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Good Benito by Alan Lightman

Copyright 1994 by Alan Lightman
Warner Books
ISBN 0-446-67160-6
(Novel)

As in Lightman's novel Einstein's Dreams, this novel focuses on physics and a physicist; aside from the common style of writing, the similarities end there.

Good Benito focuses on Bennett Lang, and takes us from his childhood to his days as a student all the way up to his days as a professor of Physics (at more than one school). However, the book is hardly linear. It jumps back and forth between the past and the present, and at times advances the narrative without warning. I found this style of writing jarring until I grew acclimated to it.

Einstein's Dreams is a series of sketches about possible alternate realities where the postulates of relativity are taken to extremes of exaggeration to demonstrate their emotional and philosophical power. (There's at least one person who recieves this that would argue against the philosophy inherent in the field of physics. Ahem...) In the case of Good Benito, this style doesn't work as well, causing the novel to be choppy and incoherent.

That aside, the individual segments are quite engaging, particularly the parts about Lang's childhood and his days as a graduate student. They show the allure of science remarkably well; Lightman manages to convey, with remarkable facility, the sheer depths to which Lang is absorbed into a problem of pure mathematics, a problem with limited applications in the "real world" but enourmous repercussions to the maths involved should it be solved.

I recomend this book, but tentatively. As I'm personally going through a spurt of interest on physics and mathematics, it's difficult for me to be impartial. (That's one reason I've waited two months until writing this review.) Were my interests in these fields spurred on by Lightman's books, or have my interests enhanced my enjoyment of these novels? Whatever the case may be, I found myself reading Good Benito and saying to myself, "Hey, this stuff sounds like it would be fun to do." Which be Lightman's intent in writing these books.

Review by Neil Fein
Edison, NJ, 01 May 1999
Review Copyright 1999 by Neil Fein

Review written 1 May 1999, posted on 28 Apr 2004