Reading, writing and arithmetic – the glorious interrelation of maths and literature

There are lots of reasons why non-scientists should be forced to study mathematics, but it’s hard to see why mathematicians should bother with literature. Literature is part of the entertainment industry: emotional manipulation, crippled by cheap assertions and hollow arguments. Maths is intellectual. Maths has rigorous standards. Literature hides guff under its pretty phrases.

Sarah Hart, a professor of mathematics, wants us to see literature and mathematics as the ancients did – mutually supportive, central elements of a rounded education.  Once Upon a Prime is an eager, straight-forward book. There is maths but, unless you’re embarrassingly innumerate, it’s not hard to grasp; there is Tiggerish enthusiasm. Like an eager parent trying to cajole a sullen child, she occasionally over-peppers her prose with exclamation marks and a little too much joshing modesty, but that’s not her fault, it’s ours. We non-mathematicians are sullen about maths. That a theoretician of the calibre of Hart has any desire at all to stoop down and include us in her glorious subject is cause for celebration. She is at her best when talking about literary structure, poetical form and combinatorics.

In chapter 3, about the literary group Oulipo, she discusses the statistical challenges for Frenchmen who refuse to use the letter ‘e’ in thir clvr novls. Oulipo’s aim is to explore fresh ways to mould literature, using mathematics. Raymond Queneau, one of the group’s founders, published 100 trillion poems in a ten-page book: he wrote ten different sonnets, then invited readers to pick their first line from any one of them, combine it with a second line, again from any one of the ten on offer, follow it by a third, also plucked from the sample of ten – giving 10¹⁴ possible combinations in all.