PD Smith

I’ve just been review­ing a fas­ci­nat­ing new book on Ger­man-speak­ing exiles in Los Ange­les dur­ing the 1940s and 50s — Erhard Bahr’s Weimar on the Pacif­ic. (Only Thomas Mann could look as mis­er­able as that in Cal­i­for­nia.) As many as 15,000 refugees from fas­cism made their way to Cal­i­for­nia, most end­ing up in the city of the angels — although Brecht rather ungrate­ful­ly likened the city to hell. They includ­ed Arnold Schoen­berg, Fritz Lang, Franz Wer­fel, and Alfred Döblin.

Some, like Brecht, were hard-boiled for­mer res­i­dents of the sin city that was Berlin in the 1920s and they felt alien­at­ed (for want of a bet­ter word) in this ver­dant, Arca­di­an city. Döblin for one com­plained about the lush green­ness that he saw every­where. Read­ing this remind­ed me of an arti­cle I did a while back on Döblin’s won­der­ful mod­ernist nov­el, Berlin Alexan­der­platz (1929), for Alan Ross’s Lon­don Mag­a­zine. As I don’t sup­pose it’s avail­able online, I thought I’d post it on my own site. It explores the sci­en­tif­ic themes in the nov­el and shows how these are root­ed in Döblin’s own train­ing in psy­chi­a­try. He was one of many Ger­man-speak­ing writ­ers in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry who had a sci­en­tif­ic back­ground and who often brought sci­ence into their work. If you’ve not read Döblin’s nov­el, I’d cer­tain­ly rec­om­mend it. And to get you in the mood, you can read my arti­cle here.

Just in case any of you are won­der­ing why I called this site ‘Kafka’s mouse’ (and I know some of you are), you might like to read this piece I’ve just writ­ten for the Inde­pen­dent. They asked me to write about my ‘Book of a Life­time’ and I decid­ed to bend the rules slight­ly and to do one on a short sto­ry. Here it is:

I first read Kafka’s sto­ry “Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse- folk” when I was study­ing Ger­man lit­er­a­ture. It has haunt­ed me ever since. It was writ­ten in March 1924, three months before Kaf­ka died. He had tuber­cu­lo­sis of the lar­ynx, and was unable to speak — a poignant back­ground for a sto­ry about a singer. But it was Kafka’s writ­ing, not his trag­ic life, that made such an impres­sion on me.

Although the title tells us this is a sto­ry about mice, the word is nev­er used. You become uncom­fort­ably aware that he is writ­ing about us. Part of Kafka’s genius is to trick the read­er into see­ing our own world dif­fer­ent­ly. When Josephine sings, her audi­ence is trans­fixed with­out know­ing why. The nar­ra­tor can­not pin down what it is about her singing that means so much to them. They lis­ten in utter silence and some­times it is dif­fi­cult to tell whether it is the singing or the still­ness that sur­rounds her voice that is so com­pelling. Para­dox­i­cal­ly, those lis­ten­ing feel her voice is noth­ing spe­cial; but there is an elu­sive qual­i­ty that moves them: “Some­thing of our poor brief child­hood is in it, some­thing of lost hap­pi­ness that can nev­er be found again, but also some­thing of active dai­ly life, of its small gai­eties”.

Tucked away at the back of the col­lec­tion Wed­ding Prepa­ra­tions in the Coun­try and Oth­er Sto­ries, trans­lat­ed beau­ti­ful­ly by Willa and Edwin Muir, the sto­ry is a remark­able med­i­ta­tion on the pow­er of art and its place in soci­ety. Kaf­ka is the nar­ra­tor and the artist, crit­i­cis­ing Josephine (who has dis­ap­peared, pre­sum­ably in a fit of pri­madon­na pique) while also cel­e­brat­ing art’s abil­i­ty to see beyond the mun­dane world. The dis­turb­ing strange­ness of his oth­er works is absent — at least on the sur­face. But the won­der­ful ambi­gu­i­ties that Kaf­ka delights in (or was tor­ment­ed by) are here, as is his unique sen­si­tiv­i­ty: he saw shades of psy­cho­log­i­cal sub­tle­ty in sit­u­a­tions that most would scarce­ly notice.

