Schrödinger's Ball

by Adam Felber

“Tender, hilarious, and packed with delightful surprises . . . If Einstein and John Cleese had written a novel together, this would be it.”–Joseph Weisberg, author of 10th Grade

Four friends set out into the night in Cambridge, Massachusetts, undeterred by the fact that one of them might actually be dead. Deb has perfected the half-hour orgasm. Grant, a geek, desperately desires Deb. Depressed Arlene has just improbably slept with Johnny, their leader, who recently and accidentally shot himself to death.

But is he (or anyone) alive or dead until he’s observed to be by someone else? Maybe not, according to Dr. Erwin Schrödinger, the renowned physicist (1887—1961) who is, strangely, still ambling through the Ivy League town, offering opinions and proofs about how our perceptions can bring to life–and, in turn, reduce and destroy–other people and ourselves. And what does Schrödinger have to do with the President of Montana, who just declared war on the rest of the country, or the Harvard Square bag lady who is rewriting the history of the world? What’s the significance of the cat in the box, the “miracle molecule,” or the discarded piece of luncheon meat?

Answer: All will collide by the end of this hypersmart, supersexy, madly moving novel that crosses structural inventiveness with easygoing accessibility, the United States with our internal states of being, philosophy with fiction. In Adam Felber’ s dazzling debut, science and humanity collide in a kaleidoscopic story that is as hilarious as death and as heartbreaking as love.

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Science Fiction, Literature, Physics, Contemporary

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Stephanie Graves · Rating 5 out of 5]

I disagree with nearly every Goodreads review I've read of this book--I find it touching, hilarious, and with something much more profound to say than the toss-off reviews people gave it. This was a re-reading, and it's one of my favorite books, and I utterly adore it. People gave it bad marks for being disjointed, but they are missing the point--the book is a celebration of the way all these disparate, singular moments and events collide into larger moments--one big Rube Goldberg machine, as Dr. Schrodinger puts it.

[Nancy Schober · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reminded me a bit of Kurt Vonnegut's writing in that you laughed while reading it but couldn't remember anything after you finished the book because there was no plot to hang any details on. Could have been titled, 'a heartbreaking work of staggering goofiness.' Kinda lost steam at the end. I got tired of the bag lady's perspective and the street guy's 'biblical' style musings. The writer is an improv comedian and it shows. Sometimes it was so funny you'd pee your pants and other time it's just elicited a giant 'duh.'[return][return]Arlene mused, alcohol will help us create a consensual reality in which all of us here believe we're entertaining, intelligent people who really like each other.[return][return]But now she thinks that she's been writing to prepare herself and protect herself, that deep inside her she is, was, and always will be a creature that wants to hold things together, to prevent change, especially when things are good.[return][return][return][return]The following was a very funny thing to read after 5 years of skiing lessons and while on a skiing holiday;[return][return][return][return]"To survive, the human brain is programmed to see clear, smooth causes and effects. How else could we survive? We need to see the patterns, learn to identify the footprints of predator and prey, see where they lead, and react accordingly. We need to predict the predictable so that we can handle the unpredictable."[return][return][return][return]Yup.[return][return][return][return]And on the interconnectedness of all things;[return][return][return][return]Now we were watching helplessly as his fork casually roamed the table, dipping into our plates, casually snagging bits of salad and pasta primavera without asking our permission. Apparently, the doctor's new thoughts about the fundamental interconnectedness of all things had erased his ability to differentiate between "his" and what was "not his." If he'd ever had that ability.[return][return][return][return]"God died a cartoon death, you know."[return][return][return][return]"Look, God cheerfully led us to science, right past the cliff's edge of his own plausibility. Then, sometime in the middle of the nineteenth century, he looked down, saw he was standing on empty air, did one last double take to the camera, and plummeted to his death. If there ever was a deus ex machina, the machina was built by the ACME Corporation."

