Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman by Richard Feynman and Ralph Leighton

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

One of the way you can tell the generations apart is what their association is for Richard Feynman. 

 

For Boomers or older, I suspect the answers would tend to be “he worked on the atomic bomb” or “a physicist who discovered stuff having to do with quantum mechanics.” 

 

For us younger Gen Xers, the first thing that often comes to mind is the Challenger disaster and Feynman’s role in the investigation. In particular, his reaming of NASA for lying about its own calculator of disaster likelihood, and his demonstration of how even ice water could make the booster rocket seals brittle. 

 

I highly recommend reading up on the Rogers Commission, and Feynman’s role in it - if you want a brutal dissection of institutional failure, it is quite a doozy. 

 

One thing that everyone can agree on is that Feynman was a Character™, one of those larger than life personalities that nobody forgets, for better or worse. 

 

Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman is the earlier of two autobiographical books by Feynman. Ralph Leighton is listed as an “As told to,” which usually means a ghost writer, but it is more complicated in this case. Leighton recorded Feynman’s stories on tape, then transcribed them, cleaning things up so that they work as a book. The result reads very much like listening to Feynman tell rambling stories rather than a formal memoir. For this reason, I credit both as authors. 

 

A few things to start off with. Feynman was born in 1918, and was very much of his generation in certain ways. The way he talks about women in the book is at times really awful, for example. As is his approach to picking up women. Even back then, he probably got away with it in part because he was “brutally handsome,” as the Eagles put it. 

 

He also had a reputation for making sexist jokes while teaching, which is pretty much in line with his generation of white males. That said, there is some nuance. Later in life, he went to bat for a female colleague in her claim of gender discrimination, which perhaps shows some positive growth. 

 

With those caveats, the book is really quite funny, and full of interesting stories, both about science and about things far removed from science. 

 

I particularly loved the chapter on his learning to pick locks while at Los Alamos. Apparently security was not as tight as people thought - he usually just got into people’s files, and then handed them back in person when he was done. 

 

Feynman’s stories about music are also quite good, from his learning to play Samba music while in Brazil, to the time he got hired to play percussion for an avant garde ballet. 

 

The book moves in essentially chronological order, from childhood to his teaching in the 1970s. I definitely smiled at the tales of his weird electronic and other scientific experiments as a kid - including nearly burning his house down. I probably should plead the 5th here about some of the stuff my brother and I did - and the stuff I myself did without any co-conspirator. I’m no genius, but I did love to play with science. 

 

Another story which caught my eye was the time he went to a dance and ended up hanging out with a couple of deaf girls, who invited him to their own dance event. Feynman was generally a good sport about trying things - the book is full of stories that contain “why not?” that end with fun things happening. This is one of those, and ended up being a formative experience for the young Feynman, as he realized that other subcultures could be vibrant and comfortable, leaving him as a sort of outsider yet welcome. I too have had those experiences, and found them as wonderful as Feynman did. 

 

Throughout the book as well, Feynman goes down these weird rabbit trails. Like the time he was in a philosophy class, and the “stream of consciousness” became a theme. He went on to carefully record his experiences as he went to sleep. 

 

At first I noticed a lot of subsidiary things that had little to do with falling asleep. I noticed, for instance, that I did a lot of thinking by speaking to myself internally. I could also imagine things visually. 

 

Wow, that is so very much me. I have a lively internal conversation, and always have. That’s how I think. When you read my blog posts, what you see is the end result of my own thinking things through by talking to myself. 

 

Another truly hilarious chapter is the one on how Feynman got drafted after he completed is work at Los Alamos. He was rejected on grounds of mental unfitness. His account of his interview with the psychologist is an epic troll job. I mean, the questions were pretty damn stupid, and Feynman refused to take them seriously. 

 

He openly admitted he talked to his deceased wife (she tragically died of tuberculosis during his work on the bomb - they got married knowing she was gravely ill.) And then got pissy when asked what he says to her. And also started asking the questions back to the psychiatrist. 

 

But the best might be when asked “How much do you value life?” and he answered “Sixty-four.” I mean, how does one answer the question? What is the unit of measurement? 

 

Some of the stories are a bit more serious. As a new professor at Cornell, he was tested on his approach to students by being asked to decide whether to take a late application from a student. When Feynman made his decision without looking at the photo, he passed, asking why the photo would be relevant. 

 

I also liked his explanation as to why he ended up turning down a lot of invitations. He felt they put pressure on him to perform, to accomplish something. 

 

It was a brilliant idea: You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing. 

 

“It’s their mistake, not my failing.” I am feeling that a lot these days. I know I am a tremendous disappointment to my parents. But that really isn’t my failing, but their mistake about who I am and what I want to be and do with my life. 

 

On a more humorous note, there is the story of the time he ended up signing one of those law school contracts. By that I mean, one where the concept of “consideration” is central. He agreed to hand over some patent idea to the government “for the sum of one dollar.” 

 

Unlike most people who sign these nominal consideration contracts, he literally demanded his dollar. This warms my lawyer heart. 

 

He then went and spent that buck on candy which he shared with everyone back at the lab. 

 

Oh, and the other time, when he agreed to give a lecture at a local city college. He did it on condition that he didn’t have to sign his name more than thirteen times - including for the check. 

 

The problem? It ended up that the form to receive the check was….number fourteen. So he refused to sign. But they couldn’t not pay him - that messed up the whole system. Ultimately, someone had to pull strings to get that signature waived. Good stuff. 

 

There is a whole chapter devoted to Feynman learning to draw. It started with a discussion, and a sort-of friendly bet. It took time, but eventually he got pretty good at it. His attempts to teach physics to his artist friend weren’t as successful - said artist eventually said about some demonstration that it was” just like fucking.” And that was the end of that. 

 

A few of Feynman’s artworks sold, believe it or not. He never did quite understand how, but I think he eventually did realize how art works. 

 

I understood at last what art is really for, at least in certain respects. It gives somebody, individually, pleasure. You can make something that somebody likes so much that they’re depressed, or they’re happy, on account of that damn thing you made! 

 

I also found fascinating his account of being consulted by some young Orthodox rabbis. Feynman was raised vaguely Jewish, but was not religious himself, for context. 

 

They said, “Well, for instance, is electricity fire?”

“No,” I said, “but…what is the problem?”

They said, “In the Talmud it says you’re not supposed to make fire on a Saturday, so our question is, can we use electrical things on Saturdays?”

I was shocked. They weren’t interested in science at all! The only way science was influencing their lives was so that they might be able to interpret better the Talmud! They weren’t interested in the world outside, in natural phenomena; they were only interested in resolving some question brought up by the Talmud.

 

This totally resonates for me, having grown up in a conservative religious subculture. Science really did only exist to confirm their beliefs, or to help make an argument against other ideas. There was zero curiosity about the world for its own sake. 

 

I’ll end with one particularly amusing anecdote. Feynman was at Los Alamos and found that one way of letting off steam, and getting some introvert time, was to play on some drums. In order to not disturb anyone, he went off into the woods, where he thought nobody could hear him. 

 

Instead, what happened was that there grew this legend about some crazy guy by himself beating on drums in the woods - probably some native american. 

 

They told their wives what they saw, and the wives said, “Oh, it must have been Feynman - he likes to beat drums.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” the men said. “Even Feynman wouldn’t be that crazy!” 

So the fella who’d been talking to me was just checking at the last minute - husbands always like to prove their wives wrong - and he found out, as husbands often do, that his wife was quite right.

 

This was a nice light, amusing book to mix in with my more serious stuff. It’s worth checking out.