As a lec­tur­er at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don, I start­ed writ­ing a Kafkaesque nov­el about aca­d­e­m­ic life. To whom else could you turn in a uni­ver­si­ty where the institution’s founder, Jere­my Ben­tham, is kept mum­mi­fied in a glass case in the entrance hall? Lat­er, while research­ing the lives of sci­en­tists, I was struck by the par­al­lels between Josephine’s hon­oured role in her soci­ety and the way we idolise sci­en­tists such as Ein­stein, whom Kaf­ka met in Prague. After all, the great­est sci­ence — as Richard Dawkins has said — allows us to “hear the galax­ies sing”. Whether Josephine rep­re­sents sci­ence or art, to me her singing sym­bol­is­es what life is about: the quest to under­stand our­selves and our place in the uni­verse. Such songs are dif­fi­cult if not impos­si­ble to describe in words. But like love, they infuse life with mean­ing.

I was very sor­ry to hear this morn­ing of the death from can­cer of the philoso­pher Richard Rorty. Simon Black­burn has talked about Rorty’s “extra­or­di­nary gift for duck­ing and weav­ing and lay­ing smoke.” But as a research stu­dent I found his ideas both chal­leng­ing and lib­er­at­ing.

It’s true that many sci­en­tists found his phi­los­o­phy unac­cept­able. “The fact that Newton’s vocab­u­lary lets us pre­dict the world more eas­i­ly than Aristotle’s does not mean that the world speaks New­ton­ian”.

Today I too have real prob­lems with state­ments like that. But for some­one study­ing the rela­tions between sci­ence and lit­er­a­ture in the 1990s, the work of Rorty and oth­ers empha­sis­ing the key role played by lan­guage in our expe­ri­ence of the world offered a fas­ci­nat­ing way into the prob­lem.

In the end, he seemed to be say­ing that valu­able knowl­edge about the world was not just to be found in the sci­ences. The real ques­tion was not whether it was sci­ence or lit­er­a­ture (or reli­gion?) that could claim to have the most per­fect descrip­tion of the world. Rather that each con­tributes a dif­fer­ent under­stand­ing to the sum of knowl­edge. That was an insight I’m grate­ful for.

Appre­ci­a­tions: NYT, Wash­ing­ton Post, Wag­gish, Cos­mic Vari­ance

When Albert Ein­stein died in 1955 his brain was removed, appar­ent­ly for med­ical research. What is less well known is that his oph­thal­mol­o­gist, Hen­ry Abrams, also cut out the great physicist’s eyes.

“The whole thing took about 20 min­utes,” he said lat­er. “I just need­ed scis­sors and for­ceps.”

Appar­ent­ly, Abrams keeps the eyes in a bot­tle in a New Jer­sey bank. He told one of Einstein’s biog­ra­phers that “when you look into his eyes you’re look­ing into the beau­ties and mys­ter­ies of the world.”

(Okay, so these aren’t real­ly Einstein’s pick­led eyes in this pic­ture. After my biog­ra­phy of the rel­a­tiv­i­ty mae­stro was pub­lished my sis­ter gave this to me as a delight­ful­ly ghoul­ish gift. But of course it’s the thought that counts.)

Eyes and see­ing are the sub­ject of two very dif­fer­ent but equal­ly fas­ci­nat­ing new books that I’ve been review­ing. They are: The Eye: A Nat­ur­al His­to­ry by Simon Ings, and Van­i­ties of the Eye: Vision in Ear­ly Mod­ern Euro­pean Cul­ture by Stu­art Clark.

Simon Ings tells the “sprawl­ing and epic sto­ry” of the eye – a 538 mil­lion-year his­to­ry from the crys­tal eyes of the pre­his­toric trilo­bites to our very own “squishy ver­te­brate eyes”.

On the way he explores the physics of oth­er more exot­ic eyes, such as that of the drag­on­fly Anax junius. This crea­ture is blessed with the dens­est com­pound eye on the plan­et – made up of no less than 28,500 “omma­tidia”, or mini cam­era-type eyes. Spare a thought for the poor nat­u­ral­ist who had to count them all! Among the oth­er weird eyes he dis­cuss­es is the brit­tlestar (Ophio­co­ma wendtii) which “is one huge com­plex eye, its whole sur­face punc­tured by lit­tle eye­spots linked by nerve bun­dles run­ning just under the skin”.

There’s no doubt that The Eye: A Nat­ur­al His­to­ry is a feast of sci­ence and his­to­ry. But for my taste it’s rather too rich a diet. The ency­clopaedic cov­er­age of the book tends to weak­en the nar­ra­tive. But if you’re look­ing for one big book to tell you every­thing about the eye, then this may well be the one for you.

