I was often astounded by the tastes, particularly the choice of literary works and movies, of Don Knuth who is a mathematician and computer scientist by training and profession. Most of the computer scientists I know are wary of reading anything outside their realm of knowledge. If you tell them anything about existentialism or postmodern literature, they will pay scant attention to you. Contrary to my expectations, Knuth is a different kind of person who relishes some of the finest books published in literature and movies created. Given below is an excerpt from a conversation between Sebastian Rahtz (SR) and Don Knuth (DEK) which tells you what I meant. The excerpt is taken from the recently published TeX’s 25 Anniversary: A Commemorative Collection by TeX Users Group.
. . . or film. O.K. The closest thing in film is this new movie Run Lola Run, from Germany. If you were to do it the way Perec did it, you would have many more chapters, but Run Lola Run gives you a story three times. The first time ends in disaster and so Lola says, “No take me back. Let’s do it again.” So we start over and she does something slightly different in the first scene and then we go through the whole story again, but everything happens five seconds later, so certain accidents don’t occur in the streets and the whole plot changes. At the end of the second telling of the story it’s another disaster, not for her, but for her boyfriend, and that’s too terrible to accept. The third version of the story leads to a happier fate.
In music I suppose I think of a theme that had been proposed to Bach, I think by one of the noblemen of his time. He supposedly improvised a theme on that melody spontaneously, but then he was fascinated by it afterwards. During the last year of his life he prepared a manuscript that he left unfinished at his death, called the Art of the Fugue. That work is analogous to Perec’s, because the idea is to make a thing of beauty while working within tight constraints.
Berry, K. and Walden, D. (Eds):
TeX’s 25 Anniversary: A Commemorative Collection,
TeX Users Group, Portland, USA, (2010), pp. 14–15.
Run Lola Run is one of my favorite films :). (And don’t miss Tykwer’s commentary. He’s done other excellent films too.)
Christoph Wolff presents some convincing evidence (Bach: Essays on his Life and Music) that the last fugue in the Art of Fugue was actually finished by Bach, but the completion has been lost.
Knuth is amazing, I agree :).