A Mass of Connecting Lines

 In a time and place that feels distant to me now, I spent an afternoon in the living room of Norton Juster, retired architect and author of The Phantom Tollbooth. I was sent there by my freshman advisor when I was doing an independent study on Mathematics in Literature. As an author of fiction that discusses math, I intended to interview Mr. Juster about the connection between the two fields. A couple nights ago I found the essay I wrote to chronicle our visit, and I was re-tickled all over again by this man and by his outlook on life. So much, that I want to excerpt it here:

[cue 18 year old voice]

The first thing Norton Juster said when I called him on the phone was, “Spell your name, please.” I presume he writes down the name of everyone who calls him, telemarketers and all. Then he asked why I called. I told him I wanted to talk about mathematics and fiction, together.

“I’m not much of a mathematician, but I think there’s a lot of humor in any subject where people think of things like negative numbers. Call me back in a week-- I’m going out of town to speak.” His voice disguised his age well. He must be around seventy years old, but it was still clear and capable-sounding, with a tinge of a New Yorker’s accent. If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve placed him in his late thirties.

I called Juster back a week later. He asked me to spell my name again and told me, again, that math has a lot of humor in it. He accidentally called mathematicians ‘mathemagicians,’ which is the name of the king of Digitopolis in his most famous novel, The Phantom Tollbooth.

“That’s a Freudian slip if I ever heard one,” he said. Then he told me to come over to his house next Monday so we could talk. 

His white house was a pleasant walk up a residential street about five minutes from Amherst's main intersection. It perched on a slope, with the garage on the lower level and the front door on the upper.

Juster let me in and led me past the kitchen into his living room. Every light was off. He told me I could sit on the couch and then crossed behind me to open the curtain, letting in cool afternoon light.

“I need a hardback chair on account of a bad back,” he explained as he eased into a folding chair with a canvas seat and wooden frame. An enormous potbelly covered in a blue knit sweater sat on his lap.

“Are you comfortable? Ok. Now. Tell me what you’re up to.”

I explained to him that I was studying fictional books that incorporate mathematics into their plots. Why do the authors do it? Is it good writing? Can numbers and letters, which aren’t supposed to get along, share a page anywhere except in a textbook? In The Phantom Tollbooth, the neighboring kingdoms of Dictionopolis and Digitopolis are in perpetual competition. I thought that Juster, if anyone, would have some ideas about how the two connect. It turns out he has a lot of ideas about how everything connects.

“I don’t precisely remember where the Digitopolis and Dictionopolis came from. But it’s the idea of words against numbers. People have the idea they have to decide which one’s important for their life—as if we have to choose,” he told me.

“I guess the way I came to it was that I was thinking about how I had trouble spelling as a kid, and then I got to thinking of all the things I had trouble with. My main motivation was remembering how, when you’re a kid, you wonder why all this stuff is being thrown at you and you don’t know why.” He held up one hand, touching all of this fingers together.

“Its like, you learn a fact. Bing.” He flicked his fingers outwards as if making a tiny explosion in the air. He went on. “Then you learn something else, and Bing, over here.” He exploded the air to his lower left. “Then another over here.” He did it again, leaving three explosions in the air.

“And its only later, and sometimes a long time, when you start seeing how these things connect, because everything connects. So as you learn, you draw lines.” He traced lines in the air with his pointer finger leading from one explosion to the next. “So me, as an old man, I have just a mass of connecting lines.” He leaned back to admire the imaginary web before him.

“Once a kid asked me what happens when all of the dots are connected, and I must’ve scared him to death. I said, 'You die.'

“I don’t know why I said that. But that is how it is, sort of, that’s what life is all about—connecting lines,” he concluded.

[end excerpt]

I can't entirely agree with Juster-- I don't think an understanding of how everything is connected is necessarily the main function of life. What, for instance, should you do once you've drawn a line? Just sit and think about it? Or do something? Maybe it doesn't matter, but I like to think it matters.

On the other hand, I see his interconnecting web theory as a gentle reminder to anyone who is trying to figure out what they want to do with their life. Back in that living room, I was struggling to decide what to study and wondering if seemingly unrelated topics I loved could be combined. Now, in the job world, I am wondering how to combine my incongruous catalog of work experience and interests-- outdoors and city, fair housing and middle schoolers, education and creative writing, counseling and journalism and social justice. In the lens of the Episcopalian Service Corps, you hear people talking about “discerning a vocation,” that is, figuring out what it is that God is calling you to do in your work.

But if there is no God calling me to do anything, the question becomes, is there a specific career path that will energize and invigorate me the most AND make the greatest positive impact on a community? I think Norton Juster would say yes, there are career paths like that, but plenty of them; and there's no reason why you have to choose one over another for the rest of your life, or even the long term. All of your experiences on and off the resume are dots that eventually you will have the wisdom to connect. (You hope.)