Book Review
It is an established truth of popular culture that, after the first one, subsequent murders become easier to commit — the psychoemotional Rubicon already crossed, there is no longer the same hesitation to do so.
It has also been suggested that, in Life, it is better to regret the things we have done than the things we haven’t …
… and, on that basis, whilst none may have been as great as “I killed all those people”, I had a not inconsiderable number of regrets.
But those days are behind me now; for now, my only regret in Life is having learned to read — books are stupid and I’m never reading another one!
Depending upon which version you stumble upon, the Infinite Monkey Theorem states, variously, that, given an infinite amount of time …
- a single monkey randomly bashing keys on a keyboard/typewriter ¹
- an infinite number of monkeys randomly bashing keys on a keyboard/typewriter
… will, eventually produce William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
There are two subvariants of ‘2’ that I’ve encountered …
- One of the monkeys produces it alone whilst the others produce gibberish.
- All the monkeys produce it between them — along with a lot of gibberish.
Any way you examine the proposition, however, I think it fairly safe to say that it’ll be quite a while before Hamlet is written.
In summation, therefore, what can I say about this book?
I can say “Five monkeys, two typewriters, ten minutes.”
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¹ Don’t worry, millennials … it doesn’t matter what a keyboard (or typewriter) is … you just keep pressing the big selfie button on your screen — clinical Narcissism is good, m’kaaay.
The adults (i.e. the non-millennials) amongst you will probably appreciate this mix more.
