A NY Times review dated Jan. 20 has the headline
Trying to Paint the Deity by Numbers
Against a Backdrop of Jewish Culture
By JANET MASLIN
"…this novel’s bracing intellectual energy never flags. Though it is finally more a work of showmanship than scholarship, it affirms Ms. Goldstein’s position as a satirist…."
The title of the book under review is
36 Arguments for the
Existence of God: A Work of Fiction.
Related "by the numbers" material–
From the I Ching, commentaries on the lines of Hexagram 36–
"Here the Lord of Light is in a subordinate place and is wounded by the Lord of Darkness…."
"The dark power at first held so high a place that it could wound all who were on the side of good and of the light. But in the end it perishes of its own darkness, for evil must itself fall at the very moment when it has wholly overcome the good, and thus consumed the energy to which it owed its duration."
The Times review of 36 Arguments notes that the book's chapters of fiction number 36, as do the 36 philosophical arguments in the book's title and appendix.
The reviewer– "So much for structure. It is not Ms. Goldstein’s strong suit…."
Some structure related to the above occurrence of 36 in the I Ching—
Another example of eightfold symmetry:
The Large Hadron Collider
See also Angels & Demons in
Hollywood and in this journal.