[Tung · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boy, how to describe this book. I’ll let the back cover summary fill you in on the plot: “Four friends set out into the night in Cambridge, Massachusetts, undeterred by the fact that one of them might actually be dead. Deb has perfected the half-hour orgasm. Grant, a geek, desperately desires Deb. Depressed Arlene has just improbably slept with charismatic Johnny, who recently and accidentally killed himself.” Um, so yeah. The plot uses as its basis the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, quantum mechanics, and Dr. Ernest Schrodinger. Schrodinger was a world-renowned physicist who had troubles with some aspects of the Heisenberg principle, and who once used an illustration that if there was a cat in a box, the cat was both simultaneously dead and alive until you opened the box and removed all doubt – but the very fact of opening the box affected the state of the internal contents. Johnny, was in his grandmother’s basement when he accidentally killed himself cleaning a gun – but until someone opens the basement door, the “alive” version of Johnny has a weekend with his three friends. Throw in a Harvard Square bag lady who is writing the history of the world, a man who declared himself the President of Montana and seceded from the Union, a homeless man who might be a prophet of God, and Dr. Schrodinger himself, and you get a book trying very hard to win your affection. The book gets points for the clever plot premise, for being set in Cambridge, MA and for the unique prose (which varies from straight prose to Bible-like writing to Shakespearean play to diary entry). But ultimately, the book is too clever by half, and too contrived. Fun read, but the novelty wears off quickly.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny book, a bit all over the place but quite entertaining.

[Natalie Kaiser · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wild romp! A sampler of narration perspectives and storytelling media.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I should admit, up front, that I'm a huge Adam Felber fan.

You probably didn't know those existed. You may have been vaguely aware of him on "Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me" (the humorous NPR news quiz), but may not have noticed the incredibly wit, or the fact that he figures out answers to the most bizarre questions. Or know that some of us want to sit in the audience and hold up signs saying, "Go Adam!"

So maybe I'm not the best judge, but I thought this book was great. Very light-hearted, brainy, zany, and somehow both real and surreal at the same time. It takes place mostly in the Boston area, and some in the Free State of Montana (no, really). The characters are diverse, strange, interesting, and in some cases not entirely what one might call "in full possession of their faculties." There's mysteries to unravel, science to misunderstand, and a variety of writing styles to enjoy from 1st person plural, to 3rd person singular, to biblical, diary, Shakespearean, and beyond.

There's also a geeky computer programmer who's introspective in some ways and clueless in others, and who has an amazing ability to say the wrong thing to girls he's attracted to. I, of course, didn't identify with this At All.

[Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pretentious. Plus the construction of this book was messy. I was maybe 5 pages in and still unsure of what the hell was going on. I like confusion, but NO ONE likes to be confused at the beginning. Why bother reading more? And confusion really only works in mysteries or thrillers or fantasies. This was one of those books about the academic world, and like most academic-satire books, it's pretentious, not funny. Sometimes people think that just cuz they're making fun of something pretentious makes it okay. But it really increased their arrogance level by 20%. Fail.

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me forever to read this book. I put it down, I picked it up, I read a bunch, and down again it went. Then I got into it, and did a little research on the Uncertainty Principle, and suddenly I was hooked. So an extra half-star for the nerd factor.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Occasionally I get to peruse the recent arrivals shelf at our library (that is, when I'm not being dragged to the "dragon" or "princess" sections). Two weeks ago I checked out this novel solely on the basis of the front cover encomium by writer, humorist, and Vandy alum Roy Blount, Jr. (my faves: "Hymn to Ham" and "Song to Grits").

Schrödinger’s Ball is written by Adam Felber, who like the good Mr. Blount, appears on NPR's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" quiz show. I guess this explains how he snagged Blount for the front cover blurb. This novel is Felber's attempt, as he eventually confesses, to explain quantum physics the wrong way. It is the book that Douglas Adams and Richard Feynman might have written were they ever caught in a quantum entanglement.

