ON THE NATURE OF HUMAN ROMANTIC INTERACTION
By Karl Iagnemma: The Dial Press, 2003, 212 pp., $22.95If there were anything to be learned about love from scientific theories or algebraic equations, you might think someone would have told us about it before now. That is unless you consider that scientists/mathematicians, even the renowned ones, have never been viewed as typically romantic people. For proof of this, just go to the video store and check out A Beautiful Mind.Better yet, consider Einstein, who once described the institution of marriage to his old friend Otto Nathan as “the unsuccessful attempt to make something lasting out of an incident.”
Now comes along the oddball, Karl Iagnemma, an exception to the egghead rule, a scientist unopposed to the notion of romance, or even marriage. Not that he is any more confident in the outcome of relationships than Einstein was, rather, Iagnemma’s approach is more, shall we say, open-minded. Perhaps even heretical.
In this off-beat, entertaining collection of stories, Iagnemma defies the logic he must have gained on his way to becoming a robotics professor at MIT. He uses math and science as poetic devices to show feeling, to cut through the numbness that can overwhelm those caught in romantic entanglement. In Iagnemma’s fascinating world, which moves back and forth between past and present, between melancholy and hope, mathematical formulas, geometric scribblings, and even spine-worn forestry texts become lifelines for those drowning in the cold, dark sea of love.
Iagnemma’s characters, like the protagonist in “Ziolkowski’s Theorem,” explain the philosophy best: “The Russian theorists would understand, Henderson thought idly. They would understand the concept of theorems written for the sake of romance. The Russians had an appreciation for the noble, doomed gesture …”
Henderson is a mathematics professor involved in what would appear to be a classic love triangle. Yet, as mathematicians are wont to do, Iagnemma jiggles the variables, plays around with the numbers just to see what will happen. The result is anything but typical, as the author examines in his own quirky way the perils of holding the torch for too long. Henderson is pathetic in his pining for former lover Marya Ziolkowski; he displays both disgust and a grudging respect for his colleague Czogloz, the dashing Hungarian who stole her heart. However, in Iagnemma’s hands, the difference between love gained and love lost can be an ever so subtle proposition.
In the title story, an aging former Ph.D student and his younger girlfriend have two very different ideas about love and commitment in a snowy college town. Their relationship is complicated not only by the man’s abiding faith in the algebraic process, but by his fascination with the diaries of The Swede, who founded the town in 1906, made and lost money in land and lumber, and fell crazy in love with a prostitute named Lotta. Iagnemma deftly cuts back and forth between centuries here, the parallel stories aligned by both setting and sorrow. “This is an indisputable fact,” the narrator laments, “there are many, many people around here who love things that will never love them back.”
Iagnemma weaves a similar thread through “The Phrenologist’s Dream,” the most poignant, weirdly provocative tale in the collection. It follows the travels and the travails of Jeremiah, who makes his trade reading people’s skulls to determine their disposition, their intelligence, and utmost in Jeremiah’s mind, their compatibility. As he wagons through the Michigan frontier around the turn of the last century, he longs to find what he perceives to be a woman with the perfect skull, that is, showing a strong inclination toward “amativeness, adhesiveness and conjugality.” The woman of his dreams. His game is mostly a sham, yet he believes, to a certain extent, in both the scientific reasoning and the viability of his search. It’s not until he meets up with Sarah, a bald woman who’s a bit of a con artist in her own right, that Jeremiah learns about the depths of emotion in his heart, and the limitations of his mind.
The overall writing in this story is striking, the quality of a seasoned pro instead of a newcomer who spends most of his waking hours teaching mechanical engineering students. Iagnemma appreciates the metaphor but doesn’t overplay it. And he has a masterful grasp of historical detail. Yet his forte may be dialogue. At one point, it is Sarah who becomes the reader of skulls, who reveals to Jeremiah perhaps more about himself than he really wishes to know.
“Well, you’ve a streak of kindness,” she says, “I know that firsthand, and it’s plain that you’re a smart fellow. Seems to me, though, that you possess an unhealthy amount of gloom.”
There is plenty of gloom to go around in On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction.Most of the eight stories play out under dark skies, under the cold harshness of Michigan winter — a desolation of place that matches the remoteness of the human condition. At times though the grayness gives way and Iagnemma reveals a fire in his characters, a heartiness of spirit, a passion for life that burns on in spite of everything.
Bruce A. Lowry is the book editor for The Anniston Star.
