Mone, Gregory

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MONE, Gregory

PERSONAL: Male. Education: Attended Science and Environmental Reporting program, New York University.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—Popular Science, 2 Park Ave., 9th Floor, New York, NY 10016.

CAREER: Popular Science, New York, NY, associate editor.

WRITINGS:

The Wages of Genius (novel), Carroll & Graf (New

York, NY), 2003.

Contributor of numerous articles to Popular Science magazine.

SIDELIGHTS: Gregory Mone's first novel, The Wages of Genius, was widely praised for its skewering of the dot-com boom culture. "They're all here: The goateed CEO speaking in new economy koans, the weave-belted turks racking up frequent flier miles, the ergo chairs cradling clenched rear ends," Gabe Weisert wrote in the San Francisco Bay Guardian Literary Supplement. The novel's protagonist is Edward, a young man who drops out of graduate school to work at a dot-com startup called Gleebs. Edward is convinced that his life is destined to follow that of genius physicist Albert Einstein, and, as he tells his story, Edward prefaces each chapter with an anecdote about Einstein's life. The most important parallel in Edward's mind is that Einstein made his greatest discovery at age twenty-six. With his twenty-seventh birthday rapidly approaching, Edward is in a hurry to make a big discovery of his own. He finds plenty of time to work on a great breakthrough during his loosely structured work days, and, as Lisa Parsons noted on HippoPress.com, he takes his quest very seriously. "What sort of edge will Edward fall off when his twenty-seventh birthday comes and he's still not Einstein?," Parsons wondered. That questions is what "keeps the pages turning."

Many books have been written poking fun at the blind optimism of those who fueled the dot-com boom, but eye reviewer Alex Bozikovic ranked Mone's effort as better than most. He is "awfully ambitious, attempting to combine . . . a grad-student Bildungsroman and light social satire," Bozikovic wrote, and "it's much more interesting than a straight satire would be." A Publishers Weekly reviewer also praised the book, writing that "Mone is a solid writer with a flair for satire and a nice touch in his understated characterizations." Possibly the highest praise came from Weisert, who called The Wages of Genius "the debut of a genuinely talented writer."