Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is the author of the novels The Mind-Body Problem (1983); The Late-Summer Passion of a Woman of Mind (1989); Mazel (1995), winner of the National Jewish Book Award and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award; Properties of Light (2000); and 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction (2010). She is also the author of nonfiction studies of Kurt Gödel and Baruch Spinoza and Plato at the Goolgeplex (2014). Her book of short stories, Strange Attractors (1993), received a National Jewish Book Honor Award. In 2015 Goldstein was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama, and she is also the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship, and a Whiting Award in Fiction. She has been designated a Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association and a Freethought Heroine by the Freedom from Religion Foundation, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Goldstein received her doctorate in philosophy from Princeton University and has taught at Barnard College, Columbia, Rutgers, Brandeis University, Trinity College, and New York University, among other institutions.
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The Late Summer Passion of A Woman of MindA Novel
It was true that Eva’s male colleagues had by now ceased to joke among themselves that a hopeless crush on Professor Mueller ought to be included among the requirements for the major in philosophy, but this was not because the students no longer fell in love with her. They did, at a rate which had of course slackened over the years but was still not inconsiderable. It was an irony—of course quite lost on Eva, who was steadfastly oblivious to the dramas in which she figured—that many who sat raptly listening to their professor’s lectures on the “futility of the passions,” on the need to transform the passive emotions directed towards objects and people outside ourselves into the active emotions of the intellect, were swollen with an advanced case of that same passive desire whose elimination was being eloquently, even passionately, urged upon them.
The Late Summer Passion of A Woman of Mind:A Novel -
The Late Summer Passion of A Woman of MindA Novel
The hands of the women lingered over their tumescent bellies. A girl no more than fifteen sat beside Eva. She was obviously in an advanced state. Her skinny, childish legs in cheap sky-blue summer pants dangled down from her engorged womb. Eva stared in disbelief at the bulge of it. The thing quivered, and the girl giggled at Eva, making a motion of swimming. Eva fought down the surge of acrid sickness, averting her eyes from the sight.
She sat all afternoon, as women came and went. There was no receptionist; patients were called in by the doctor himself.
The Late Summer Passion of A Woman of Mind:A Novel -
The Late Summer Passion of A Woman of MindA Novel
It was in this first book that Eva came upon a reference to Joseph Goebbels’ children. Gisevius made a passing, cynical reference to the presence of the Goebbels children at one of those fêtes the Nazis were such masters at creating, Hitler’s fiftieth birthday party perhaps. “There were the inevitable Goebbels children, trotted out once more for display.” Yes, she could remember them. There had been six of them. They had been pointed out to her once, at some sort of celebration, very very large. Perhaps it had even been that massive birthday party for Hitler! They had been standing on the podium, beside their mama and papa, dressed all in white. She could not really remember how their famous papa had looked. She had only stared at the beautiful children, the six shining specimens of Aryan perfection.
“Look,” Mama had said, “look at how beautiful and good they are.”
The Late Summer Passion of A Woman of Mind:A Novel
"She is a playful, buoyant, witty stylist who parses intractably difficult philosophical and religious ideas with breathtaking ease . . . She is also smarter than me, you, and most people on earth . . . Philosophy won’t go away as long as Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is around to remind us of its enduring relevance.” —Matthew Price, The Boston Globe [on Plato at the Googleplex]
"A brainy, compassionate, divinely witty novel. Goldstein can make Spinoza sing and Gödel comprehensible, and in her cerebral fiction she dances across disciplines with delight, writing domestic comedy about Cartesian metaphysics and academic satire about photoelectric energy. 36 Arguments radiates all the humor and erudition we've come to expect from Goldstein, and despite the novel's attention to the oldest questions, it has arrived at exactly the right moment . . . One of the funniest [academic satires] ever written . . . Goldstein doesn't want to shake your faith or confirm it, but she'll make you a believer in the power of fiction." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
“One of the most intelligent and funny pieces of fiction to surface this year. Goldstein’s ability to translate complex philosophical or mathematical problems to such basics as friendship and sexual desire leaves the reader giddy with inspiration . . . One of the most original laugh riots to successfully disguise itself as literature.” —The Kansas City Star [on The Mind-Body Problem]
Selected Works
