by: Nabila Rhapsodios
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| Oppenheimer Movie Poster |
Not long after I
watched the movie, I saw "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of
J. Robert Oppenheimer" in an online bookstore catalog. On the catalog,
above the title, it says that the book was the inspo for the major motion
picture "Oppenheimer," Nolan's movie. I was surprised. Moreover, it
turns out that this book was published in 2006 and reprinted to celebrate
Oppenheimer. So, I was hurrying to click the 'Buy the Book' button. But, my
fingers halted because of the 'PO in 90 days' status. Days turned into months,
so I forgot about checking the book's status.
On my one visit to
a mall, I entered the physical bookstore, the same bookstore where I met
American Prometheus online. There, I saw the book standing perpendicular to an
acrylic under the New Release display. I would buy that immediately, but many
considerations stood in between, and I gave in. I delayed buying the book on
many occasions. On January 1, 2024, the book finally became mine.
This 721-page
book is dense, historically detailed, and hard to hold. I feel almost sorry for
anyone interested in reading it, but I wasn't daunted by it in the middle of
the three months of reading (March-May). I pressed on.
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| Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer (Left) & Oppenheimer (Right) |
Nolan's adaptation
was faithful to the book. The movie and the book follow Oppenheimer's privileged
upbringing, finding his true heart's calling in theoretical physics after
failure as an experimentalist, his association with several Communist Party
(CP) members (for this one, only the person himself could affirm for sure
whether or not he was a Communist), the enormous strain he took as atomic
weapons leader at Los Alamos, his rise to fame, his growing hostility with
Lewis Strauss that finally to humiliation that pushed to rescind Oppenheimer's
security clearance at the peak tensions between United States and Soviet Union.
You could get a better handle on Oppenheimer than watching the movie. "Oppie," as some of his friends called him, was naive, promiscuous, and emphatic. Oppie, to his problematic yet mischievous wife, was a hero. To his daughter, whom he adored, the father was everything to her. Unlike his wife and daughter, the sensitive son perceived Oppie as complicated to reach, like the stars above, because Oppie could not fully mediate the troubled relationship between his wife and son. Oppie could be seen as bossy when he bragged about something he mastered through the eyes of fellow scientists and his pupils.
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| Lewis Strauss |
Oppie's condescending attitude got on the wrong foot of some people, which eventually landed its mark on a powerful man named Lewis Strauss, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, who became his great adversary both privately and professionally. Their animosity in the book was finer than in the movie. This is part of the most awe-struck for me.
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| Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss & Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer |
Oppie, haunted by his connection to the bomb that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, did everything to stop the multiplication of the H bomb, even trying to propose international control and multiple states to have a say on where or when the bombs could be used versus Lewis Strauss who wanted to undo his effort. And lo! Strauss performed self-investigation at great length on Oppie, where he found the greatest liability in Oppie: His circles were mostly left wings. The FBI and Department of Justice rode along with Strauss to question Oppenheimer, where the evidence pointed out he was a Communist partisan, unpatriotic, and was believed to be a national security risk. Palpably, Oppenheimer was ousted from the scientific community he helped to create, and his security clearance was revoked following the excruciating hearings that Strauss staged.
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| Cillian Murphy Projects Oppenheimer's Decisive Thoughts on Using The Atomic Bomb in the Movie as Described within the American Prometheus |
Oppie lectured at universities and dwelt on more comprehensive themes of culture and science in his exile. He toned down his personality and became a humanist, pondering human survival in an age of weapons of mass destruction. Ultimately, cancer ravaged his body rapidly. In late 1965, he realized his end time was near after inconclusive surgery and unsuccessful chemotherapy. His smoking addiction was clearly the cause of his throat cancer. I felt sorry for the "Father of the Atomic Bomb" who had to die so much in pain. Oppenheimer died in his sleep at Princeton, aged 62, on February 18, 1967. A man who had dedicated his life to physics and the United States, only to be betrayed in the back, ridiculed, professionally maligned, and tete-a-tete slandered because his figure looks so much better at present than all of the people who tried to ruin him. And so do his warnings of an atomic bomb, which are pertinent today.
MY IMPRESSION
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| Kai Bird, One of the Authors |
From a literary standpoint, American Prometheus was a true pleasure to read. It is a thorough biography of the magnificent but flawed physicist. Yet, from the view of general masses such as me, I found the use of the atomic bomb to end the war vexing. And I pray this deadly weapon will never be used in my lifetime. "Father of the Atomic Bomb" admitted in the book that he was to blame because he helped to build weapons with the sole purpose of rendering the earth uninhabitable. He could no longer wish the atomic bomb as a war weapon, jeopardizing innocent lives and what worse use to a country so close to surrendering. He hoped that people around the globe would share his sentiments about that even after his death. Yet he was proud of the scientific progress that physicists had made in concocting an atomic bomb.
Many years after
the hearings, numerous believed the proceedings were highly unjust and resulted
from flawed suspicion and paranoia. American Prometheus affirmed Oppenheimer
had been loyal throughout his life, although the book didn't confirm Oppenheimer's
status as a CP circa 1930's. This mystery had died and been buried with Oppie
decades ago. The authors' research and portrayal of this debatable mystery were
equitable and even-handed.
American Prometheus
is more like a novel than a biography because all the twists, ups, and downs
harmoniously weave together through all the facets of Oppenheimer's life. I
felt I was in the story and could see what was happening there. A fun
combination of biography and fiction reading experience. Very informative and
well-researched, I am immensely proud of devouring this monstrous book. This
book is by far the most outstanding non-fiction I've ever read (finally besting
The Theory of Everything as my numero uno non-fiction. That book has been my
champion in the non-fiction collection for 14 years); it introduces me not only
to the flowering physics of the 20th century but also to the Shakespearean
tragedy of the man who was crossed by his own kind.
American Prometheus
is filled with so much information, both nontrivial and trivial, that it can
get overwhelming at times. It was a fascinating read, but my eyes hurt even
moving forward just a few pages at a time because this Pulitzer-winning print
is so tiny. Another criticism is that several sections were hastily pasted
together and repeated, almost verbatim, from previous sections, making the
readers easily sidetracked.
This would be ten out of ten reviews for most of the book's content, and I wholly supported anyone who had voted that score before me. American Prometheus is highly, again, highly recommended!
Guys, I am okay with long books. I invariably read longer books even though they all drag me to the end (LOL!). I am always looking ahead to see how many more pages there are.
~END OF THE ARTICLE~
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