D'Alembert's Principle

By Andrew Crumey

Three novellas bound together in a highly-acclaimed post-modern literary triptych

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dedalus
• Release date: Jan 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781909232471

Andrew Crumey

Andrew Crumey was born in Glasgow in 1961. He read theoretical physics and mathematics at St Andrews University and Imperial College in London, before doing post-doctoral research at Leeds University on nonlinear dynamics. After six years as the literary editor at Scotland on Sunday he now combines teaching creative writing at Northumbria University with his writing.He is the author of seven novels: Music, in a Foreign Language (1994), Pfitz (1995), D'Alembert's Principle (1996), Mr Mee (2000, Dedalus edition 2014), Mobius Dick (2004, Dedalus edition 2014) Sputnik Caledonia(2008, Dedalus edition 2015)) and The Secret Knowledge (2013).Andrew Crumey's novels have been translated into 14 languages.

Reviews for D'Alembert's Principle

[libraryish2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Imagine a puddle of water as a form of alien life - how would that life form think? What would they make of us humans? How would they communicate? These are just a few of the philosophical queries propounded by Andrew Crumey's characters as he re-works the the lives and imagines the conversations of the famous French philosophers - D'Alembert, Diderot and Julie de Lespinasse. It made my head hurt when I first read it, but the questions, answers and characters kept me coming back time after time; this book is a conundrum and a delight to read.

[thorold_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Half a rather dull historical novel stuck together with some silly 90s postmodernism. Probably clever when he wrote it, but 15 years on it just seems a bit past its read-by date.

[bodachliath · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found this book marked down to £3 in a post-Christmas sale, and picked it up just because it looked interestingly challenging. I found it a fascinating blend of philosophy, fantasy and history, but the games Crumey plays with form, ideas and his own characters are dizzying and at times difficult to follow.The first and longest of the three sections is the most straightforward - an exploration of the life and times of the eighteenth century scientist and philosopher D'Alembert, who worked on Diderot's encyclopedia and believed that the ultimate aim of science was to produce a simple universal model that everything else would follow from. The entertainment is provided by the exploration of his milieu and his unrequited love for a woman who humours him while betraying him. In the short second part a fictitious Scottish philosopher imagines a dream journey to various planets all of which cause him to come back to fundamental Cartesian questions about his own existence, and the history and provenance of his supposed works is also explored in a playful way.The third part Tales from Rreinnstadt is apparently linked to, and quotes from, Crumey's previous novel Pfitz. It is a loosely linked set of rather Borgesian philosophical fables exploring the nature of imagination and infinity, gently ridiculing D'Alembert's world view.This is not a book I would recommend to the casual reader, but it would probably reward a more detailed study, and certainly left me with plenty of interesting questions to ponder.