This novel puts you into the stream of consciousness of Joe Lake, a boy growing up in California in the 1950s. For him, arithmetic represents all that is wrong with his world. It is difficult, ugly, and incomprehensible. He despises it at school, where certain annoying girls are good at it and even his favorite teacher seemingly punishes him with it. And, it is even worse at home where his father -- a professional scientist -- has installed a blackboard in Joe's bedroom:
| (quoted from Arithmetic Town / Arithmetic)
But I use [an unspecified expletive] a lot in my room, that's where Dad
'helped' me with my arithmetic, by driving himself crazy with my stupidity. Since he made the
blackboard in my room he thought that gave him
the right to make me do arithmetic at it, which
just about wrecked my whole room, like filling
it with deadly gas. The feeling of looking at his
unendurably precise writing on my blackboard,
twenty-five problems, the sound of the door shutting, call me when you've finished. I thought about
dying, or setting fire to the house, my own things
being used against me. I could take the sponge
and erase all the problems, if only I could come up
with some explanation. I don't know who that was.
Or, what problems. His neat writing on my blackboard made everything less colorful, the world
was drab and oppressive, the light in the ceiling glared out, really mean, and I started hating
the cowboys on the walls and curtains, watercolor
cowboys who roped nothing. Even if I listened as
closely as I could Dad's words didn't make any
sense, there were the whys, I wanted to ask at
least one why between each of his words. But why
gets you nowhere. I made a stab at the threes and
fives, I could do those once in a while, but then
he was coming back in, with these questions,
Don't you understand this, WHY don't you understand this, what seems to be the problem here,
looks like we're going to have to shoot you down
on this one. Then his OKAY, meaning I'm going
to explain to you everything from the beginning,
|
Then, Joe's parents buy him a workbook called "Arithmetic Town", featuring a picture perfect image of happy parents and school children on the cover, which he is required to work through.
An excerpt from this work was first published under the title "Arithmetic Town" in the literary journal Granta in 1996 (see here) where it essentially takes the form of a short story. The full novel, Arithmetic, was then published in 1998. I am grateful to Gregory Cherlin for letting me know about its existence. |