Stu­art Clark’s study is aimed at a more schol­ar­ly mar­ket. But if phras­es like “the lan­guage of veridi­cal­i­ty” or “ocu­lar­ce­ntrism” don’t put you off, then this fas­ci­nat­ing cul­tur­al his­to­ry has much to offer.

His theme is how peo­ple in Europe came to dis­trust the evi­dence of their own eyes in the ear­ly mod­ern peri­od (the 15th to the 17th cen­turies). The verac­i­ty of vision was unset­tled by beliefs about how demons could trick our eyes.

Accord­ing to Clark, peo­ple viewed the Dev­il as “a con­sum­mate still life artist, able to deceive the view­er into con­fus­ing an image of some­thing for the thing itself”.

Appar­ent­ly one of the Devil’s wickedest wiles was the illu­so­ry steal­ing of penis­es.

From mad­ness and mag­ic to dreams and demons, Van­i­ties of the Eye is a detailed and dense­ly argued account of the visu­al cul­ture of this for­ma­tive peri­od. Clark’s find­ings will make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to our under­stand­ing of the rhetoric of the Ref­or­ma­tion and the scep­ti­cism which fuelled the Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion. It is an impres­sive piece of research and a book which will open your eyes to a new aspect of intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ry.

Most of us take see­ing for grant­ed. After all, what is there think about? You open your eyes and it’s all, well, there. But as both of these books show, vision is a com­plex and sub­tle process. And see­ing has a com­pelling his­to­ry – both bio­log­i­cal and cul­tur­al.

You can read the pub­lished review for the Guardian here.

I used to be pro­fes­sion­al­ly con­cerned with vision – I was a pho­tog­ra­ph­er.

This was one of my more com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful pic­tures, tak­en in Som­er­set.

(And just in case any­one won­ders: No, we don’t all live in thatched hous­es in Eng­land.)

There’s more of my pho­tos on Flickr if you’re inter­est­ed. I keep mean­ing to add some more…

Remem­ber the bam­boo I men­tioned in my first TNB post? Well, it’s now plant­ed and doing fine.

Which is more than can be said for my back after exca­vat­ing the hole in our back gar­den. The ground turned out to be most­ly brick and stone. I guess that’s what hap­pens if you buy a house built on indus­tri­al land.

Actu­al­ly some of the stones in the hole were rather beau­ti­ful peb­bles.

I’ve often won­dered how long it takes a riv­er or the sea to cre­ate such per­fect­ly smooth peb­bles. Not quite as long, per­haps, as it took nature to come up with the eye…

[orig­i­nal­ly post­ed on The Ner­vous Break­down]

I have to admit it: The Lord of The Rings was one of my favourite reads as a child. By the age of thir­teen I’d ploughed through it three times in total. I can still remem­ber the pure escapist bliss of read­ing it while lying in a ham­mock beneath the fruit trees in our Essex gar­den dur­ing the sum­mer hol­i­days (no school!), fol­low­ing the hob­bits on every step of their trav­els through Mid­dle Earth.

Gol­lum was one of my favourite char­ac­ters. Admit­ted­ly, he was deceit­ful, mur­der­ous and had a seri­ous per­son­al hygiene prob­lem. Hard­ly a pos­i­tive role mod­el. In fact that was prob­a­bly why I liked him. There’s some­thing about wicked­ness that is always more intrigu­ing in fic­tion than good­ness.

But it might also have had some­thing to do with the fact that my dad did a very good impres­sion of Gol­lum.

Smeagol’s pre­cious, my pre­cious…

My dad was great at read­ing sto­ries aloud and it was this that got me hooked in the first place. He made me realise that there is a mag­i­cal place you can go to when the world seems bleak. It’s called imag­i­na­tion.

Yes­ter­day I had my very own Gol­lum moment – the arrival of fin­ished copies of my book. It’s deeply sad, but I have to admit that there was a very strong impulse in me to take a copy into a dark cor­ner and whis­per “my pre­cious” to it soft­ly.

I didn’t though. I resist­ed. But after work­ing on a book for four years you get strange­ly pos­ses­sive about it, and the moment when you can final­ly hold the fruit of your labours in your hands is spe­cial. Ask any writer and they’ll tell you the same.