The book is as outlandish as it is funny. It is the first book I've read that suffers a core dump due to recursion. An entire chapter is written in Shakespearean couplets. One of the characters (a mentally challenged beggar) speaks with the archaic formality of the King James Bible. Another is President of Montana. One more is caught between "dead" and "alive" (without doomed feline overtones). Still another character has perfected the half-hour Big O. And another (my hero) finds Mandelbrot swirls in his coffee with cream. Even Herr Professor Schrödinger himself stars as a loquacious houseguest from hell.

The entirety of the book is spent constructing a complicated framework of improbabilities that culminates in a Rube Goldberg-like finale in Click'n'Clack's Harvard Square, Boston, MA. Along the way, we get a taste of the mysteries of quantum physics, explained in metaphors that often slide just underneath our radar, like this beautiful riff on the Uncertainty Principle:

Grant was having some processing problems. In his ear Arlene urgently whispered a mad tale about Johnny's demise. His eyes, forward, were fixed on the backs of Johnny and Deborah, who were leading them down a quiet semi-urban street toward Harvard Square. Well, to be honest, his eyes were mainly fixed on the lower part of Deb's back, where everything seemed to slope gracefully inward on its way down, compacting, gathering its energies, before it exploded into the most glorious hips and buttocks that Grant had ever known. Despite the dissonance between the inputs of his ears and his eyes, Grant's mind was even further afield. He was thinking about the silence that existed right in front of him between Deb and Johnny. It was the easy, casual silence that seemed to belong exclusively to the very, very cool, and seemed forever denied to Grant. He was half tempted to accelerate, catch up to Johnny and Deb, join their silence, and become part of it. But he knew he'd start talking right away, or even if he didn't Johnny or Deb would make some conversation, locking him out of their silence as they tried to make him comfortable. He couldn't get in there without altering it. Damn. Damn.

Schrödinger's Ball is delicious fun, and the characters Felber brings to life will stick in your grits for a long, long time.

[Michael Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Schrodinger's Cat is just a metaphor. It doesn't actually apply to real cats. It's about subatomic particles. It's also the jumping off point for this novel which by misapplying the metaphor works up an absurd plot. If you can imagine something like the t.v. show Friends mixed with Being John Malkovich, Rashomon, and a touch of the Sixth Sense, you might enjoy this book. I did. Some GR reviews call the book "pretentious." I really don't think so. I don't think the author was trying to impress. I think they were just having fun.

[Harry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Adam Felber on "Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone" and figured he would probably write a funny, interesting book. Well I was mostly right. It reads like an imitation of "Another Roadside Attraction" (Tom Robbins) which I recently reread. It still holds up. At points the book seems more like a standup routine. Some funny stuff but it barely holds together. If you want to laugh and aren't to particular it's a good read.

[QuakerMaid · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think it's good.
I've read dumber crud.
That's why I'm giving this 5♥s.
I see junk like "Dracula" and "A Man Called Ove" getting acclaim. And them are just awful.
This was a light, entertaining read.
Interesting way to write and plot a book.
Easy read.
And isn't that the reason we read fiction? Entertaining, easy reads (?)

He must not have known Paula Poundstone in 2006. I didn't see her in the acknowledgements.

[Lauren · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m horrified that this was the first book I picked up in a new year. I’m pretending it didn’t happen.

I’m still sticking with my goal of “if a book doesn’t grab me in the first 20 pages, I abandon it”. I got to page 20 exactly and dropped it like a hot potato.

There’s SO many characters and every other paragraph jumps to a new one, so the story (if you can call it that) is very disjointed. It also tries too hard to be funny yet brilliant, and comes off as just pretentious.

[Matthew Spencer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a soft spot for weird books that try to tackle big philosophical ideas with misapplication of modern physics. This book certainly falls into that niche. Rereading some pages for this review reveal some dated ideas about gender, but it's a very weird, conspiratorial little book if, like me, that's what you're into.

[Chris Porter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is out there. It's written in a unique style and I love it. I re-read this every couple of years for the laughs.

