The CEO of a software company I used to work for once posed shirtless for a local alternative newspaper, with gold glitter covering his chest, face and long black hair. This was during the late 1990s, when the hot air balloon known as the original dot-com bubble had yet to burst. Few software leaders go to that extreme to promote their companies, but I mention this memorable act of self-promotion in case you pick up Joshua Cohen’s BOOK OF NUMBERS, read the passage in which the head of a Google-like Internet search company strips off his kasaya robe and neoprene wetsuit to greet a visitor naked, and think: That’s more than a little farfetched. It is, but not as far as you might think.

BOOK OF NUMBERS is a novel for people who like the postmodern literary stylings of authors such as David Foster Wallace. If you loved the encyclopedic writing of INFINITE JEST or the detailed catalogue of corporate speak in stories such as “Mister Squishy” from OBLIVION, then you’ll enjoy BOOK OF NUMBERS, a big, rambunctious novel that delights in detailed descriptions of just about everything. The writing is exuberant throughout but is most vivid in the 250-page middle section that chronicles the company’s rise and is the memoir of the firm’s wetsuit-shedding leader.

"Buried amidst the techspeak...is a fascinating story of the power of high-tech’s most successful firms and the fate of privacy in a world in which everyone is connected. Cohen the fledgling novelist is a riveting character, especially in the book’s quieter, more contemplative moments."

Joshua Cohen’s novel is the story of two characters named Joshua Cohen. One is the book’s narrator, a mid-list novelist whose one novel came out on September 10, 2001, to much hoopla: a book party in which “[c]opies of the book were piled into pyramids”; where Finnity, Cohen’s editor, “all prepped, Harvard vowels and Yale degree,” talks about his author’s “migrant story” but mispronounces all the Hebrew words; and where party attendees do lines off the blurbs on the back of the book. It’s a huge celebration, until the events of the next morning bring the party to an abrupt end.

Because of the events of September 11, 2001, the book sells poorly. The paperback release was canceled, and the book received only two reviews: one positive, the other “positive with reservations.” Novelist Cohen scrounges to make a living as a writer but catches what appears to be a break when, in 2004, a new website asks him to interview the book’s second Joshua Cohen, the “genius, googolionaire, and Founder and CEO of Tetration.com.” The real Joshua Cohen’s decision to name the company Tetration is one of many clever details: tetration is a math term for the exponentiation of exponentiation. Exponential growth is fast, but tetrational growth is even faster. And that’s how fast the Tetration search engine is.

The interview doesn’t go well, but, in 2011, when Tetration’s Joshua Cohen, also known as the Principal, decides to write a memoir, he summons the novelist Joshua Cohen to work on the project. The novelist, on the verge of divorce and unable to shake his time-consuming affection for pornography, welcomes the large advance. But the memoir --- which consists of interview transcripts, first drafts, snippets of computer code, and strikethroughs of deleted text --- ends up including the shady dealings of Tetration president Kori Dienerowitz and a company known as b-Leaks, led by a mysterious, Julian Assange-like man named Balk.

Your appreciation of BOOK OF NUMBERS will depend on whether you think sentences such as “The diner was a kitsch joint of a bygone pantophagy, all unwiped formica and unctuous linoleums” are thrillingly precise or needlessly pretentious. In his attempt to cram information into the book, Cohen often lets the narrative get away from him. The relentless display of erudition overwhelms the story at times (as is the case, in my opinion, with much of Wallace’s work). The casual reader will find the techspeak-heavy middle section rough going. Cohen gets the technology right --- terms such as octalforty, eigenvalue and kludge (rhymes with stooge) are used throughout --- but one wonders how many readers will have the patience to slog through it.

Buried amidst the techspeak, however, is a fascinating story of the power of high-tech’s most successful firms and the fate of privacy in a world in which everyone is connected. Cohen the fledgling novelist is a riveting character, especially in the book’s quieter, more contemplative moments. Which just goes to show that you don’t have to cover yourself in glitter to command attention.