OBSERVATIONS REGARDING NON-PRIME ODD NUMBERS

 

This past year has been a challenge to all of us and with so many facing dire circumstances, the moment seemed to ask something of me other than my usual writing fare. So, instead of writing fiction I used the time to explore a topic that has long intrigued me -- the nature of prime numbers. Those odd numbers that have no factors other than 1 and themselves. No one seems to know quite how they are formed, or why, and no one has found a way of determining the identity of the next prime number without resorting to a trial-and-error method. For a system such as math, that relies on logic, not knowing these things struck me as out of character. So, I decided to have a look at the matter for myself.

My first attempts involved a direct inquiry into the nature of primes. That effort quickly proved frustrating. Primes appear with an aggravatingly complex irregularity. After wrestling with that a while I decided to try an indirect approach - determine the nature of numbers that are not prime in the hopes of exposing something about the number system that might give insight into the nature of primes. I did this by exploring on my own - discovering patterns and relationships between the non-prime composite numbers - finding those patterns first, before turning to academic sources for an explanation. The effort turned out to be not only productive, but adventurous. Transforming math from a subject endured in a lifeless classroom to a marvelous journey through an elegant and intriguing kingdom.

My latest book - Observations Regarding Non-Prime Odd Numbers - contains the result of my study so far and is available now. You can buy a copy through all the usual places: Amazon - Barnes & Noble - Books A Million - and through independent bookstores everywhere.

COVER FOR ELECTRIC BEACH RE-ISSUE

Electric Beach is the third novel in the Mike Connolly mystery series and was originally released in 2006.  It will be re-issued by Dunlavy + Gray on February 1 and will be available in print and as an eBook. This is the new cover.

The Art Dealer's Wife - - Available Now!

The Art Dealer's Wife is available now at all the usual places. 

Here are the links to Amazon - Barnes & Noble - Books A Million

 

The Art Dealer's Wife

 We are running a giveaway right now on Goodreads for my next book - The Art Dealer's Wife - enter for a chance to win 1 of 10 autographed copies - click here to go to the site

THE GIVEAWAY HAS ENDED - THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO ENTERED AND CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNERS!

Speedboat

SPEEDBOAT is a novel by Renata Adler. I came across it in my Goodreads feed. The cover caught my eye. Then I read some of the reviews and was intrigued enough to order a copy. Finished reading it recently.

The story is often described as a "plot-less" novel. Actually, it is a very cleverly designed and well-written collection of memories. Told by a fictional character about her fictional life. Arranged in short segments - some only a single paragraph. It reads like a conversation you've had with friends after dinner. One of those conversations that moves from topic to topic and back and forth and you hear something and wonder what happened next but before you can ask, the conversation moves on to another topic. Then it comes back again to the one you were interested in and you find out a little bit more, but before you can get the whole story the conversation veers in a new direction. Something like that.

The book was written in the 1970s and has the feel of the era. New York writer, movie critic, social critic. A bit of an edge to the voice. Adler was at times very much on the inside of the New York literary crowd, and very much on the outs. I like her work and was fascinated by the way she did this book.

A Moveable Feast

I recently finished reading A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway. Required reading for an art history course I'm taking this fall.

Early in his career, Hemingway lived in Paris with his wife and young child. They had a rather miserable existence but it was a heady time when other writers and artists of the era were there - Hemingway, Gertrude Stine, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, to name a few. This book provides a glimpse into what they and their era were like. The so-called "Lost Generation." A well-known moniker for the group that arose, as it turns out, from a throwaway comment made by an automobile mechanic and repeated by Stein. Hemingway did not like it. Great source for insights regarding the people and the time. I enjoyed it.

The Last Gentleman

The Last Gentleman, a novel by Walker Percy, was published in 1966. I finished reading it the other night.

This was Percy's second book and it doesn't appear to have gained the following of his first, The Moviegoer (see below). Also unlike Moviegoer, this book hasn't been critiqued as deeply for its philosophical assumptions and implications.

The Last Gentleman follows the life of Will Barrett, a young Southerner who relocates to New York in search of an authentic sense of himself and a life of purpose and meaning (common themes for Percy). Barrett, it seems, suffers from something identified only as a "nervous condition" marked by recurring fugues - episodes of disassociation from himself - and from periods of intense deja vu.

Through a series of circumstances, Barrett becomes acquainted with the Vaughts, a Southern family, apparently from Alabama, who have come to New York seeking medical treatment for their son, Jamie. The Vaughts like Barrett and in talking to him learn that they have many acquaintances in common.

When the time comes for the Vaughts to return home, they insist that Barrett return with them to help care for Jamie and serve as his companion. By then, Barrett is in love with Kitty, the Vaughts' daughter. He agrees to return with them to their home in the South where he looks after Jamie and romances Kitty.

That is the basic plot of the book, but in telling that story Percy also tells us the story of Barrett's life before he came to New York and his family's history and position in Southern society. And quite a lot about the Vaught family's story as well. Most of the book follows a continuous narrative, but not all of it and Percy slips seamlessly into discontinuous time - telling the reader things that happened earlier but without being as obvious about it as a reader today might expect from a popular novel of the current era.

This novel probably won't be my favorite Percy story. I enjoyed reading it and I thought Percy had a reason for writing it - something he wanted to tell us or something he wanted us to think about, he just never seemed to get to it. Obscurity, as someone pointed out about one of my own books, is a good thing, but too much of it makes a story unworkable. I would say something like that about this book.