Where Do You Stop? the Personal: History, Adventures, Experiences, and Observations of Peter Leroy (Continued)

by Eric Kraft

Book Overview

Peter Leroy finally completes a junior-high-school science assignment, thirty years late, exploring along the way quantum physics, entropy, epistemology, principles of uncertainty and discontinuity, a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0517585448
• ISBN13: 9780517585443
• Release Date: September 1992
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• Length: 181 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Wow! This is one of the most interesting I have ever read!

Using his Pychon-esque writing capabilities, his clever, but not flashy wit, and unbelievable narrative abilities, Eric Kraft has shapen one the most unique and interesting books I have ever read. It was recomended to me by a friend. I was reluctant to start, but I wound up reading it in about two days. The series of books are the memoirs or a fiction character, and his life on long island. Within the narrative, there are simple clues that begin to tell you the this Fictional character isn't alwaystelling whole truth. But, he's fictional to begin with, so does it really matter. The book is filled with great quirks like that, not to mention that it is one of the funniest things you will ever read. Eric is one of the few authors who truly understands the mind of an 11 year old boy. He offers a wonderful glimps of life as a child during the 1950's, and touches issues such as race, funding in public schools, and ratio of beer to lemonade creates the perfect shandy.

Where will he stop?

Just as I wish Eric Kraft was my junior high language arts teacher, I also wish I had Miss Reingold for 7th grade general science. As with his other books, Kraft once again takes me back to childhood - this time to adolescence - during a time when my mind was a bit more open, and on occasion would be challenged by a caring teacher who tempted me to think outside the textbook.This book is a joy to read; so entertaining in fact, that the reader can easily lose himself in the anecdotes, and later have the full meaning of the book sneak up on him. In 7th grade science class, Peter must answer the question "Where do you stop?" With little specific direction from his teacher, he is forced to abandon his encyclopedias and open his mind, and finds himself applying the meaning of the question to various parts of his life. As a result, this novel modestly approaches the grand subject of how the individual fits into the universe - how infinite is each of our effect on each other and the world? and where does it stop? or does it stop? As with his other works, it is difficult to do this book justice in a review as its contents can be enjoyed on so many levels (from the scientific and philosophical to reflections on childhood fantasies). For my sake, and the sake of other readers who love Eric Kraft, I hope the words "to be continued" were not merely symbolic of the book's title, but that the story will continue...Here's hoping he does not stop.

A Great American Non-Aristotelian Novel

Take one ten-year-old boy going on eleven, quantum physics, the mysteries of sex, grown-ups and an apparently ever-widening world to know and you have the ingredients of this entrancing novel by Erik Kraft. I recommend it highly to all readers as a painless and entertaining way to get a genuine feel for the the non-aristotelian approach implicit in quantum physics as filtered through the brain of a wonderfully curious youth. The book is written in the form of a memoir by middle-aged hotel owner and memoirist, Peter Leroy, and continues the recounting of his nineteen-fifties childhood in Babbington, Long Island, "Clam Capital of America," which began with the previous Kraft novel, Little Follies. The present title, refers to a question for a science paper assigned by Peter's new seventh grade "general science" teacher Miss Rheingold, who has distracting legs, a passion for quantum physics and a disconcerting way of asking discumbobulating questions. The science paper must answer one of the six questions that the children pick out of a glass bowl on the first day of class. Their paper must include a demonstration or experiment and diagrams and has no deadline. You might wish to try your hand at them yourself:Where does the light go when the light goes out?When is now?What is the biggest question of all?Why are you you?What really happens?Where do you stop? (p. 43)Peter picks the final question and with some of the other members of his group finds that he gets taken over by the question: "If it seems like a simple question to you, try thinking about it with a ten- or eleven-year-old brain. Well, where are the edges of things? Where in space-time, for instance, does one phase of your life end and another begin? Where do you mark the onset of an idea, a discovery? Where do you mark the end of a belief?" (p. 5) The novel follows Peter's discoveries during the school year as he becomes aware that the distinct boundaries that separate people, `ideas' and things may not appear so clearly when examined closely. The scientifically and sexually-awakening Peter takes particular delight in realizing that smelling anything involves taking molecules of that substance into ourselves and that at a sub-atomic level some of the electrons from one thing or person may overlap with those of another. He explains this to Ariane, a seventeen-year old woman, for whom he has developed a crush:" '...You think you stop here, at your skin--'I touched her. Without thinking about the liberty Iwas taking, I put my hand on her leg...Apparently I was too close, because she slapped my hand and said, 'Down, boy.''Sorry,' I said, though I was not sorry at all. 'Butthe thing is that you don't stop here.' I hesitated a moment, then touched her finger, just barely touched it, to show her what I meant. "This isn't the edge of you. It looks like it, but it isn't. Little bits of you are spreading out. All over the room. I know they are, because I can smell them.''Tha

Funny,wise, philosophical,a novel about childhood in the 50s

Who but Eric Kraft could write a novel about diffusion? "Where do you stop?" is the question assigned to 11-year- old Peter LeRoy by his science teacher as the molecules of her perfume pervade the room. The image of diffusion per- vades the novel, from Peter's childhood memory of mixing peas and mashed potatoes, to racial intergration in the fictional community of Babbington. Memory itself is a series of vignettes suspended in the "Zwischenraum" of time. And of course we can't really tell where one of Mr. Kraft's novels stops and the next one begins as he chronicles Peter's life. The story ("to be continued") is told with Mr. Kraft's usual humor and digressiveness. We learn more about Babbington of the 1950s, clam capital of the world, and catch Peter at a time between childhood and awakening sexuality (that perfume). Grandpa Herb, the Studebaker salesman, makes another great invention, an automatic garden sprinkler.