GET LIT: Win a copy of Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's 36 Arguments for the Existence of God

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GET LIT: Win a copy of Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's 36 Arguments for the Existence of God

POSTED: Thursday, February 11, 2010, 7:22 PM

Filed Under: Arts Books

Pantheon, 399 pp., $27.95, Jan. 12

On this snowy Thursday, we've come to realize that a good book can get us through even the most serious cases of cabin fever. (And a bad book ... well, you'll hear about that tomorrow.)

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's new work of fiction, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, about an atheist author who battles between faith and reason, should get you through to springier weather. Here's what Justin Bauer had to say about Goldstein's novel in January's Shelf Life:

36 Arguments does not lack erudition: There are long disquisitions on the prisoner's dilemma and on Kabbalistic numerology, sometimes even delivered by stock characters like the gray-suited conservative demagogue who faithlessly advocates for the Almighty. Nonetheless, Goldstein's book is a complex confection for a novel of ideas. It's written in 36 chapters, with titles like "The Argument from the View from Nowhere," with an appendix of supporting logical proofs, and it's about a psychologist who has himself written a book disproving the existence of God, containing in turn an appendix with 36 logical proofs. All the care and self-awareness that Goldstein has coded into her novel elevates and amplifies her subject, leavening the dry philosophy and grounding her flights of fancy. She is aware of the power of variation and the elegance of recursion.

To win a copy, answer me this:

In what year did Goldstein become a MacArthur Genius?

E-mail carolyn.huckabay@citypaper.net for a chance to win. And check back tomorrow to find out how I did with my self-inflicted snow-day assignment.

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