Of course, as with any per­son­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant moment, there’s more than one emo­tion in the mix:

Relief that the work is com­plete. Sat­is­fac­tion that, despite all the dif­fi­cul­ties you’ve encoun­tered on the way, you final­ly man­aged to get there in the end. Pride? Yes that is there too, although it goes with­out say­ing that no work is per­fect and no one knows that bet­ter than the author. And of course there’s anx­i­ety, because as you hold that book in your hands, you know that it is about to go out into the world. That means you’ve lost con­trol over what has been up till now an intense­ly per­son­al rela­tion­ship between writer and text. In a sense, it is no longer just your book – the whole world (poten­tial­ly!) gets to share the intel­lec­tu­al jour­ney you’ve been on.

Maybe I’m read­ing a lit­tle too much into the moment. But obses­sions – and writ­ing a book has to rank as a major obses­sion – are like that. Just ask Gol­lum.

My pre­cious…

Of course, I haven’t just been read­ing my own book! There are two oth­ers that have caught my reviewer’s eye: A World With­out Time: The For­got­ten Lega­cy of Gödel and Ein­stein, by Palle Your­grau and Sky in a Bot­tle by Peter Pesic – both have just been pub­lished in paper­back.

Towards the end of his life, Ein­stein claimed he went to his office “just to have the priv­i­lege of walk­ing home with Kurt Gödel.” The two men could be seen strolling through the streets of Prince­ton where both worked at the Insti­tute for Advanced Study. The wild-haired pro­fes­sor was often seen lick­ing an ice-cream, which appar­ent­ly scan­dalised the prim Prince­to­ni­ans.

Your­grau tells how Gödel took Einstein’s the­o­ries to places even the great meis­ter of rel­a­tiv­i­ty dared not go: he imag­ined a world with­out time. For exam­ple, Gödel cal­cu­lat­ed how a space­ship could trav­el into the past or the future. He “worked out the pre­cise speed and fuel require­ments, omit­ting only the lunch menu”.

Gödel’s favourite movie was Snow White. “Only fables present the world as it should be and as if it had mean­ing,” he said rather poignant­ly. Gödel even­tu­al­ly descend­ed into para­noia and hypochon­dria (he died in 1978 weigh­ing just 65 pounds). But Yourgrau’s wit­ty por­trait of this friend­ship between two of the most extra­or­di­nary minds of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry is very read­able & I cer­tain­ly rec­om­mend it.

Physi­cist and musi­cian Peter Pesic con­cerns him­self with a ques­tion which has per­plexed philoso­phers, sci­en­tists and chil­dren alike since the begin­ning of his­to­ry: why is the sky blue? His illu­mi­nat­ing jour­ney into the his­to­ry of light and colour shows that attempts to answer this appar­ent­ly sim­ple ques­tion involve “the secrets of mat­ter and light, the scope of the uni­verse in space and time, the des­tiny of the earth, and deep human feel­ings.”

Leonar­do da Vin­ci, Horace de Saus­sure, and John Tyn­dall all tried to cap­ture the azure beau­ty of sky in a bot­tle. But as Pesic shows, it was poet and artist John Ruskin who first under­stood the mech­a­nism that makes the sky blue. Ruskin was in the audi­ence at Tyndall’s attempt to recre­ate the won­drous blue of sky in a bot­tle using pho­to­chem­i­cal reac­tions in 1869. Rather remark­ably “the vision­ary artist saw more clear­ly than the sober sci­en­tist.” For although Tyn­dall clung on to the idea that par­ti­cles in the air cre­ate blue sky, Ruskin grasped that air mol­e­cules them­selves were respon­si­ble. This was con­firmed by Einstein’s 1910 paper on opales­cence, show­ing that the colour of the sky is caused by gas mol­e­cules scat­ter­ing the sun’s light.

A fas­ci­nat­ing book from a writer who, like me, is intrigued by the par­al­lels between sci­ence and the arts. You can read my brief reviews of these two books for the Guardian, as well as a cou­ple of oth­er new releas­es, here and here.

Blue sky think­ing is a hot sub­ject in pub­lish­ing at the moment. In the last day or so Götz Hoeppe’s Why the Sky Is Blue: Dis­cov­er­ing the Col­or of Life has just land­ed on my desk from Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Press. Ide­al sum­mer read­ing by the sound of it…

[orig­i­nal­ly post­ed on The Ner­vous Break­down]