The war on science is an old story. Pringle lends it specific weight with this chilling story of a man who, had he survived,...
A tragic story of the totalitarian suppression of knowledge—one that is all too familiar to history, even in our own time.
Pringle (Day of the Dandelion, 2007, etc.), former Moscow bureau chief for The Independent, recounts that in that city he lived on a street named for Lenin’s otherwise little-known brother. Down the way, on a grid named as a kind of “Who’s Who of the old USSR and its socialist allies, even Ho Chi Minh,” was Vavilov Street, named after the great physicist Sergei Vavilov, whose admitted brilliance was nothing compared to that of his brother Nikolai. A kind of Indiana Jones of the plant world, Nikolai was always tearing off in search of rare einkorn or interesting hybrids. Pringle records a meeting of Vavilov and American botanist Luther Burbank, with the former concluding that “it was difficult to learn anything from Burbank—‘the artist’s intuition overwhelmed his research.’ ” When the Bolsheviks came to power, Lenin, though despising the intelligentsia, recognized their at least temporary usefulness as technocrats in the new state, and Vavilov was allowed to continue his research in plant genetics and agronomy. Stalin was less kindly disposed toward the knowledge-working class, and he gave pride of place in the new Soviet science to the quack Trofim Lysenko, who dismissed Mendelian genetics in favor of a particularly ungainly kind of Lamarckism. Vavilov generously insisted that his scientific colleagues hear Lysenko out, even though “there was no proof of the inheritance of acquired characteristics,” as Lysenko insisted. Lysenko won out with his theories of vernalization; the result was a killing famine, one of several the Soviet Union endured. For his part, increasingly marginalized in a politicized scientific community, Vavilov wound up in the Gulag.
The war on science is an old story. Pringle lends it specific weight with this chilling story of a man who, had he survived, might have saved millions of lives.Pub Date: May 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7432-6498-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2008
Sometimes a memoir writer makes the unfortunate decision to turn a potentially good 20-page article into a work many times that length. Goran's book is Exhibit A. Goran, a novelist (Mrs. Beautiful, not reviewed, etc.) and English professor at the University of Miami, co-led a weekly creative writing course there with Isaac Bashevis Singer for a decade (197888) while also helping translate and edit some of Singer's stories. His portrait of their friendship consists largely of seemingly verbatim transcripts of conversations; how they were remembered or recorded is never explained. Occasionally puckish or otherwise witty, these exchanges far too often consist of forgettable banter. Goran works diligently to capture an intense, decade-long friendship, and offers an occasional piquant observation (e.g., a reference to Singer's ``giddy savage world''). But for a teacher of writing, he also delivers himself of some peculiar, portentous prose (e.g., ``He remains for me the spokesman of our dilemma of unbelonging'') and cites some dubious second- and third-hand reports of ``acts'' and ``quotes'' (he quotes Singer as having remarked that Elie Wiesel, a fellow Jewish-European-American Nobel laureate, allegedly complained to a friend in Paris that ``Isaac Singer is the worst enemy of the Jews after Hitler''; Goran apparently made no effort to verify these words). At times, he does step back from their conversations to portray more vividly the very sad, even pitiable, man Singer had become at the end of his life: often lonely, misanthropic, melancholy, self-centered, and emotionally withholding. In his last few years (the octogenarian Singer died in 1991) his tendency towards absentmindedness and fearfulness became considerably more pronounced. But this memoir is sad too for what it reveals about the author, who seems largely unable to winnow out much of substance from a great deal of oral fluff.
Pub Date: Nov. 10, 1994
ISBN: 0-87338-506-3
Page Count: 176
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Neither a strong, coherent spiritual guide nor a work of wisdom.
A spiritual guide for members of the New Church, a denomination whose teachings are from the book of Revelations.
“…If you stay with me, I will lead you into many truths, in which you never thought to be possible,” Emmanuel writes, and many “truths” are indeed revealed in this wordy volume. According to the author, man is a little world, and living within him are spirits and angels. Man has no thoughts of his own, and each individual is a little heaven and a little hell. The closer man draws to the Lord, the more he receives from the Lord. The book proceeds thusly, in a stream-of-conscious format with no paragraph breaks or organizing principle, aside from chapter headings. It’s as if James Joyce decided to confront spiritual issues while abandoning his strong imagery and innovative language. In general, the author seems to strive toward a pure connection with God without the filter of a self to interpret it. However, this results in a lack of an authoritative voice. Emmanuel takes on a variety of issues simultaneously without unpacking them to unleash their wisdom. It’s not that he makes false claims or that the cited scripture is inaccurate, but the many rhetorical questions that he attempts to answer are contradictory and render the spiritual questions meaningless. A beginning summary states that this book was written for members of the New Church, which, in the book of Revelations, is the New Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven from the Lord. “The words are meant only for those who are seeking truths of the Kingdom of Heaven. If you are not seeking these truths…these words will make little sense to you,” Emmanuel writes. The words do sometimes make sense but the lack of organization makes it impossible for them to serve as a guide to God’s wisdom.
Neither a strong, coherent spiritual guide nor a work of wisdom.Pub Date: May 23, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4257-5563-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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