Kai Bird and Marie Arana at the Aspen Institute, May 6, 2024/By Patricia Leslie
When he was a student at Princeton University, George was sometimes called upon to read to Oppenheimer (1904-1967) during the last weeks of the scientist's life as the "father of the atomic bomb" lay bedridden.
The readings were selected by "Kitty," Oppenheimer's wife who chose selections on ancient history.
Here! Here! The audience cried: There's a book there! We want a book! (Another one.)
But we came to hear Bird talk about his book he wrote with Martin J. Sherwin (1937-2021) and Arana interviewed Bird as part of the Klein Book series.
She said the film "does a good job, but doesn’t do the thorough job of the book."
Kai Bird and Marie Arana at the Aspen Institute, May 6, 2024/By Patricia Leslie
Bird FOIAed the FBI about Oppenheimer and received 8,000 pages in return while Sherwin received 50,000 pages.
For a long time, he resisted writing the book with Sherwin because “co-authoring is notoriously filled with pitfalls“ but "Marty" kept pushing.
He was "very nice and very funny," Bird said and Sherwin told him that if Kai didn’t help, Sherwin's gravestone would read: "He took it with him."
It was a “wonderful collaboration" and the book came out in 2005, winning some prizes but never making it to the bestseller lists until the movie came out.
It's an "amazing miracle" what’s happening to this 19-year-old book now, Bird said. It's become an international bestseller.
Kai Bird and Marie Arana at the Aspen Institute, May 6, 2024/By Patricia Leslie
Bird and Arana have been friends for 30 years, both raised overseas and both, familiar with “”global spin."
Bird said he was a “fugitive" in his own country, ignorant about America but biographies led him to knowledge about the U.S.
The book took him and Sherwin 10 years to write, "a really long time," because "I couldn't stop researching....You get obsessed" with resources. (While he was working on Oppenheimer, he also was working on other books.)
He gave important details about Oppenheimer's life when the scientist was growing up, but he reserved most of his talk to the "tragedy" that belonged to Oppenheimer.
The "father of the atomic bomb" was a mysterious young man, “very bright" who gave a lecture to the New York Minerals Society at age 10, an age unknown to the group when it invited him but which kept its invitation after learning of his age. The audience laughed.
Oppenheimer was “nerdy," "endlessly mysterious," “awkward with women," and "painfully conflicted" about his achievements.
The McCarthy era did its dirty deeds, stripping him of his security clearance as a suspected spy and accused him of being unfaithful to his wife. He became a broken man, disinvited by universities to speak. The FBI tapped his attorney's phone.
“They destroyed him" who "became the chief victim of the McCarthy era."
The McCarthy legacy has endured, Kai said, because we are still suffering the effects in the person of Donald Trump, an observation which brought approval from most in the audience.
He mentioned Trump's relationship with Joseph McCarthy‘s chief attorney Roy Cohn which haunts us today. Perhaps he was joking when, to audience laughter, he said his next biography would be about Cohn.
To ensure the science in the book was accurate, the authors sought the guidance of Jeremy Bernstein, a quantum physicist and New Yorker writer who corrected language.
Oppenheimer was "quite handsome in a magnetic way" who attracted women.
His met his wife "Kitty" when she was 27 and married for the third time but horsewomanship on a trip sealed their relationship.
Their son Peter is now in his 80s, "traumatized by the events of 1964." He never went to college but became a carpenter. Peter has three children and lives in Santa Fe.
Their daughter Tori, born in 1944, is "portrayed very well in the movie," according to Bird. She spoke Russian, French, and Spanish and wanted to become a translator at the UN but the FBI would not give her clearance. She moved back to the family's home on St. John Island in the U.S. Virgin Islands where she built a cabin and committed suicide at age 32 after a fight with her ex-husband.
In his homespur and down to earth style, Bird answered a few questions after his talk with Arana.
Years were spent trying to clear Oppenheimer's name from the tainted roster of the McCarthy era, and finally, President Joe Biden's secretary of energy, Jennifer Granholm achieved the almost impossible in December 2022 seven months before the movie was released, when she vacated the revocation of Oppenheimer's security clearance.
Oppenheimer admired the poetry of T.S. Eliot, a few lines from his poem Gerontion which Arana spoke to close the event:
Here I am, an old man in a dry month,
Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.....
I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it
Since what is kept must be adulterated?
I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch:
How should I use it for your closer contact?
I must confess I have neither read the book nor seen the movie and now, can't wait to do both.
Posts