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Totally quirky, good and fun book

[Elliott McCrory · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a funny and clever book about quantum mechanics. And Felber is a Tufts grad!

[Bonnie Lawrence · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Adam Felber and have listened to him for years on NPR and his podcasts. His book had plenty of accolades from people I admire. And, the book was very witty and sarcastic - which I appreciate. But, it just wasn't my cup of tea and didn't hold my attention.

[Rhonda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book far more than I did. As it is, Felber writes an incredibly witty book. I fully understand the fact that his main thesis of existence in multiple states is the glue that holds things together and that thesis works very well, on multiple levels. But this just makes for a clever book rather than what I would deem a good novel. In fact, I am somewhat in awe that the author could write such a unique book and for that I almost give him another star.
As to my criticism of it, I do not, as others have seen it, regard it as a disconnected book. I think it quite the opposite. The brilliance of it is the way in which he DOES connect each and every thing together. I found myself laughing out loud every few pages, partly from the situations written and then from the extrapolation of what he had written. It made the book a delightful read.
Ultimately, I just couldn't find what the book was about. In a sense it was a one trick pony, reining in the reader if he attempted to object that things weren't entirely making sense in the usual fashion. The best way to approach it was to let the book have its own way and enjoy it as one would an unusual amusement park ride. Still, as funny and interesting and provocative as it is, it reminds me more of a comedy sketch than it does a novel.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of our favorite weekend events is tuning into NPR's weekly news quiz show, "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!" The wit and repartee of the rotating panel, host Peter Sagal and the ever amazing Carl Kasel (official scorekeeper, judge and announcer) is really good listening fun. Adam Felber is a frequent panelist, and so when I found this book, I was eager to read it, as he is very entertaining on the show.

The book was not at all what I expected. Quirky, witty, very funny in places, and extremely quirky, but it took me a while to grab hold of the different story arcs that twist and wind through this one. Still, in the end, I really did enjoy it. Can't exactly define what I expected it to be, at this point, but the fact the it was something totally different is not a bad thing, just a different thing. It's got (as one reviewer,
Harold Francis Jenkins Jr, over at Amazon, puts it) "absurdist humor, charming and delightful characters (at least one of whom spends most of the story being at once dead and not-dead), a healthy dose of quantum physics, a happy mix of first-, second-, and third-person narratives, and a writing style that easily slips into pseudo-Biblical and faux-Shakespearean and, at least once, breaks down completely."

All of which I concur, but I want to know what happened to the cat.

[Ashley]

I didn't finish this before it had to go back to the library. It's not bad, but it's quite weird (probably the correct word is absurdist), to the point of being hard to get into. I won't rule out returning to it someday, but it's not a priority.

(Made it to the end of Ch. 5 if I pick it back up again.)

Quotes:
"Stevie just has this glow around him. It actually LOOKS like a glow to me--I see it. That's almost definitely because I'm crazy and I spend too much time in my own head, but maybe that's just part of being old, too--our own version of the world gets more real than the world everyone agrees on. But, then again, that sounds a lot like crazy, too, doesn't it? Who dares! It's my birthday!" -p. 49

[after the girl he likes starts playing his favorite video game] "Not only was she into it, but for a novice she had some surprisingly good insights into the game. Grant's mind boggled: He'd thought that his fascination with these games was a pathetic sublimation of his sexual impulses disguised as a hobby. Having the object of his real-life desires involved in his sublimated-desire activity--it was great but seemed somehow wrong, like they should explode or something when they came in contact with each other, sort of a matter/antimatter thing. Or maybe his head was supposed to explode. He wasn't sure." -p. 65-66

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first I thought I was not going to like this book, but Felber fooled me. He broke every rule of the novel -- no, he ripped the novel in half and then fourths and then kept going until he had only shreds left and then he stomped on them, all the time having an uproariously good time and making sure that the reader was there for most of it. That was my only criticism. The book seemed choppy at first, forcing you from scene to scene and introducing new characters, from a woman having a long orgasm, to the President of Montana, to a rat, and Felber almost lost me. But the pace slowed down a little (only a little) and I was able to keep up. Felber makes you work the entire time, feeding you physics, philosophy, psychiatry, and good old sex, at the same time moving from character to character and place to place, weaving a tapestry whose threads might exist or not. You really don't know where he is headed until the end. Well, at least I didn't. I managed to like most of the characters, and laughed when weird things happened within the novel (I am, after all, already a fan of Jasper Fforde, who loves to color outside the lines). I also liked Ferber's dedication to his mom, the writer.

