Review: A Madman Dreams Of Turing Machines - Arts & Leisure - International Herald Tribune - The New York Times

It is a curious thing that the two greatest logical geniuses of the last century both killed themselves. Alan Turing died after taking a bite of an apple that was laced with cyanide. Kurt Gödel died of a paradox: he thought people were plotting to kill him by poisoning his food, so he refused to eat and consequently starved to death. Did these two men self-destruct because of their logical prowess, or in spite of it? Did they reach some tragic deduction about life that the rest of us are too dim to see? And was it just a coincidence that both were inordinately fond of the Walt Disney movie "Snow White"? The narrator of Janna Levin's novel can't stop thinking about Turing and Gödel - "my two mad treasures" - and what their lives have to say about genius, human fragility and abstract truth. This narrator, it should be noted, is a somewhat spectral presence in the book. Although there are few textual clues, we are meant to guess (so says the dust jacket) that it is a woman and a scientist

It is a curious thing that the two greatest logical geniuses of the last century both killed themselves. Alan Turing died after taking a bite of an apple that was laced with cyanide. Kurt Gödel died of a paradox: he thought people were plotting to kill him by poisoning his food, so he refused to eat and consequently starved to death. Did these two men self-destruct because of their logical prowess, or in spite of it? Did they reach some tragic deduction about life that the rest of us are too dim to see? And was it just a coincidence that both were inordinately fond of the Walt Disney movie "Sn