How I Learned to Start Worrying. (But) Where is the Art? Review of Haynes, R., From Faust to Strangelove

A Review of Roslynn D. Haynes, From Faust to Strangelove. Representations of the Scientist in Western Literature

The first thing you notice about Roslynn Haynes’s book is the huge amount of notes and bibliographical references on which her survey of five hundred years of western literature is based. Let there be no doubt: the author is well-read on the theme of the scientist in literature. And what is more: she manages to integrate her discussion of the representation of the scientist in literature with a reconstruction of the major developments in science itself. On top of that, she pays a lot of attention to the larger societal setting in which both the history of science and its representation in literature are to be situated. The aim of the book is nothing less than to examine “the representation of scientists from the Middle Ages to the present, showing how the recurrent mutual suspicion between scientists and other members of society was developed and reinforced in Western literature and pointing to some of the fictional suggestions for overcoming what is arguably the most pervasive problem of our time, namely, communication failure.” (p6) The stakes are high. Perhaps too high. Inevitably, a price must be paid for such an enormous, historiographical enterprise. In her book, Haynes sacrifices the subtleties of literary analysis for the sake of a chronological, but above all classified, order: we begin with the sixteenth century version of the Faust-myth and end with Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). In between lies a rigid categorization of five centuries of western literature that I shall deal with shortly.

As for the relation between science and its literary repre- sentation, I doubt whether the author has even begun to reflect on the old, inescapable epistemological implications of such a conjunction: whether the very idea of the artist’s “representation” of the scientists of his day, does not falsely presuppose that there is a real preverbal (pre- artistic) realm of science to be portrayed. In view of Haynes’s own interest in the way art has contributed to the ambiguous reception - and functioning -of science in western civilization, such a hierarchical distinction between art and science seems untenable. One may even ask whether the concept of “representation” is adequate in a study which claims that “viewed chronologically [the fictional scientists] achieve an additional historical significance… as ideological indicators of the changing perception of science over some seven centuries… These subversive fictional protagonists have inevitably contributed to Western society’s ambiguous love-hate attitude towards science, which has resurfaced in recent decades in the debates over the use of public money for space research…” (p2). One need not be a radical anti- representationalist to find that such remarks point to a conception of science as culturally constructed. That literature has a role to play in the exposure of the hidden social implications of the scientific drive toward fact- finding - as well as toward objective representation - is one of the major contributions of postmodern (literary) criticism. Except for some occasional references to feminist criticism, however, Haynes never explicitly aligns herself with this school of thinking, let alone theoretically raises the question as to how the status of science, and of (its) representation, changes when viewed from this constructivist perspective. Regrettably, her book remains superficial in this respect. Her analysis is based on a simplified definition of literature as the reflection both of the writer’s opinions and of the predominant social - mainly critical - attitudes toward scientific development. Hence, to pursue my epistemological questions any further would amount to complicating the theme of the book in ways not directly relevant to it. Let me therefore turn to a brief discussion of what we do get from Haynes’s historical survey.

As said, Haynes has done her homework: one can only praise her firm grasp on the history of science and its literary re- presentation, from alchemy to nuclear physics, from Faust to Strangelove. Although the evolution of science portrayed is not new, the book’s encyclopedic gathering of scientists, novelists and their work, makes it a valuable resource for anyone interested in the central theme: how have writers responded to particular scientific developments and how have their representations come to provide the west with powerful cultural myths about the controversial role of the scientist in society.

The immensity of information given, however, masks an ex- treme rigidity of design. Taken as a whole, Haynes’s encyclopedia strikes me as too “scientific,” in her own sense of the term: as obsessed with order, efficiency and control. Dozens of literary works are stripped of their formal complexities, and reduced to mere representatives of the six (varying) stereotypes that the author recognizes throughout the history of literature. There is first of all the popular image of the evil scientist who thinks that he can side-step the God-given limits of man’s capacities (Faust, Frankenstein, Jekyll, Moreau and Strangelove). Other stereotypes include the stupid (absent-minded) professor, the emotionally deficient scientist, the heroic adventurer, the idealist and, finally, the helpless scientist who loses control over the (military) application of his knowledge. All of these categories Haynes explores from a historical perspective: when and why were they introduced and at what points in history did they recur. Together they constitute the frame that allows her to cogently categorize innumerable canonical as well as lesser known authors: Wells, Huxley, Eliot, Hawthorne, Brecht, Musil, Hoffmann, Swift, Zola, Kubrick, Holsten, Aldridge, Colby, Kornbluth, Zuckmayer, and many others.