[Jordan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted so badly to like this book. It felt like it was going to read like a Christopher Moore book. Sadly, it was not. There was a lot of irreverent humor; a major plus. However, the story was not sticky. I was so utterly uninterested in the characters and the plot that I honestly can't tell you what the book was about. It just got to a point where I was waiting for it to end. JUST END!

[Ginger K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Start with the idea of Schroedinger's Cat, which is both dead and not-dead (or alive and not-alive) in its box, because no one's lifted the lid to observe the results of the experiment. Now apply that to a character in a novel. Weave in a second story line about a tax-evading governor who's declared his mansion to be a sovereign nation. Then toss in an occasional piece from a first-person plural narrator complaining about Dr. Schroedinger, who ought to be dead himself, making himself at home in 'our' house.

Then make it even weirder. And funnier.

I lent this book to my sister. She read it three times before offering, sadly, to return it.

She still has it. I still mean to replace it.

[Jon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think Adam Felber is one of the funniest panelists on Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me. So I was really excited to ready this books (because is also tangentially about science...and I think science is interesting). Unfortunately, I never really "got" this book. Couldn't get into the characters, it wasn't as funny as I expected (although there are some quite nice bits of wordplay) and the connections to the science were never made really clear. I was expecting P.G. Wodehouse meets Michael Frayn's Copenhagen...and alas this was not that. I was almost sold with the epilogue...but not quite.

[Jeffrey Dinsmore · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one came highly recommended from a connection over at Random House, but I gotta say, I wasn't that blown away. It was an attempt at a Tom Robbins-esque wacky comedy about physics and an enormous cast, but it just didn't have the characters that a Robbins book has. If you want a book by a genius about geniuses that's 1000 times more engrossing, go with David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Four friends meet up in Cambridge, Mass for a night on the town...after one of them accidentally shot himself - but is he dead if no one else notices? Schrodinger is back from the dead spouting scientific theory and generally making a nuisance of himself. The self-appointed President of Montana has mutiny on his hands, and a cookie-flashing bag lady is rewriting the history books.

Crazy madcap adventure when these unique characters' lives combine. Reminds me of Jonathan Carroll, Jasper Fforde, and maybe very slightly, Vonnegut.

[Alger Smythe-Hopkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

A too-clever fractured tale of the disastrous/fortuitous adventures of four friends after one shoots himself accidentally, but he kind of lives on because the body is not discovered for three days.

Simply put, this is a book built around an idea and Felber surrounded that idea with colorful characters but just the smallest trace of a plot.
And then the book ends by collapsing the conceit with an insultingly stupid device.

Overall, it's cute and funny, occasionally sexy, and at times poignant; BUT the lack of purpose and necessary focus makes this book a throw away.

[Alison · Rating 3 out of 5]

It doesn't really have a straightforward plot, so I will attempt to list the various things that happen early on in the book:
• We meet the President of Montana.
• We briefly meet a kid called Johnny as he is accidentally killing himself while cleaning his gun.
• We meet Dr. Schrödinger, who is magically alive many years after his death and who is explaining his cat theory to some people.
read more...

[KC · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot. I found it in my local library while searching for Thursday Next. The title appealed to me, me being one of the biggest nerds. This is a sometimes confusing story of four friends, a bag lady with a history interest, the President of Montana, and one very dead freeloading scientist and his cat. Very funny and heartwarming, and can I just say that I love Grant?