Is math in literature (fiction) too much for a general audience?

[Kyriakos]

While i had stories printed which contained (admittedly a small, and it was not needed to follow to see the main plot) an amount of mathematics, i also have been told that some other works by myself are very difficult to follow, regardless of the descriptions and non-math parts tending to cause an interest.
This is a bit annoying, cause i aim to present work that can be read/enjoyed, and afterall i am very aware that the readers form the story in their own mind and pov anyway. But i still also aim to present plots and stories that i deem as important, from my own side.

Sometimes the balance seems to be ok, but it always is so when the story can be followed almost without caring at all about any math noted. For example a somewhat larger story of mine (18 pages) was deemed as great by a publisher (meant for a book), while it had various references to a 4rth century BC spiral, and a socratic dialogue about it. The story, however, was focused in the external side of it on very different issues (namely some sort of weird outbreak near a construction site), so the readers could just ponder that line. Of course they could (if they wished to) later on just look for the names given in the story, but in reality the math there is not meant to lead to much else, at least specifically, it is just the semi-poetic idea of that spiral as a seal which hides a monstrous lurker behind it.

But other stories don't work like that. Some even i regard as pretty much not to be published, unless i have a couple of books in the future already and can therefore include these works to later on.

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The question in the thread is the one in its title. Do you think that math has a position in a fictional literary piece? Moreover, do you think it can add something, or is it mostly bound to annoy readers, for whatever reason? It is quite rare to have people interested in literature, also be interested in math, although in my view there can always be links between any creative work by a human.

Up to now i think that the only writer i have read a lot by, and who uses some math (in a refined manner) in a lot of his works, would be Borges. But the math there is more in the vein of hypothesis, and very rarely anything specific. For example in one of his works there is a book which supposedly has "an infinite number of pages", and due to this it is argued that any page can exist anywhere in it, consequently rendering it virtually impossible to read the same one twice. In my own stories there are mostly geometrical shapes, juxtaposition between 2d and 3d forms of an object, and the loses in such a translation, but surely i keep away from basing the appearence of the story on any math, cause this would not have a good effect on most (or all) readers..

[Time Commander Bob]

Some fiction does contain mathematics as a backdrop or plot element, but often people consider mathematics to be in a separate world to everything else or just as a mundane tool to achieve a task, which may explain its rarity in fiction.
I'm not sure how much maths you require in a story to consider it mathematically based (not sure how to interpret "in a refined manner", also depends on what you consider "literature"), but I would suggest Neal Stephenson. In particular Anathem is a very good example of this.

[Mayer]

math is like an universal language but also hard to follow for those who aren't used to it.

fiction with more complex formula may find subscribers, though it will never be part of popular literature.

[Phier]

Its playing to the audience.

I would view math in a story about the same as I viewed Tolkien when he would have some long song in Elvish. Its something to read the first line of and skip to the end to get back to the story.

My wife may enjoy it but you won't make literary fame with math nerds as your main audience.

You need a good story that can be enjoyed WITHOUT the math, such as Tolkien without a degree in linguistics.

[Nikitn]

Randomly adding in fancy formulas/expressions/facts for the sake of adding it will not impress anyone, and least of all the few people who actually understand math. I hope you're not thinking of doing that? That's just lame.

However, including interesting logical results from math in your stories isn't necessarily a bad idea. Easily understandable concepts and theorems that have relevance to the story could fascinate the more intellectual reader. There's plenty of stuff out there that's counter-intuitive and fascinating.

[Condottiere 40K]

As long as the author wrote it like explaining it to a five year old, I'll get it.

[Kyriakos]

Thank you all for the great replies

Randomly adding in fancy formulas/expressions/facts for the sake of adding it will not impress anyone, and least of all the few people who actually understand math. I hope you're not thinking of doing that? That's just lame.

However, including interesting logical results from math in your stories isn't necessarily a bad idea. Easily understandable concepts and theorems that have relevance to the story could fascinate the more intellectual reader. There's plenty of stuff out there that's counter-intuitive and fascinating.

I surely never include formulas in a literary piece, indeed that would be suicidal (not to say, idiotic ). I am in favor of presenting an idea in plain language, cause i think it is self-evident that if one actually grasps an idea correctly, it should follow that he would be able to present it in very simple and everyday language. And from that it partly follows that the idea can be picked up easily by another person, even if he has (even) less of a math background than myself (i am a philosophy graduate anyway).

I tend to have frequent symbols of "limits" in my short stories, such as chasms, an abyss, a freefall and so on, a barrier in material form. The barrier is also a symbol apart from an actual object in the story, and moreover it is the notion of a limit, which ties to math in many ways. I think that math is very linked to the rest of human logical thought, although obviously its notation is usually very hard to follow by most people due to the lack of having a math degree. I never have math notation in stories, of course.

Indeed the idea is to mostly allude to progressions found in the story that may have some sort of objective or subjective link to math ideas. The stories are not an attempt to prove anything (of course i once thought that i might try that, but for the time being i am checking my megalomania since it already is dangerously excessive ).

[Nikitn]

Well that sounds good to me, but I would hardly call it math. More a way of thinking influenced by mathematical concepts.

[Kyriakos]

^Mostly

I would describe it more as a lingual presentation of some math concept, tied to an overall plot of the story. Basically it is a construction aimed to create allusions to links between language, symbols, and some math concepts in the story. I don't go out of my way to include math out of some view that it is by itself good or high-brow or anything in a story, i use some of it cause i actually feel it is linked (to some degree) to parts of what is being presented in the prose work