Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! eponymous
Title: "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"
Author: Eponymous; autobiographical
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
346 pages, includes index.
It's been an even longer while. Sorry about that. A recent yen for consolidating my creative pursuits has prompted me to pick up the reins again.
And I shall do so with this fucking terrific book by one of my personal heroes, Richard P. Feynman, who also happens to be one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century. I'm not sure exactly what it is he accomplished, other than doing a lot of the more seminal work that built up a lot of our current science.
There's a lot more to the guy, though, and he does not at all fit the stereotype of the pocket protector. For one thing, he was an incredibly insatiable womanizer who picked up girls almost literally everywhere he went and thought about almost nothing other than T&A if it was jiggling in front of him.
This guy worked at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project with folks like Niels Bohr in the early years of World War II, and was the only one dumb enough to look directly at the fury of a nuclear blast in the testing stages. When he wrote about that particular experience, there was a passage that struck me as being quintessentially Feynman:
That's part of another aspect of his personality, in fact--the prankster side. While he was working at Los Alamos, he caused quite a few security scares because of some gassers he pulled by cracking damn near every safe in the place.
Then there's the inexcusable ease with which he picks up languages (like Japanese and Portuguese, for Christ's sake)--and girls--and obscure historical topics. He was so interested in Mayan astronomy that he gave several acclaimed talks on the subject, in spite of having quite literally zero formal training.
The title comes from a humorous episode in his college years, in which he makes a pretty funny social gaffe at a formal gathering. The statement certainly seems like a good fit for Feynman's life in general--he approaches things with such good humor and friendly curiosity that you think he's just a regular guy.
Then he drops in a casual mention of the energy levels of the lighter nuclei and how he worked out all the theory for it in a hotel room in Brazil, and it really socks it to you--this man is brilliant.
It's sort of a window into the mind of genius, sitting shotgun on a ride through the heavens. You get the feeling, from the way Feynman goes all over the place with his little asides, that he's literally processing everything somewhere in the background noise. The amazing thing is that he calls himself "anti-intellectual" and that's certainly true--he's just an everyday charming skirt-chasing polyglot height-challenged nuclear physicist.
Scale: Seminal figure in 20th-century physics who gets loads of trim. Like Einstein on testosterone supplements and 50 times as fun. 5, baby.
Audacity: I still can't get past the balls on this guy at Los Alamos. 5.
Engagement: Immensely relatable. A regular guy who happens to knock out revolutionary quantum spin theory between bottles of booze and willing ladies. 5.
Sexiness: A surprising amount for a a book that glosses over the really freaky parts of this guy's life. Still, he's pretty schmo-ish, albeit hilarious. 4.
Average: 4.75. Pretty high-range, damn near top-of-the-shelf, and it would have been cheapened by graphic portrayals of Feynman's encounters with the complicated sex. Would read again. And again. And again. And possibly once more after that.
Author: Eponymous; autobiographical
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
346 pages, includes index.
It's been an even longer while. Sorry about that. A recent yen for consolidating my creative pursuits has prompted me to pick up the reins again.
And I shall do so with this fucking terrific book by one of my personal heroes, Richard P. Feynman, who also happens to be one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century. I'm not sure exactly what it is he accomplished, other than doing a lot of the more seminal work that built up a lot of our current science.
There's a lot more to the guy, though, and he does not at all fit the stereotype of the pocket protector. For one thing, he was an incredibly insatiable womanizer who picked up girls almost literally everywhere he went and thought about almost nothing other than T&A if it was jiggling in front of him.
This guy worked at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project with folks like Niels Bohr in the early years of World War II, and was the only one dumb enough to look directly at the fury of a nuclear blast in the testing stages. When he wrote about that particular experience, there was a passage that struck me as being quintessentially Feynman:
That's Feynman for you, I think. All through the book he gives off this sense of near-psychotic, singleminded curiosity about things that arouse his interest. He keeps at it and keeps at it and has this damnable ability to see how things work in his mind, like an exploded diagram--which is, in fact, how he describes it.
They gave out dark glasses that you could watch it with. Dark glasses! Twenty miles away, you couldn't see a damn thing through dark glasses. So I figured the only thing that could really hurt your eyes (bright light can never hurt your eyes) is ultraviolet light. I got behind a truck windshield, because the ultraviolet can't go through glass, so that would be safe, and so I could see the damn thing.
That's part of another aspect of his personality, in fact--the prankster side. While he was working at Los Alamos, he caused quite a few security scares because of some gassers he pulled by cracking damn near every safe in the place.
Then there's the inexcusable ease with which he picks up languages (like Japanese and Portuguese, for Christ's sake)--and girls--and obscure historical topics. He was so interested in Mayan astronomy that he gave several acclaimed talks on the subject, in spite of having quite literally zero formal training.
The title comes from a humorous episode in his college years, in which he makes a pretty funny social gaffe at a formal gathering. The statement certainly seems like a good fit for Feynman's life in general--he approaches things with such good humor and friendly curiosity that you think he's just a regular guy.
Then he drops in a casual mention of the energy levels of the lighter nuclei and how he worked out all the theory for it in a hotel room in Brazil, and it really socks it to you--this man is brilliant.
It's sort of a window into the mind of genius, sitting shotgun on a ride through the heavens. You get the feeling, from the way Feynman goes all over the place with his little asides, that he's literally processing everything somewhere in the background noise. The amazing thing is that he calls himself "anti-intellectual" and that's certainly true--he's just an everyday charming skirt-chasing polyglot height-challenged nuclear physicist.
Scale: Seminal figure in 20th-century physics who gets loads of trim. Like Einstein on testosterone supplements and 50 times as fun. 5, baby.
Audacity: I still can't get past the balls on this guy at Los Alamos. 5.
Engagement: Immensely relatable. A regular guy who happens to knock out revolutionary quantum spin theory between bottles of booze and willing ladies. 5.
Sexiness: A surprising amount for a a book that glosses over the really freaky parts of this guy's life. Still, he's pretty schmo-ish, albeit hilarious. 4.
Average: 4.75. Pretty high-range, damn near top-of-the-shelf, and it would have been cheapened by graphic portrayals of Feynman's encounters with the complicated sex. Would read again. And again. And again. And possibly once more after that.
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