Inside Out Art: Halvor Aakhus' BOOK OF KNUT

Okay, how brilliant is The Book of Knut? Answer, based on what I've seen: Very. The book comes from Jaded Ibis, a tiny publisher that's recently won me over heart and soul.

The premise, according to an interview with author Halvor Aakhus: "A mathematician finds a novel (Book) written by her dead lover (Knut Knudson) and subsequently transforms it into an annotated mathematical textbook, complete with homework problems. Aside from oil paintings, musical scores, mathematical graphs, etc., it’s got 216 footnotes."

Padgett Powell (author of The Interrogative Mood) says: "Halvor Aakhus should be paralyzed from depression and knowing too much. He has two or three doctoral dissertations, never consummated, in his head. The truly arcane stuff in Book of Knut is from his memory. This book won a prize getting to this point, and the judge said it was so outrageously complicated he could not not give it the prize. The reader should gird his or her loins if loins can be in one's head."

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