Author Archives: susan

I’m determined to finish this novel today and then maybe take a break from reading. It seems that there is much that Abbott gives the reader to consider though the symbolism in his written world can mostly relate rather obviously.  … Continue reading → Continue reading →

This concept may be very familiar to mathematicians but to me it was a flash: Although popularly everyone called a Circle is deemd a Circle, yet among the better educated Classes it is known that no Circle is really a … Continue reading → Continue reading →

If a man with a Triangular front and a polygonal back were allowed to exist and to propagate a still more Irregular posterity, what would become of the arts of life?  (p. 24) None but the perfect need be.  Survival … Continue reading → Continue reading →

The concept of this story is phenomenal because it is based upon a simple premise of figures and angles, the whole being personfied into Flatland and its inhabitants.  I would of course love most to know how this idea came … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Gender, sure, but what’s the difference when the physical difference is so surely the reason in Flatland: To my readers in Spaceland, the condition of our Women may seem truly deplorable, and so indeed it is.  A Male of the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Isn’t he just adorable? This might be something cool–Flatland, the film might just be something I’d like to get a hold of and do a comparison of both medium and culture, especially since there’s over a century between the writing … Continue reading →

Hah!  It wasn’t his educational reputation he was worried about, nor political and social shunning.  Edwin Abbott originally published Flatland under a pseudonym.  I strongly suspect it was for his very life he feared once this got out: Not that … Continue reading → Continue reading →

What’s so great about this novel is that it illustrates its points in dimensioning, i.e., a triangle or square is drawn as a figure.  In Flatland, these actual figures are seen only as straight lines and the image of triangle, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Abbott seems to have something to say about culture and society in his own world of four dimensions and is getting it said via Square’s description of Flatland: Rarely–in proportion to the vast numbers of Isoceles births–is a genuine and … Continue reading → Continue reading →

How many authors have I read now that had been writing under threat of political persecution–Boethius, Aristotle, Voltaire, Bulgakov.  And now, while Abbott is not under such, his character of Square, the narrator of this story ends up there evidently … Continue reading → Continue reading →

How could I put back upon the shelf a book wherein circles talk to squares? This short novel by Edwin A. Abbott looks to be the perfect followup to The Life of Geronimo Sandoval. Again, I may not quite catch … Continue reading → Continue reading →