How I Won a Nobel Prize by Julius Taranto

Published by Little, Brown and Company on September 12, 2023

How I Won a Nobel Prize is centered around the concept of “woke” education. A wealthy conservative named B.W. Rubin endowed a private university called the Rubin Institute. The Institute purchased an island off the coast of Connecticut, built a tower, and staffed it with deplorable professors: racists, gropers, zealots. The Institute is portrayed to the public as a sort of punitive exile for professors who can’t follow the rules, but the faculty — consisting almost entirely of white males — loves the place. They can sleep with students, harass them, and use all the offensive language they can imagine, never suffering consequences.

Since the island has a nice beach, the Institute became a “Sandals for scandal” with no HR director, no code of conduct. The Institute charges no tuition, so it gets bright students who suffer the harassment in exchange for an education as well as the Young Republicans who relish their entitlement. If students are concerned about attending school on the island (known on the mainland as Rape Island), they were invited to carry Mace.

B.W. Rubin is sleazy in a way that is unique to the truly rich. He is convinced that any action he takes to gain more wealth and power is justified, even if he must dominate worthier people to enrich himself.

Helen was a graduate assistant at Cornell, working with Nobel Laureate Perry Smoot to create a model that would help them create superconductive substances at ordinary temperatures. The novel explains superconductivity and Helen’s quest in a way that even I can (superficially) understand, and I’m no physicist. Math and coding are Helen’s strength, while Perry is the one who make intuitive leaps. Some of the novel’s best writing — and it’s all exceptional — comes from Helen’s descriptions about what it’s like to be “in the zone,” when she is coding with almost supernatural confidence, “pirouetting between raindrops, seeing the whole vast board,” certain that she is about to solve a difficult problem.

Perry is gay. He became unwelcome at Cornell after a male graduate student reported that Perry made a pass at him. Conversely, Perry’s sexual harassment makes him welcome at the Rubin Institute. Helen feels compelled to follow Perry because the only other expert conducting similar research is in China and she doesn’t speak Mandarin.

Helen’s lover is a liberal IT guy who objects to living in the obnoxious environment of Rape Island before he relents and follows Helen. Their relationship is strained by the move, although Helen has so little time for Hew that the relationship has never been great. In any event, Helen is thinking of having an affair with a literary writer who has been exiled to the Institute. The writer was much admired before he became so literary that ordinary readers could not grasp the point of his work.

Helen’s relationship with Hew becomes a quirky subplot when Helen uses equations and spreadsheets to decide whether she should stay with him. She is surprised when the answer is always the same. She doesn’t realize that, for all the math, the equations rely on subjective data and therefore return subjective answers. I suppose you can listen to your heart or you can listen to the results of math problems that are driven by your heart.

How I Won a Nobel Prize isn’t a romance novel, but romance is part of life, whether we welcome it or not. Perry makes an interesting argument that, because he is socially dysfunctional outside the academic environment, his only hope of romantic happiness is to have a relationship with a student/lover. He views teaching as forming an erotic connection with students. It’s a bit self-serving, but I can understand his feeling that it’s unfair to ban him from the only relationships that might give him a chance to love. I disagree that it’s unfair, but I appreciated the contribution his perspective makes to an understanding of the dynamics of professor/student relationships.

Although it represents a smaller part of the story, the novel asks an interesting question about the correct balance between academic freedom and disciplining faculty members for the opinions they express. Of somewhat greater significance to the story is Hew’s concern about the disparity of power that might allow people of wealth or fame to escape judgment for immoral or illegal conduct. Helen counters that people who have made valuable contributions to society should not be defined by their worst actions. Why can’t we admire the good things people did even if we detest their misconduct?

The novel also suggests the use of Artificial Intelligence to make the administrative decisions of government, replacing self-interest with a computer-generated understanding of the nation’s core moral beliefs. I’m not sure how that would work in the real world, but it’s an intriguing solution to the role that wealth and power play in the political system. Finally, Helen has a fascinating epiphany about the nature of commitment and how it is used as a respite from the burden of constantly making choices.

While How I Won a Nobel Prize is marketed as a comedy, probably because the premise of a university for deplorables is darkly amusing, but it is largely a novel of ideas. Idea-driven novels are always at risk of bogging down, but an entertaining plot keeps the story in motion. Plot lines simmer until Julius Taranto brings them to a boil in an explosive and unexpected climax. In fact, the entire story, from beginning to end, is unexpected and surprising. It’s also the best debut novel, and possibly the smartest novel, I’ve read this year.

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