The Dot and the Line, A Romance in Lower Mathematics by Norton Juster, author of The Phantom Tollbooth.
Once upon a time there was a sensible straight line who was hopelessly in love . . . with a dot.
Is it geometry or is it a love story? Or both? Or is it a philosophical tale about the line between freedom and anarchy and which is more attractive? Norton Juster’s little book, The Dot & the Line tells the story of a love triangle in which the Dot is torn between the sensible Line and the free-spirited Squiggle. Which suitor will win out may be foreshadowed in the title of the book, but how the Line wins the Dot’s heart is an engaging tale of adventure and imagination.
Fans of the extended wordplay in The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster’s most famous children’s book, will delight in the wordplay and “mathplay” in this little book. And the Dot comes up with one of the best insults I’ve ever read: “You are as meaningless as a melon. . . . Undisciplined, unkempt and unaccountable, insignificant, indeterminate, and inadvertent, out of shape, our of order, out of place and out of luck.”
It’s a bit of a parable or a fable, even with a moral tacked onto to the end. But I think readers will find this book to be quite “clever, mysterious, dazzling, complex, erudite, profound, eloquent, versatile, enigmatic, and compelling.” Just like a line and the geometry it encompasses.
About the author:
“Norton Juster is a dedicated mathematician whose efforts have been focused primarily on the verification of supermarket register receipts and the calculation of restaurant gratuities in a number of foreign currencies. He has also done pioneering work on the psychological effect of mathematical melancholia. . . . The author lives with his wife in western Massachusetts, where he conducts a support group for negative numbers.”