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文學出版又見生力軍，以南台灣為根據地的「松濤文社」近日推出三本新書：連獲國內各大文學獎的新秀黃信恩小說集《高架橋》，和兩本詩集《等待沒收》（陳雋弘）、《 海誓》（凌性傑）。 一般人難以用主流出版社的營運邏輯理解松濤文社：出書量極少，2002年至今六年出九本書，當中五本還是公認「冷門」的詩集；一百五十元的定價，遠低於市場行情，紙價連番高漲的現下，更是「匪夷所思」。松濤文社的書每本首刷一千本，幾乎可以銷完。 「松濤」原來是高雄中學代稱，源自校門口有九株松樹。松濤文社在出版品上這樣自我介紹：「以雄中為最大公約數，一群來自南方的文學愛好者、出版者、思想者、寫作者。」松濤文社脫胎自2000年前後幾屆的《雄中青年》校刊社。 現任松濤文社總編輯的林達陽，得過時報及林榮三文學獎，他說當時校內創作風氣蓬勃，不少同校寫手在校刊和文學獎初試啼聲，一出手就有超齡、超水準演出，令 人印象深刻。期望延續校刊中優秀作品的閱讀生命，林達陽與《雄青》社員們，啟動了「雄中十年詩文選」編書工程。初、複選後，再由余光中、陳義芝、張大春、 羅智成等名家決選，編成《擴張的盛夏》。 高水平的編書工程靠的全是幾個熱愛創作的校友對文學的無名熱血，他們拿出零用錢墊付不足的印刷費，還到高雄女中等友校宣傳。受到同學熱情支持，首刷一千本 很快銷售一空。之後再出《狂草時期》，銷售速度不如《擴張》，但一本一本賣，也賣到所剩無幾。「這些書、這些錢，屬於全體雄中出身的創作者。」林達陽說。 不想讓辛苦點燃的文學火苗熄滅，社員決定用不到五萬塊的盈餘成立松濤文社，以「出版坊」形式運作。成立宗旨很簡單：只要是雄中人，愛寫、能寫，松濤文社的 大門永遠為你開。 不設辦公室，所有出身雄中、雄女的編輯、美編都是不支報酬的「志願役」，作者不領版稅，印刷廠更以「友情價」接單。省下的成本全數反映在定價上，林達陽指 出，文社是為寫作者與讀者搭橋，營運只求不蝕本，讀者又以高中、大學生佔大宗，一百五十元是他們願意掏錢、作者也不致感到「廉價」的數字。 在林達陽看，松濤文社雖是靠滿腔「浪漫情懷」支持，卻是為了「堅持給年輕的寫作者希望」而存在。在台灣當前「重洋輕土」的出版氛圍中，文學新人想出第一本 書，要接受不少磨難與挑戰。松濤文社為作者寫下第一筆出版履歷，讓他們有機會得到更多注目的眼光；同時，也要讓其他尚在崗位上奮鬥不懈的寫作同業和校園新 手，在這文學人口萎縮、定義嚴重傾斜的年代，能看見一點不肯也不會放棄、閃爍希望的光。 |
Numerology
My cousin, bound for a top liberal arts college in the fall, was amused when I told her I was reviewing a book about big ideas in mathematics, from the classical to the contemporary. “Don’t they already know everything about math?” she asked. “You know, there’s algebra ... and then calculus ... and that’s it, right?”
ONE TO NINE
The Inner Life of Numbers.
By Andrew Hodges.
Illustrated. 330 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $23.95.
Andrew Hodges, a fellow at Oxford and the author of the lively new book “One to Nine,” would have been horrified, but not surprised. My cousin, in his view, is a victim of the pedagogical tradition that presents math as an eternally fixed array of computations, to be memorized and repeatedly executed without motivation or explanation. The result, he writes, is a “legacy of fear and anxiety generated by schools, which leaves most of their victims with a lifetime of mumbling apologetically about ‘my worst subject.’”
“One to Nine” offers a different model for teaching math — discursive rather than linear, topical rather than abstract and remote, and, above all, manically energetic rather than repetitive and plodding. The book is composed of nine chapters, each focused — very, very softly focused — on one of the first nine natural numbers. Chapter Four, for instance, starts out with the observation that four is a perfect square, and from there skips along to the construction of Latin squares, the irrationality of the square root of two, the definition of the logarithm (whose relation to “four” never comes entirely clear), complex numbers, and the even more exotic quaternions (a number system in which “numbers” are actually strings of four integers, and the product of two numbers depends on the order in which you multiply them!), the theory of four-dimensional spacetime and Einstein’s equation E=mc2 (squares again) before finishing with a short and speculative account of the theory of twistors, one of many competing candidates for the universe’s underlying geometry.
Catch all that? Hodges’ lightning pace allows him to cover in one little book the greatest hits of the last 3,000 years of math and physics, leaving plenty of room for jabs at the Bush administration and quotes from the Pet Shop Boys (these so frequent as to be tabulated in the index).
The overall effect is like that of a lecture by the type of professor who paces back and forth in front of the blackboard, with insistent voice and waving arms, and has trouble adhering to the ostensible syllabus for any extended period. Being this type of professor myself, I can attest that the style is popular with students. But it requires discipline to convey real information as well as enthusiasm.
Hodges often manages that trick. He ably explains the subtly distinct shadings of the word “probability” in statements like “There’s a 90 percent probability I’ll get a six in the next 12 rolls of this die,” “There’s a 90 percent probability of a catastrophic climate change in the next 50 years” and “There’s a 90 percent probability that the current warming of the earth is a result of human activity.” This is the kind of tacit knowledge about mathematical practice that’s unrelated to computations and hard to test, so it doesn’t show up in school math classes. But it’s crucial for arguing sensibly about the planet’s uncertain future. Hodges is also excellent at describing the ways in which mathematical thinking winds its way into every aspect of human life, from fashion to politics to finance, whether we’re aware of it or not. Like Molière’s Monsieur Jourdain, most people have been speaking math their whole lives.
The hyperactive style of “One to Nine” is less well suited to more conventional mathematical material. Georg Cantor’s notoriously mind-boggling hierarchy of infinities is covered in just three pages; the proof of the irrationality of the square root of two, a theorem so profound and startling in its time that its discoverer is traditionally held to have been drowned in the sea by his scandalized Pythagorean colleagues, gets just one. And it’s hard to imagine a novice reader getting much from exposition this compressed:
“Latin squares can be used for devising a duty roster for n dirty jobs in a houseshare of n people. Or, for comparing the effect of n drugs on n animals in some doubtless vital trial. Who said mathematics wasn’t useful? Similar ideas lead to the error-correcting codes which make it possible for computers to communicate reliably. Or, for that matter, to football leagues, speed-dating nights and the plot lines for ‘Desperate Housewives.’”
Too much of the book is like this passage, which is not exactly math, but what Stephen Colbert might call “mathiness”: a series of fervent gestures that gives the impression that mathematical ideas are being expressed, but doesn’t actually deliver the goods. Readers will enjoy sprinting through “One to Nine,” and they’ll certainly learn that there’s much more to the subject than the algebra and calculus taught in high school. But they might not be able to explain exactly what.
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