What is the allure of the torus?
ohhhh I am so excited to answer this question.
so this blog is primarily focused on a novel called Skippy Dies by Paul Murray (published 2010) that I became obsessed with in early 2020, the complete reasons for which are too complicated to explain here. but in short: no other book I've read has been so expertly constructed, so laden with foreshadowing and self-referentialism; the characterization is so specific and well-done, the plot builds dread and winds down perfectly. it's an INCREDIBLY rewarding book to re-read because there are hints that point to what will happen later in the book literally everywhere you look, it's just so incredibly dense with meaning while also being very readable and a very good story. and like, not to brag but I'm a pretty big reader, I've been reading 40-70 books a year for over a decade at this point. there is nothing that comes even close to Skippy Dies.
the book is set in an Irish boarding school in 2003 and follows the lead-up and aftermath of the death of the 14-year-old titular character Daniel "Skippy" Juster, who dies in the prologue during a doughnut-eating contest with his friend Ruprecht, the school's resident child prodigy/genius.
Ruprecht is obsessed with mathematics and quantum physics, and he specifically develops an obsession with string theory/M-theory; these become major talking points of the book, and there is a lot of discussion about hidden dimensions, the Big Bang, and the dissonance between astrophysics and quantum theory. Ruprecht's fixation with string theory and "symmetry" becomes a metaphor for his longing for genuine love and connection--which is understandable, seeing as he is bullied and dismissed by basically everyone in the school besides Skippy.
of course, doughnuts also become one of the major recurring symbols throughout the book, strongly associated with Ruprecht in particular (who is my favorite character, since he's a perfect example of the fat nerd archetype I always fall for). from there, it's easy to draw the metaphorical line between the doughnut-shape (the torus!) and the "closed loops" of string theory.
once you realize that, you notice how many references there are to other torusus/loops within the book: my pinned post is basically a list of the doughnut-shaped things that appear in or are referenced in the book.
a lot of the quantum physics talk in Skippy Dies is lifted from the nonfiction book The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene, which Murray read prior to writing Skippy Dies; that book is absolutely laden with toruses and loops, and the more I looked into it the more it became obvious to me that the torus/loops are absolutely everywhere in the realm of quantum physics and mathematics: black holes, orbits, Escher loops, et cetera.
it felt like uncovering a secret understanding of the world that I would never have realized if not for Skippy Dies. it seems as if almost everything in not only quantum physics, but also most of science and the whole world, has something to do with toruses or circular loops. I see them everywhere now. it feels like a brilliant hidden world, this shape that is nestled in the heart of so much math and science; and it's just so mind-blowingly brilliant to me that a novelist seemingly figured this out and hid it inside of his fiction. (loops and holes are mentioned/used metaphorically in most of his other books too, but never to the extent that he does it in Skippy Dies)
I'm obviously not the first or only person to realize the utility and ubiquity of the torus--other pieces of media, such as Nope and Everything Everywhere All At Once, also rely heavily on the torus/looping imagery to prove a metaphorical point. but for me it's all about Skippy Dies, a book that to me seems infinity larger than what exists in its pages; to me, it seems to encapsulate everything about life and human knowledge, and after almost 5 years of reading and rereading it, there are still references to internal and external things that I pick up on that I'd never noticed before. (the novel is also structured like a torus--the prologue scene happens chronologically about 2/3rds into the book, giving it an inherently looping quality; especially if you're someone who reads it over and over again lol)
so. that's the allure of the torus. hopefully this makes any kind of sense to anybody else and doesn't come off as absolutely deranged. thank you so much for the ask, though, this was really interesting to try to explain concretely π
