohen (the narrator), who is ultimately, writing for Joshua Cohen (the internet mogul). Perhaps Cohen means to "problematize" the whole notion of the author by way of its most post-modern manifestation in "the death of the author". What unfortunately manifests though, feels more like lazy, gimmicky, writing.Barthe’s declaration famously de-privileges the composition of the text (all of pre-mid-20th century literary criticism) in favor of the reading of the text. That presents an interesting problem for would-be critics of an archly post-modern text. Suppose the author is dead and you think the book sucks — is it you, or is it the author? As in any relationship, it’s probably the both of us. However much the interlocutor of the author or the narrator stands as a fantasy of my own construction, I do have to say, in the case of The Book of the Numbers, baby, it just isn’t working out for me.-- edit --(I feel guilty for writing a negative review, so let me qualify. When I wrote this review, I was unaware of this interview by the author (http://bombmagazine.org/article/608462/joshua-cohen -- an article from BOMB, not sure if amazon allows links). In this interview, Cohen describes the book as "a version, or a travesty of Joycean hope: to keep the academy busy for a while. I didn’t think I was being presumptuous, though. I think I was being preemptive. What I mean is that virtually any book that’s going to be paid serious literary—academic literary—attention nowadays is going to be run through a computer. Stanford, not coincidentally, is ground zero for this type of “criticism”—where scholars can tell you which American or British author misplaces the most modifiers, or when split infinitives were a thing, or not a thing. The study of literature is becoming, or has already become, the study of data. Every Dickens novel has been mined, every Nabokov character described as having phallically long toes has been tagged. Deconstruction—unconscious betrayal, or betrayal by the unconscious—is for the microchips now."Unfortunately, I think that paragraph speaks much more than the criticism I had intended to write. Cohen refers to Franco Moretti's work with graphing literature as the future of criticism. He says he's writing to that method of criticism. He's not writing for our entertainment, he's not writing for our edification. He's writing so that guys with computers can count up the words, make directed graphs from the words, run graph algorithm on the words, and praise the hell out of the genius that dared to play their game.Well.

The Great American Internet Novel.

The author has an amazing vocabulary and breadth of knowledge. Also an annoying tendency to make up words that made the kindle dictionary unhelpful. It sometimes seems that he was getting paid by the word. He's very good at restating things multiple ways. The basic narrative (center of the book) is interesting and thought provoking. There were long stretches that I found almost unintelligible. I only finished it because it was a book club selection. The word play can be creative and clever, but I often found it forced, like the author was merely showing off. Transitions from one narrator to another were never identified. I knew the voice had changed, but had difficulty determining who the new narrator was.

I know this book has received laudatory reviews from very smart people whom I respect. That said, I've just read the first twenty pages and I'm ready to put this one back on the shelf. It's not because the novel is simultaneously pretentious and pedantic -- which it is -- but because I find the stream of consciousness prose off putting. It's not that I have anything against "writers writers." It's just that too me, Cohen is trying to hard to be that kind of writer -- you know, the sort of anti-Trump type. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Still, I need to think about whether I should pick it up again. If I do, and I change my mind, I'll add to this review.

Best novel to date about the Internet.

While the story is fictional I think the book is best approached as a half-bioI've heard it described as meta-fiction. While the story is fictional I think the book is best approached as a half-bio, half auto-bio. As the author implies on the first page. The drama takes place outside the book as suggested by the first line:"If you're reading this on a screen, f*** off. I'll only talk if I'm gripped with both hands"It got poor reviews because people couldn't get through it. Those who got through it praise it. I don't know anyone I would recommend it to IRL however. Its not for everyone. Its long and some parts are dry which disqualifies most people. Secondly it revolves around contemporary themes that those who haven't been influenced heavily by the internet might not fully appreciate. The novel is unique because it deals with contemporary issues classic novels cannot deal with and that is why I so highly value this book.As for intellectual content from the first chapter I will say this:I feel the major premise is the notion of identity becoming a commodity. What information that makes you unique can be sold and traded. Joshua Cohen is the name of the Author, protagonist and the major character. By having the same name their identity merges in searches. The book is supposed to be a memoir of the founder of Tetration (google/apple like coperation) written by a ghost writer (the protaginst). He writes :"I realized that the only record of my one life would be this record of another's. That as the wrong JC it was up to me and only me to tell them to stop-to tell Rach to stop searching for her husband (I'm here), to tell my mother to stop searching for her son (I'm here), to send my regrets to you both and remember you,Dad-I'm hoping to get together, all on the same page."The author's identity is eclipsed by his employer. Yet the protagonist is conscious of this and takes advantage of it to illustrate the complexities of life and social relations at large.The most intimate details of people can be found on their computer and the book suggests technology lets us know one another on a much deeper level than ever before. I enjoyed the novel's exploration of new themes and wouldn't want to compare it to other works.The hardcover is very aesthetic. The sleeve has a nice grippy feeling with the book itself being designed to look like a classical text you would find in a library. Similar to some bibles I am sure. I think the picture is well done and makes the book stand out with it on.