Genius Part I

Funes: … which brings me back to my original question.

Montag: Which was?

Funes: What is genius?

Montag: (spills milk through nose) What is genius! What is genius!

Funes: Yes, what?

Montag: Hardly a simple question. Hardly even an original question.

Funes: Yes, hardly. (pauses) But – what is it?

Montag: Well, if the riddle of genius has not been deciphered before, I doubt that it shall be this afternoon by the likes of you and me.

Funes: Perhaps it is one of those things that can’t be precisely defined. Can’t be solved like a mathematical equation. One can only offer one’s opinion on the matter. And that works to our advantage.

Montag: How so?

Funes: Any work here of ours has merit and value, then.

Montag: I see. (chews lip, deep in thought) Have you heard of Gauss?

Funes: Gauss … Gauss. He’s a scientist, right? Seventeenth or eighteenth century?

Montag: Close enough. Mathematician.

Funes: You, dear friend, are the left brain to my right! I shall analyse genius from the artistic fields of endeavor, and you shall attack it from the hard intellectual sciences –

Montag: Hold it, hold it. Before I attack anything, I just want to give an example.

Funes: An example of what?

Montag: Genius.

Funes: Of course. Go ahead … Explain this Gauss to me.

Montag: (casts a rueful glance over his cookies) Well, listen Funes. All I wanted to say, was, well, tell you a little story. I thought it might explain an aspect of genius that perhaps you hadn’t thought of before. (spots Funes’ indignant expression) Well, I mean, it might shed some light on the question.

Funes: (magnanimously) Go ahead, my dear Montag.

Montag: Well, it seems that when Gauss was a child, say, six or seven years old, and was in school, his teacher gave the class a problem. Kind of like a make-work problem, so this poor sap could read a book or sleep off a hangover, something like that … You haven’t heard this before?

Funes: Sounds like I’m in for an apocryphal tale.

Montag: No. True story. Or so I’ve been told.

Funes: Go on. What was the problem assigned to the class?

Montag: Sum up all the integers between zero and a hundred.

Funes: Add together all the numbers between one and a hundred?

Montag: Basically. That’s another way of putting it ... Can you do it?

Funes: Of course I can. (strikes up his pipe) I just need a pad and pen and some time. (mumbles) A good deal of time.

Montag: That’s what this teacher thought. The thing is, a minute or two later, Gauss hands in his sheet of paper. The correct answer’s on it.

Funes: (interested) Ah. The little scamp discovered a short cut. An algorithm for solving the problem. How clever!

Montag: Just ‘clever’, or genius?

Funes: (laughs) That is the question here, isn’t it?

Montag: So, dear Funes, what did little Gauss do?

Funes: (smile vanishes) Uh …

Montag: (laughs) Funes, you may be a literary genius, but I do believe some remedial math should be in your near future.

Funes: (darkly) So what does this seven-year-old boy know intuitively that this seventy-year-old man doesn’t?

Montag: Pairs.

Funes: Pairs?

Montag: Yes, pairs. What he did, while his young friends were adding one plus two plus three plus four, et cetera, et cetera, was come to a simple realization. See where I’m going?

Funes: (excited) Yes! I see. (traces imaginary lines in the air) He paired them up highest to lowest. Then … then …

Montag: You’re right. Keep going.

Funes: Then … little help?

Montag: (laughs) Let’s see what little Gauss found out. Zero and one hundred equal?

Funes: One hundred.

Montag: One and ninety-nine?

Funes: One hundred. I see! … I think …

Montag: Two and ninety-eight?

Funes: One hundred. So, is the answer … five thousand? Fifty pairs each of a hundred!

Montag: (slapping the table) Close, dear Funes, so very close.

Funes: Where did I go wrong?

Montag: You didn’t. You just didn’t go far enough.

Funes: Explain.

Montag: There are fifty pairs of numbers from and including zero to one hundred. But there’s one number without a companion. Pair-less, so to speak. The number fifty, in the exact center of our number pair spectrum. So, Gauss realized this, and added it to the five thousand, which, as you said, is the fifty pairs each adding to one hundred. So the correct answer is five thousand fifty.

Funes: I’m speechless.

Montag: You, my dear Montag, have never been speechless.

Funes: True. But what does this say of genius?

Montag: (long pause) Unlike little Gauss solving his problem, we are the true children.