When Rebecca Goldstein, the American philosopher-novelist who looks like
Rapunzel but thinks like Wittgenstein, was awarded the prestigious MacArthur
Award (commonly known as the “genius award”) in 1996, she was praised for
her ability to “dramatise the concerns of philosophy without sacrificing the
demands of imaginative storytelling”.
That is putting her achievements lightly. Her most recent book, 36
Arguments for the Existence of God, is a vast, rambling fiction based on
the traditional tenets of the good old university campus novel (eccentric
professors, beautiful postgrads, lots of barely repressed sexual tension),
but which is nonetheless possessed of a steely intellectual coherence that
is frighteningly impressive to behold.
In spinning her tale of floppy-haired Cass Seltzer, a moral philosopher who
suddenly becomes a media darling when his gentle version of atheist ethics
makes him a prime candidate for magazine profiles and television debates,
Goldstein casts her net wide to encompass all the ideas in Seltzer’s
bestselling book (its appendix contains canny refutations of the eponymous
36 arguments) and delves into them with no pity for any reader who might be
straggling at the back of the class. To read her is to take a crash course
in post-theological debate but also to lose yourself in a cast of dazzlingly
bright characters and amusing situations.
Seltzer is far too enchanted with life’s beautiful mysteries to be a proper
unbeliever; he is a charming guide through the complex field of secular
ethics. Equally appealing is his verbal sparring partner Roz, who shows up
(after disappearing up the Amazon for several years) to poke fun at his
newfound celebrity but also to love him deeply. Then there is the crazy
Professor Klapper, a wild-eyed philosopher idolised by all (but none of
whose graduate students have actually been deemed deserving of doctorates,
no matter how many decades they study under him).
Klapper becomes entranced by Seltzer’s family links to a separatist community
of Hasidim called New Walden, and it is on a trip to this enclave that he,
Seltzer and Roz encounter a remarkable boy whose life-path teaches them the
most important lesson of all. Six-year-old Azarya, despite being completely
shielded from the outside world, casually reveals that he has discovered for
himself the concept of prime numbers.
Azarya can read and write “only” Hebrew, Yiddish and Aramaic, but when Roz
sketches out a map of the United States for him — he has no idea that he
lives in a place called America — her naming of the individual states just
once is enough to teach the boy to read English.
Clearly, Goldstein’s characters are fantastical. But like the big ideas with
which readers are encouraged to engage, their power would be diminished by a
strictly or simply logical construction. Her business — like Seltzer’s — is
to proselytise wonder and openness of thought. That she spins a mighty fine
yarn along the way only sweetens the life-saving pill that she is gently,
but quite necessarily, ramming down our sorry, secular throats.
36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction by
Rebecca Goldstein (Atlantic, £12.99; Buy
this book; 399pp)
