Recieved from UK bookmoocher today!

The Genius in My Basement is not a euphamism. This is literally the story of the genius who lived downstairs from Alexander Masters. I have to be honest, after the first few chapters I thought I wasn't going to enjoy this and might not even finish it. It took a little time to get used to the style. With random sketches, descriptions of noises in the text, talking to the reader as though we're creeping downstairs scooby-doo style to look through the guy's flat, it all felt a bit overdone, and more about the author than the subject. But, stick with it, I say, because this is a really, really fantastic book. And whilst it doesn't bang through a biography in the traditional way, what you are left with is a real portrait of the man, so you feel as though you have actually met him.

So, Alexander Masters was renting a flat from a guy, Simon Norton, who is it seems pathologically honest, obsessed with travelling about on buses all over the country, lives in an utter mess (doesn't worry about appearances at all), is well off enough not to need a job, on a mission to save and improve public transport (down with cars and save the environment) and seems to be very happy with his life and existance. Even though in this achieve-achieve-achieve, over-work yourself (Anyone who's not working full time plus over time must be lazy) culture we have, it seems he's wasted his life perhaps. And his potential.

So why is he a genius? If you know maths you'll know; if the theoretical dizy heights of maths is like another dimension to you, as is it to me, you won't immediately know, but Simon Norton is a mathetical genius. As in winning global prizes as a teenager, getting his degree, being in a research group at Cambridge in the 70s and 80s and writing this atlas to the MONSTER - the ultimate in group theory (I won't even attempt to explain). But his fascination with solving problems goes in any direction, whichever makes him happy, but not necessarily what people would call a worthwhlie direction. And when the men of the research group went their seperate ways in the 80s, Simon had no one to push him in the right direction, and just left the scene to revle in his bus timetables.

So, is it a waste of his intelligence? They're all theoretical thought experiments, and one can ask if any of them have any practical use to humanity (if you want to go down that vein, you can wonder where is the point in anyone reading any book). The point being that if it brings you joy and happiness in your life, well, why not?

It is also an interesting tale of growing up genius, education, and the point that you can be as brilliant as you want, but if you don't have the self-discipline or someone to direct you, where are you going to go? I thought Masters also had some very good points about education in the UK and in general. Say what you want, but family money and parental influence have their roll to place. I'm not a fan of the old school hierarchial snobbery we have in education here when they start on about private schools (Norton did go to Ashdown and Eton)... and the name dropping starts, about Boris Johnson, Clegg, Cameron etc etc... and really, it's a mates world, you think, not that these people are any more intelligent than the rest of the country, but that they went to the right schools, therefore they are put into the positions of power. And what a disgusting bunch of nest-feathering egotistical types who have no real feeling for society as a whole... sorry, going off on a rant that has nothing to do with this book.

I want to finish off with a paragraph that I thought was very astute about education, child geniuses and growing up and all that:

"To prodigies, talent doesn't come from hours of hard work, it comes from delight. As long as they find what they do delightful, they'll keep at it. But over-ambitious parents, inflexible maths teachers, humdrum university programmes can destroy the delight in as little as six months; shortly after the brilliance withers away too. Conway believes it is almost always a bad idea to send maths prodigies to university at an early age. They rarely, when you do, come to anything as adults. It is too early to destroy a child's social life and regiment his thought. Let the chld roam. Give him an expert tutor, but for as long as possible let him stay free and guided by delight." (p.318)

I left this book with several others at the Poppleton Little Book Exchange this morning (also took 3 other books away with me).