The Grasshopper King

by Jordan Ellenberg

Chandler State University is the one thing keeping the dusty, Western town of Chandler on the map. Now that its basketball program has fallen apart, CSU’s only claim to fame is its Gravinics Department, dedicated to the study of an obscure European country—its mythology, its extraordinarily difficult language, and especially its bizarre star poet, Henderson.

Having discovered Henderson’s poetry in a trash bin, Stanley Higgs becomes the foremost scholar of the poet’s work, accepts a position at Chandler State University, achieves international academic fame, marries the Dean’s daughter, and abruptly stops talking. With all of academia convinced that Higgs is formulating a great truth, the university employs Orwellian techniques to record Higgs’s every potential utterance and to save its reputation. A feckless Gravinics language student, Samuel Grapearbor, together with his long-suffering girlfriend Julia, is hired to monitor Higgs during the day. Over endless games of checkers and shared sandwiches, a uniquely silent friendship develops. As one man struggles to grow up and the other grows old, The Grasshopper King, in all of his glory, emerges.

In this debut novel about treachery, death, academia, marriage, mythology, history, and truly horrible poetry, Jordan Ellenberg creates a world complete with its own geography, obscene folklore, and absurdly endearing -characters—a world where arcane subjects flourish and the smallest swerve from convention can result in -immortality.

Jordan Ellenberg was born in Potomac, Maryland in 1971. His brilliance as a mathematical prodigy led to a feature in The National Enquirer, an interview with Charlie Rose on CBS’s Nightwatch, and gold medals at the Math Olympiad in Cuba and Germany. He is now an Assistant Professor of Math at Princeton University and his column, "Do the Math," appears regularly in the online journal Slate. This is his first novel.

Genres: Fiction

200 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2003

About the author

Jordan Ellenberg is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His writing has appeared in Slate, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and the Believer.

Reviews

[Rohit Goswami · Rating 1 out of 5]

A very poorly executed juvenile caricature of academia. The perspective and narrative make the fact that this is written by a mathematician rather obvious. I have no idea why I slogged through that random set of essays about the futility of marriage and young angst. This is clearly no Stoner nor even a dear committee members form of satire. It is effectively fan fiction from a graduate student point of view.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as quirky-original or insect-oriented as I hoped, but a fun read.

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very witty. At times, I was reminded of Wallace's "Infinite Jest," although I doubt the comparison will stand up to anything more than superficial scrutiny.

my favorite quote: "But even his politeness was eerily precise; as if he'd had to learn about politeness in books, had skimmed through all the formulas of courtesy and rehearsed the ones he thought he'd need."

[Nadine in California · Rating 3 out of 5]

The pacing brought this book down to 3 1/2 stars for me but otherwise, this book has a perfect balance of humor and rueful melancholy that kept the funny or the sad from running away with the story. The only other book I can recall that did this with equal skill is The Nix. Both have sad-sack protagonists who are loveable in spite of themselves.

Its academic satire tickled me as a bit of a spoof of Nabokov's Pale Fire - a book that I adored in my 20's, but upon re-reading decades later was more annoyed by the author's vanity than impressed by his writing (though it is impressive). Ellenberg, on the other hand, has an almost joyful writing style that feels totally unaffected and is a pleasure to read, whether it's creating a full-out slapstick scene or tweaking academic pedantry. As a mathematician, I feel like his writing is precise, but also not afraid of being intricate. Here's an example on the satiric side, with the narrator/protagonist describing Gravinic, the (fake) language he studies and teaches:

The Roman alphabet had arrived in the Gravine too late to exert much normative force on the spoken language. Pronunciation was governed by a staggering collection of diacritical marks, haphazardly applied. But the pronunciation was simple compared to the task of constructing a grammatical sentence. Gravinic, like Latin, had its cases: it's nominative, tentative, accusative, dative, and ablative. But then, too, there was the locative, the transformative, the restoritative, the stative, the operative and its tricky counterpart, the cooperative; the justificative, the terminative, the reiterative, the extremely popular pejorative, the restive, the suggestive, the collective, the palliative, the argumentative, the supportive, the reclusive and the preclusive, the intuitive and the counter-intuitive, the vocative and the provocative, the pensive, the defensive, the plaintive...

As the declension of the Gravinic noun dragged on, the enrollment of our class declined alongside.

This is the author's only work of fiction, although (along with academic writing) he does write popular math with tempting titles like How Not To Be Wrong - The Power of Mathematical Thinking and Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Absolutely Everything. I will definitely have to see if he brings the same writing verve to math! Maybe one of them will coax me out from under the bed!

[Suhrob · Rating 4 out of 5]

A touching, exquisitely written novel about the quirks and tragedies of academia. Also quite fun.

If it was written by a lit PhD this would be great.
Instead it is a first novel by a mathematician. Incomprehensible, how it turned out this good...

Pale Fire is definitely a reference point (and I assume Pnin too, though haven't read it yet).
Extra points if you like conlanging (which I do - and maybe there is some influence of Ithkuil in Gravinian?)

(small quibble/mini spoiler: I knew he is mathematician and was waiting the whole time for a 1) Gravinian deep-dive 2) secret messages encoded into the checker positions. Alas neither happened!)

[Karen Carlson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A clever, fun to read novel about the peculiarities of academia. The first 50 pages are fast-paced and giddifying; the sly satire hangs together quite nicely, leading to a mostly happy, if bittersweet, ending.

FMI see my blog post at A Just Recompense.

[Erik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another in a long line of indie publications that I read years ago, this book is wildly inventive and entertaining as hell. I can't remember all of the details of the story (you don't want them anyway), but I remember that I loved it.

[Tia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A funny depiction of the silliness of being a grad student.

[Erika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very amusing look at the ridiculous culture of academia.

[Jenne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, it's no Lucky Jim, but it's amusing.

[Saharvetes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely wonderful.

Part of the last chapter is a bit dreary (author's got to end the book somehow), but on the whole, the book is totally worth reading (and even rereading).

[Holden Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some thoughts at https://holdenlee.wordpress.com/2015/...

[Ann Kiefer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting depiction of academic life, erudite, kept my interest, didn't expect the ending.

[Greg]

Excellent book: witty, complex; but a fun, easy read at the same time