A few days ago, I finished A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash, a biography by Sylvia Nasar. Like many readers, probably, I had never heard of Nash or this book until seeing the movie with Russell Crowe as Nash. While I’m not sure I would like to meet Nash, I certainly enjoyed reading about his life and work, even if his true mathematical contributions were way over my head. His Nobel-winning work was in game theory, and at least in broad terms, makes sense, although Nasar is smart enough not to get bogged down in the mathematics or the papers themselves, although she seems to understand quite a bit more than she decided to put in print. The biography never talks down to the reader, but it also stays with the human story. What startling hubris Nash had as a young man, all the way through until his schizophrenia (per the after-the-fact diagnosis) robbed him of his productive, effective mind during much of his middle age. The startling thing, by all accounts, was that he recovered in later life, even proceeding to do some further thinking and publishing, if not at the incredible level of his youth. This personal renaissance, an event that Nasar documents as rare, but not unheard of, helps redeem Nash the person somewhat, as he was hell on his family for many years.
The movie spent a lot of time on the fantasies he was living through, visualizing an imaginary friend and various shadowy agencies for conspiracies only Nash could unveil. The book spells out various examples of where Nash was off-kilter, but doesn’t wallow in them, as the movie did. But I guess the director needed something to hang the story on, visually.
As an aside, I still remember realizing that I was truly a parent when one scene in the movie took my breath away. The scene is when Nash is giving his son a bath, and forgets him because of the distraction of his internal voices. Made me cringe, although it all turns out fine. Before having a kid, I’m not sure I would have blinked at that scene. I had a similar response to a scene in the movie Trainspotting.
I enjoy biographies, but only in moderation, mixed with a brain-dead thriller (haven’t read one of those in a while… got any suggestions?) or any other compelling fiction (got one of those going now… give me some time to finish it and write a few notes).