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The MANIAC
By Benjamin Labatut
Chilean author Benjamin Labatut is known for his genre-bending works that explore the boundary between fiction and nonfiction and delve into the realms of the scientific and the philosophical. His third novel, When We Cease to Understand the World (2021), was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and has been translated into more than 30 languages. The Maniac is his first book written in English.
THE STORY: Labatut examines the rise of intelligence beyond human understanding, beginning first with the tragic tale of a physicist driven to despair by the rise of the Nazi Party and culminating in the triumph of AI over human intelligence. At the center is Hungarian-American physicist and computer scientist John von Neumann, who worked on the Manhattan Project and led America on the path to nuclear weapon investment. Through a series of fabricated oral histories and journalistically styled explorations, Labatut dives into the mind of a man credited by many as the smartest of his age--as well as the troubling consequences of his legacy. The author also profiles Austrian physicist Paul Ehrenfest, who despaired of the quantum revolution, and South Korean Go master Lee Sedol, who was beaten by an AI.
Penguin. 368 pages. $28. 9780593654477
NY Times Book Review 4 out of 5 stars
"The Maniac does, by and large, assume the guise of fiction... but I did find myself wondering what it gained from this that a (minor and essentially rhetorical) tweak into long-form journalism would retract. At its best, as in the stunning opening sequence reconstructing the murder-suicide of the physicist Paul Ehrenfest and his disabled son, or in the final section's gripping account of a computer defeating the world's best human Go player, you just throw up your hands and think. Who cares what discourse label we assign this stuff? It's great." JOM MCCARTHY
Observer (UK) 4 out of 5 stars
"The details largely conform to what you'll read in the history books, but Labatut affords himself considerable latitude to imagine real lives from the inside.... Even in the more feverish passages, when yet another great mind succumbs to madness, haunted by the spectres they've helped unleash on the world, he feels in full control of his material." KILLIAN FOX
San Francisco Chronicle 4 out of 5 stars
"Labatut submerges you in the mind of real-life scientists and thinkers who were ill equipped to deal with the consequences of what they discovered. While their accomplishments may have brought them fame, honor and prestige, they also resulted in depression, addiction, madness, estrangement from their obsession--even early death." ALLISON ARIEFF
Washington Post 4 out of 5 stars
"Labatut is that vanishingly uncommon thing: a contemporary writer of thrilling originality. Even more than When We Cease to Understand the World, The MANIAC is a work of dark, eerie and singular beauty."
BECCA ROTHFELD
Atlantic 4 and 1/2 out of 5 stars
"Even as the novel trains its focus on von Neumann, however, its structure keeps him at a distance; he is not a person we come to know so much as a problem we need to solve.... The fact that The Maniac is Labatut's first book written in English, rather than Spanish, may also play a role in this tonal unevenness." ADAM KIRSCH
Harper's 3 out of 5 stars
"Labatut calls the book'a work of fiction based on fact.'... The attempt at polyphony is sometimes strained, but the anecdotal approach helps to revive a man often reduced to an encyclopedia entry."
DAN PIEPENBRING
Guardian (UK) 3 and 1/2 out of 5 stars
"With this much creative energy invested, why does the result feel underpowered?... At regular intervals the rigidity of Labatut's design forces from the mouths of his narrators a kind of Wikipedic exposition, void of the liveliness of true human speech." SAM BYERS
CRITICAL SUMMARY
The MANIAC of Labatut's title is the "Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator and Computer," an early computer designed by von Neumann in the 1950s. This ambitious and feverishly creative work spans a story reaching back nearly a century and challenging both traditional historiography and historical fiction. Through fictional oral histories and sometimes encyclopedic prose, Labatut sketches a portrait not just of a man but also of technology's reaches. The result is divisive. While some critics cite "tonal unevenness" (Atlantic) and a style "void of the liveliness of true human speech" (Guardian), others describe Labatut's impressive ability to transform von Neumann into something more fable than man. Meticulously researched and grand in scope, the novel is utterly original in delivery.
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