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Literary Challenge

Mathematics in Literature
  

Can you identify the author of the following passage? The book? Write us at hubbard@matrixeditions.com with "math metaphors" as the subject. Or submit your favorite literary passage involving mathematics.

We will give the answer and post a new excerpt June 1.

New Challenge

Hexton-on-Weir is a town of stone houses, most of them very old and slightly cramped, centred around a town square which is not a square, but a highly irregular form unknown to geometry. In the centre of this square is a church, a fine building which has fallen into disuse as a place of workship, and has been turned into a museum to a famous regiment whose barracks are a few miles out
of town.

Previous challenge

``Sufferers are seldom sweet-tempered; and Laura formed no exception.  Pin, her most frequent companion, had to bear the brunt of her acrimony:  hence the two were soon at war again. For Pin was tactless, and took small heed of her sister's grumpy moods, save to cavil at them.... Laura retaliated by falling foul of little personal traits in Pin:  a nervous habit she had of clearing her throat — her very walk.  They quarrelled passionately, having branched as far apart as the end-points of what is ultimately to be a triangle, between which the connecting lines have not yet been drawn.

Answer

This is from The Getting of Wisdom,  by Henry Handel  Richardson (Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson, 1870-1946).

For earlier challenges (and their answers), go to previous challenges

 

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