STILL mythologizing solitary genius

I’m both proud of and embarrassed about where I went to grad school. I tend to avoid the name in conversations with new acquaintances because it triggers so much judgment: oh, you’re smarter than I thought, or richer and more privileged or snootier or whatever. I never felt as if I belonged at that elite place, although in retrospect, who deserves anything? So many deserve more than they’re given. That doesn’t mean I was dumber than other the students, although my academic training was weaker, and I was the youngest of the bunch.

I thought they’d reluctantly admitted me because the state of NJ was funding me, so what the hell, doesn’t cost us much, give her a spot. I’d attended Rutgers on scholarship as an undergrad–making me one of only two in my graduate cohort of 15 or so who hadn’t attended a private college–then snagged a Garden State Fellowship to continue studying twentieth-century poetry in Princeton’s English PhD program. This meant that, until I entered my third year and was allowed to T.A., I lived on $7.5K per year, in addition to whatever I earned temping in the summers, versus somewhat higher stipends Princeton or outside fellowships dished out to others. Even in 1989, that was tight! But I was rich from another perspective. My civil engineer dad and stay-at-home mom had funds to cushion my impoverished student act: they gave me a used car, kept me on their insurance, and helped in a ton of smaller ways. I would have struggled, maybe failed, to keep shoving my way through those big fancy doors, otherwise. Or I would have depended on big loans, making my later life much harder.

I’m thinking of all of this because we finally succumbed to the rave reviews and saw an Oppenheimer matinee yesterday. I disliked it intensely, although I appreciate many striking elements of the movie others admire: the way the main character visualized the quantum universe in his early years was beautiful, the history often intrigued me, the film’s sound design was great, and it’s full of dazzling performances. I’m as haunted as anyone by an emaciated Cillian Murphy’s slow blue-eyed blinks. There’s even some poetry: a copy of The Waste Land flashes by, and Murphy quotes Donne’s three-personed god sonnet as they name the Trinity project.

There are much more profound critiques of the film than the one I’m bringing–for example, that it gives no time to the profound damage wrought on human beings living downwind of the Los Alamos experiments–but my emotional reaction was also shaped by many shots of Princeton and other elite graduate schools. To quote Jack Stillinger’s book on romantic poetry, Oppenheimer leans hard on “the myth of solitary genius.” Apparently, certain white men are special in their talent and drive; they recognize, help, and fight each other, often working in groups, but the important thing is that their vast intellectual gifts make them profoundly lonely in pursuing their visions (as well as, in poor Oppenheimer’s case, victim to Robert Downey, Jr.’s dangerous spite). What an obnoxious way of portraying insight and discovery: to heroize a few figures and downplay the prejudices and myopias supporting them, as well as the toxicity of their obsessions. Christopher Nolan basically celebrates Oppenheimer as the tortured, talented Batman of physics.

I could go on. My spouse and I railed over dinner at the bad writing, too: the three-act biopic structure both overstuffs the long film and leaves a million angles unexplored. None of the female characters is actually important to the plot–their own stories are sucked into Oppenheimer’s black hole, with no illumination escaping. Yet this post-movie conversation happened on the patio of a cute little French bistro, because I’m well-paid enough for that now–lucky to have parlayed my mock-Oxford diploma into tenure at a private college, which is a huge privilege, even though some professors with fancier jobs flick their eyes at my conference nametag then, indifferent, look away. In short, the film reminds me, without helping me think about, how terrible I felt in grad school as well as the inequities I’m implicated in now.

Anyway, here I am, back into the swing of my difficult, interesting, reasonably well-rewarded teaching job, wishing I had more time to write and read and think. My current idea is that M-W-F will be school-focused but for at least a couple of hours on T and Th, as well as part of the weekend, I’ll find time to go to movies and take hikes and be a writer. Different kinds of work have their own gravity, and I don’t have the best history of keeping them in balance, but the stars say this will be a month of auspicious change in my life. Wouldn’t that be lucky?