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Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman ::
Oh, genius. Itës an idea thatës been batted around, thatës been over-used, that has been beaten to death. I sometimes wonder if it even has any meaning any more. When I was in college, it seemed that every book that I was to read was a work of genius, that the authors were incomprehensible geniuses, that their understanding of the nature of our existence was so complex, so definitive that I would never be able to fully grasp what they were trying to say. The best I could do would be to sometimes discover a fleeting glimpse of one of their ideas. Then, if I was lucky, and I worked hard enough, I would write an essay on that idea and receive a respectable grade. Not being a genius myself, it was a frustrating existence, finding that there was an impossible gap between me and those writers, thinkers, mathematicians, and scientists I so admired, that I spent so much time thinking about. They were perfect in so many ways that I was not, they were divine and it was my duty to try, in vain, to understand them and report on what I saw.
It was exciting read this book, now that Iëve gotten some distance between myself and that closed-in, undergraduate existence I suffered through nearly four years ago. Because no matter how stingy you are with the idea of genius, Richard Feynman will make you want to pass the word out like pennies. He helped bring forth nuclear fission. He understood not only the impossible concepts of quantum mechanics, but also the mathematics on which the system of thought was founded. He cracked safes. He sensed people by their scent and their body heat. He taught himself the bongos. He even once was able to calculate, without the aid of any pencil, paper or computer, the trajectory of one of NASAës earliest rockets (apparently, he told the NASA scientist, much to their dismay, that their experiment had crashed into the ocean). And, though much of Feynmanës strengths were made clear in Genius, all of his shortcomings were, as well. He has little ability in, and even less tolerance for, what seemed to be all other areas of academia. He had perpetually troublesome relationships with people, especially women, and he treated almost everyone poorly.
So, though much of his mental ability proves to this day to be untouchable, Feynman was also not divine, not fundamentally any better than anyone else. I think on some level he was aware of that, which was what made him such a damn fine scientist, if not, in fact, a genius as well.
The Gospel According to the Simpsons ::
Whenever I think of religion in the Simpsons, three episodes come to mind immediately. First there was the one in which Homer, who has to skip town to evade a ,000 pledge he made to PBS (to get them to shut up), is unknowingly signed up by Reverend Lovejoy to work as a missionary in the South Pacific. Then there is the episode in which the Catholic church gets air time during the Superbowl, and they use voluptuous, suggestive women to advertise that they have "made some changes." Finally, do you remember the one in which Bart passes out the sheet music for Inna Godda Davida, and the church stupidly sings the entire seventeen minute song, organ solo and all? There are, of course, many, many more. So, with all of this irreverence, why would you expect to get anything but harsh criticism from someone who is seriously writing about religion in the Simpsons?
Well, get this: the Simpsons have an active religious life, they always struggle with spiritual and moralistic issues, they are always turning to their conception of God for help. Though organized religion many times bears the brunt of the show‘s satire, the characters are often guided by their religious beliefs, and their moral and spiritual sensibilities are often the only thing that guide them through a world of materialism, incomprehensibly bad decision-making, and outright insanity. (A world which, because it satirizes our own, is all too familiar.) So in this way, the Simpsons are much more intelligent about, and sensitive toward religion, moreso than any other show on television.
And no matter what role you think religion takes in the Simpsons, it‘s presence has regularly been one of the smartest, funniest aspects of the series. And it is one of the show‘s unique characteristics that, should the series ever end, I will miss the most.
Northern Tales ::
When I was younger, I had a tendency to adopt the writing style of whatever book I am reading at the time. Whether it be Kurt Vonnegut or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, it always seemed like Iëm trying to get inside another writerës head, to ask the question, “what would [such-and-such an author] do with this character?” I remember when I was in college, my fiction tended to have the same verbosity of a David Foster Wallace novel (although where his writing was elegant and direct, mine was labored and meandering). I havenët really felt myself doing this until recently, when I read this collection of stories. During that time I saw my writing style change quite a bit, much like it used to in college. Only this time I think it worked out better than it did when I was nineteen and reading hipster post-ironic tomes. Hereës an example of my writing, from a post I made to this site while I was at the height of this book:
I will drop off the tent, they will go to the store to buy groceries. I do not know what time I will be back, but I may be gone for a while. Is that OK with them? Yes, it is fine, they will see me when I get back. We are on the bus together, because we are headed in the same direction. The driver yells at us about standing behind the line, about how transfers cost an extra thirty cents.
Now, hereës a passage from the tale “The Whale, the Sea Scorpion, the Stone, and the Eagle,” which is about a girl who escapes from her husband, a whale:
A little while after, the whale tugged at the line again, and only now did it discover that it was not the girl but a bone at the end of the line. Then it rushed out of the house, gathered up all its bones, so that it became a whale again, and set off in pursuit of the fugitives, who were already far away. But in its haste, it forgot its hipbones.
Do you see the similarities here? Do you? Thereës a simplicity in the sentence structure, thereës a quirkiness to the world set forth by the matter-of-fact language. I know itës hard to see because whereas mine takes place in Chicago, the tale I chose takes place in a mystical land in which women actually marry whales. So I guess really, what I am trying to say here, is that you must trust me when I say that this book has influenced my writing style.
The single most compelling aspect of these tales is this: we see a world in which there is no barrier between the story tellerës physical world and their internal, subjective one. I know Iëm starting to sound all philosophical and mushy, but listen. Inasmuch as these stories do reveal something about the culture out of which they were born, and more specifically about the person who tells them, I saw a world in which there was no difference between the life of the story and the life of the story teller. This world is alive with spirits and spell-casting shaman and a man who lives on the moon and has a magical, hovering dog sled. This world is one in which stories flourish, in which they are everywhere. The stories of this world create a captivating vision of human existence, and the writing that conjures it up is worth trying to emulate.
The Bird Artist ::
Set in a small town in Newfoundland, The Bird Artist tells the story of Fabian Vas, village idiot, semitalented bird artist, and murderer of the lighthouse keeper. It is a sad, elegant story of a boy who grows up not by grand experiences, but by suffering through the foolish decisions his parents force on him and his own indecisiveness. This leads to a doomed arranged marriage, a ruined home life, and what would seem to be utter isolation from any real human contact. Really a very bleak situation. But through it all, Fabian is guided (however cryptically) by his true love, Margaret Handle, and his bird artist mentor, who he communicates with by mail. This is a story that is frustrating, that is bleak, that seems sometimes to be all but hopeless. But I found myself hoping for this luckless hero, because I saw too much of my own life in the one he creates for himself.
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