Freedom is not a License for Chaos | The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics

Simply Art | The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics | Norton Juster

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	• The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics Norton Juster Chronicle Books, 2000 - 80 pages average customer review:based on 34 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Dot and the Line

I don't know why, but I was under the impression that this was a children's book. It's not. It's a math lover's book. The book itself was ridiculously hard for me to find, so I was glad when I finally got my hands on it, but again, huge letdown that this isn't a quirky little kid's book about dots and lines and basic geometry. The font is difficult to read at times, although the design quality, simplistic as it is, is superb. The story itself is pretty simplistic, but so very complicated in its simplicity. The puns, the symbolism, make for a good read.

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Freedom is not a License for Chaos

The phrase is the turning point and premise of this amazing, simply delightful little Math book. Math? That is our son's most disliked subject. Wait, The Dot and the Line is not a Math book! It is a hilarious comedy! But is that all? It is a romance, a story of love deeply felt, pursued, capable of provoking great things in the soul. In a little math book? Is it possible? Yes, it is.

Our Classic Languages-loving son reads it aloud every time this book visits us from the library. (Readers, please remind me to purchase a copy for his next birthday). He suffers with the straight, dull and unbending line when driven to the "edge" (of the paper-- the line is drawn on the edge of the page) as the "perfect by every measure" dot flirts around with the anarchist, slothful squiggle. Moved by great love, the line at first attempts to show its own grandeur by asserting its importance in art, world politics, sports. To no avail: the dot is not impressed. Then the unimaginable happens: when almost giving up, the line, using great concentration, becomes able to make angles!

What follows next is what makes this little book a great book: the enthusiastic line makes more and more angles in a chaotic frenzy, until... it realizes that chaos without order leads nowhere. It stops, straightens itself again and it discovers that freedom is not a license for chaos. From then on, life changes for the line: exercising great control and virtue, it discovers a new world:
For months he practiced in secret. Soon he was making squares and triangles, hexagons, parallelograms, rhomboids, polyhedrons, trapezoids, parallelepiped, decagons, tetragrams and an infinite number of other shapes so complex that he had to letter his sides and angles to keep his place. Before long he had learned to carefully control ellipses, circles and complex curves...

Ah, the virtue of the discipline of Mathematics! The beauty of its exact angles and dimensions. The rhythm, art and music of what it is able to create, using exercise and order! I will refrain from spoiling it completely for the new reader, but let me quote his final "moral of the story": to the vector, the spoils. This type of humor is the best!

The back jacket, after telling us that the author, among other things, runs a support group for negative numbers (one can glimpse Mr. Juster's opinion on the state of the culture in the 60s) mentions an award winning film, and I found it on You Tube. I was happy to see that that the screenplay was also written by the author but I warn you that the book is much better. This new edition has wonderful graphics and some different pictures as well.

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Simply Art

I was introduced to this book in a college course for art illustration, I have since bought it at least seven times, gave it away, then missed it. I now have a copy to KEEP!

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Mathematical LOVE

Everybody loves a romantic underdog story, where the guy who seems to have no chance at all ends up with the girl of his dreams. But Norton Juster (unsurprisingly) puts a rather different spin on the usual story in "The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics," which is a charming little picture book about... well, a dot and a line. And a squiggle.

"Once upon a time there was a sensible straight line who was hopelessly in love... with a Dot." But though he voices his devotion, the Dot isn't interested -- she's busy romancing a bad-boy Squiggle, and considers the Line to be hopelessly boring and conventional. The Line falls into a depression over his hopeless love... only to discover that he has skills that make the Squiggle look pitiful. Can he win over Dot?

When he wasn't writing clever books like "The Phantom Tollbooth," Norton Juster was a successful architect. To be an architect, you need to know something about lines -- and "The Dot And the Line" is basically a celebration of geometry and all the wild things you can do with a seemingly simple line. Art, mathematics and nature are all explored via The Line.

And Juster writes the whole thing in a delightfully punny manner ("... and before long he was completely on edge," along with an illustration of the Line on the very edge of the page), with some delightful phrases ("You are as meaningless as a melon!"). And he finds countless clever ways to insert the Line into all sorts of places (THE LINE AS A POTENT FORCE IN THE WORLD OF ART), emphasizing its importance far above the Squiggle.

And what's more... it's just so endearing to see the Line working so hard to win over The Dot.

"The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics" is an enchanting little romance that explores all the possibilities in a simple Line. A charming little fairy tale of geometry.

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A lovely book for all ages

I love this book, my father gave it to me when I was a little girl and I lost it. I bought it again, used, same edition, to keep my memories and bought a new one for my son. A different way to take a look at relationships, shapes and creation.

Once upon a time there was a sensible straight line who was hopelessly in love with a beautiful dot. But the dot, though perfect in every way, only had eyes for a wild and unkempt squiggle. All of the line's romantic dreams were in vain, until he discovered . . . angles! Now, with newfound self-expression, he can be anything he wants to be--a square, a triangle, a parallelogram. . . . And that's just the beginning!

First published in 1963 and made into an Academy Award-winning animated short film, here is a supremely witty love story with a twist that reveals profound truths about relationships--both human and mathematical--sure to tickle lovers of all ages.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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