If curiosity is what keeps a reader going from beginning till end, From Faust to Strangelove might disappoint. There is a certain predictability about the narrative path chosen here that did not stimulate my desire to proceed. A chapter on the bad (unfeeling, immoral) scientist tends to be followed by a section on the good (idealist, heroic) one. Although historical movements have traditionally been believed to generate their own counterparts, such a predetermined Hegelian script seems to me by now outdated. Furthermore, while Haynes’s investigation into the successive periods of literary history tries to do justice to the contextual differences, it is precisely her insistence on the shaping forces of the soci- al-scientific setting, that makes her account somewhat bloodless, if not mechanical. Thus she starts, for instance, her chapter on early twentieth century American literature with an invocation of the cult of discovery instigated by such prominent inventors as Franklin, Bell and Edison, only to conclude that “[g]iven this adulation of the inventor, it is not surprising that American writers at the turn of the century incorporated actual inventors as characters in their fiction” (p164). There follows an admittedly perceptive discussion of the Scientist as Inventor, followed by a portrait of the Scientist as World Savior, the Scientist as Detective, the Scientist as Utopian Ruler. Not unexpectedly, the next chapter counters this idealism with the following opening-lines: “The scientists’ reign as heroes of twentieth- century literature was always open to question, and even the promise of a limitless power source was not sufficient to prolong the idea beyond the 1940s” (p187). The myth of the evil scientist reappears - and comes true! - once science gets voluntarily involved in the machinery of the first and second world war: as the title of chapter twelve triumphantly pro- claims, “reality overtakes fiction.” That this fulfillment of the Faustian myth raises the complicated question as to where to draw the line between reality and myth, science and fiction, Haynes comfortably neglects.

In Haynes’s view, the function of art is to lay bare, and bridge, the gap between the scientist and his community. What Shelley’s Frankenstein teaches us, for instance, is that a scientific experiment conducted in total isolation, cannot but be expressive of the scholar’s lack of sympathy for the people closest to him. Hence the monster kills Dr. Frankenstein’s future wife. The much-debated feminist implications of this destructive gesture are eloquently re-articulated by Haynes: Frankenstein is a novel about a scientist who wants to usurp his future wife’s natural power of procreation. What is equally interesting in her discussion is the parallels she suggests between science and art: everything that is true for Dr. Frankenstein also pertains to the artist. Both are guilty of wanting to re-enact the omnipotent role of the Creator. Both thereby commit the crime of displacing reality (the original). Unfortunately, but perhaps predictably, Haynes does not explore her insights any further. What she leaves unsaid is that the artist works at the same distance from reality as the scientist that (s)he criticizes. Mary Shelley’s novel is as much an indictment of her father’s unemotional intellectual stance toward her, as it is a disconcerting inquiry into her own desire to replace the loss of her son with new, albeit artificial, life. If it is the fate of the isolated scientist not to foresee the destruction that his invention might unleash, it is no less the burden of the artist to produce a work of fiction that is necessarily different from—even intolerant of—reality. Given the fact that, not unlike the scientist, the artist is at odds with the world that (s)he recreates, how can one insist on the representative function of literature? How can Haynes on the one hand recognize that art subverts the scientific developments of its day, and on the other hand construe a history of literature that is totally determined by - and reflective of - those developments? Surely, if art questions the certainties produced by science, its meaning lies in its discontinuity toward it. How, then, save by the ambiguities of its form, can art bridge or reveal the gap between the totalizing order of the scientist and the irreducible contradictions of its long- term social effects. Unfortunately, Haynes has devoted little attention to this characteristic open-ended form of art. In the end, her interest lies in generalities rather than particularities; in stereotypes rather than subversions; in content rather than form. I could not agree more that science is a problematic model for the arts.