The Putnam prize is mentioned heavily in A Beautiful Mind. The way Nasar tells it, Nash's inability to win the Putnam was a huge source of jealousy when he was an undergrad, and it prefigures his loss of the Fields Medal in the year before his schizophrenia sets in; she wants us to suspect that this perpetual snubbing is part of what drove him crazy. I'm a little more than halfway through the book now. The earlier part, describing Nash's feats, was more exciting. The more I read about the schizophrenia, the less I want to read on; I guess it's both depressing and compelling. Failed genius is, maybe, my own central narrative, the one that guides my life. I don't want to watch it play out.

POST SCRIPTUM: This post was addressed to the author's aunt, who had recently loaned him her copy of A Beautiful Mind, a terrific book about mathematical people and the lives they lead, often quite pathetically misshapen—as in pathos, that is.