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A Beautiful Mind
The John Nash of Nasar's biography, while less likable, is far more fascinating and multidimensional than his cinematic counterpart; he is a draft dodger, a vicious prankster (one practical joke of Nash's involved filling a light fixture with water, which could have electrocuted a hapless victim when he turned on the light), and an arrogant braggart.
Hollywood has whitewashed much from Nash's life; besides working to dodge the Korean War draft out of fears that it would hurt his career, Nash fathered an illegitimate son whom he refused to help care for, despite the fact that his own circumstances were far better than those of the child's mother. The woman he married, Alicia Larde, is portrayed in the film as the one and only love of Nash's life; no mention is made of their 1963 divorce. (Nearly forty years later, the couple remarried.) To read Nasar's biography is to discover fascinating episodes like Nash's stint in Europe, when he attempted several times to renounce his American citizenship and obtain political asylum, and his encounters with fellow patient and Pulitzer prizewinning poet Robert Lowell in a Massachusetts mental hospital.
The book is as absorbing a history lesson as it is a story; Nasar sets Nash's life beautifully in the context of his time. Nash's bisexuality, for example, was much more of an issue then than it would be now; while today many areas have laws against discrimination based on sexual orientation, in 1954 not only was it legal for employers to dismiss a homosexual employee, but any evidence of homosexuality was sufficient grounds to deprive a government employee of security clearance. Later, the reader learns of many once-credited treatments for mental illness, like insulin injections (thought to deprive the brain of sugar and thus kill off defective brain cells), colonic irrigation, and even "fever therapy," given by inoculating patients with malaria or typhoid. Nasar's description of the politics by which Nobel prizes are awarded, a process purposely shrouded in mystery by the various committees involved, is a particularly fascinating read. Her inclusion of these and other details paints a rich historical picture that's a pleasure to read.
The one thing missing from A Beautiful Mind is, of course, the voice of John Nash himself. Where possible, Nasar plucked quotes from his writings and the recollections of friends and colleagues, but Nash himself maintained, as he put it to a New York Times reporter, "a position of Swiss neutrality" toward his biographer. Throughout the extraordinary story of Nash's life -- his rapid rise to fame, his loves, his illness, his disappearance for decades from the academic community, and his recognition at last as a Nobel laureate, one wants to ask him, "What were you thinking?" Unfortunately, it's a question Nasar was unable to answer.
One true merit of the movie, so highly altered from Nash's real story (and, considered apart from the facts, it is both moving and interesting), is that it will undoubtedly inspire many to pick up Nasar's beautifully written biography. It's time to meet the real John Nash.
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Indeed, it is an excellent biography, and this review is right on target: the Nash of the book is far more multidimensional and interesting than any Hollywood creation could be.
Something the book draws out wonderfully is the tension between Nash's tremendous virtue as a thinker, and the fact that he was a really dislikable person for much of his life. His attitude generally seemed to be that his intelligence was the sole measure of his merit as a human being, and should open the doors of the world to him regardless of whether or not he was a pleasant or decent person. The places where he was right and wrong about this -- and how that changed during the "lost years" of schizophrenia -- is a fascinating cautionary tale for all of us fringy geeky types, whether fighting mental illness or not.
Everybody knows that beautiful, attractive women invariably go for the guys that abuse them most. :)
This is a great movie from what I hear, but it makes one simple mistake:
It makes people with mental illness think they can also be like Nash and 'fight back'.
This isn't the case, and gives people an unrealistic look into the life of someone who is mentally ill. As an advocate, I find it kind of hard when the public is shown a movie like this. They think... "why can't `they` all do like he did?"
A mistake indeed. Not that a story where someone overcomes a great hurdle is bad, but it's dangerous in this case.
Next movie: A person who has AIDS, but fights it and somehow beats it. Then everyone will think it's possible.
[Before you flame me, I'm not alone on this issue. Also, if you want to flame me, look around and see why someone like me has to become an advocate.]
Get your Unix fortune now!
The problem is that the book itself is full of evidence that this picture of genius is simplistic in the extreme. While Nash was there, Princeton was full of first-rate intellects --- geniuses by any yardstick --- who shared nothing of Nash's sociopathic nature. Einstein was reserved and eccentric, but good-natured. Von Neumann was articulate and cosmopolitan, and heavily involved in politics. Godel (before his paranoia set in) was sophisticated and urbane. Each of these men easily outrank Nash. None of them shared his tendency to strut around proclaiming his own genius or his habit of sneering at the worthlessness of other minds. And yet both the film and the book push all the old myths of genius. When I was a grad student at Princeton the main consequence of this myth, as far as I could tell, was that everyone had to put up with jerks who thought they could induce genius in themselves by being an asshole to everyone else.
You say that you felt sorry for him, but repulsed at the same time.
The movie got a reaction out of you, and apparently a strong one at that. I think that in a way, that was the intention, and by getting that reaction out of you, it accomplished it's objective.
I, too, had many of the same feelings toward Nash. However, by actually having those feelings, I believe the movie was good. If I didn't feel that way towards the character, I would consider the movie "a bad movie".
In essence, I think the movie ROCKED! 'Grats to Russell Crowe and the rest of production for making me both sympathize, admire and loathe Mr. Nash. What a ride.
However I felt Sylvia Nasar's defense of the film's intentional disregard of John Nash's sexual history to be disingenuous. Yes he may be bi or gay or straight or it may have been a mistake or experimentation or whatever but the arrest had a profound affect on his life, one certainly relevant to the film.
Frankly the author lost a great deal of creditability with me when she broke down in tears describing Nash's recent remarriage to his wife and kept babbling about how wonderful and beautiful a person he is. While biographers doubtless have opinions on their subjects I've never heard one get so maudlin or express such overt and unconditional adulation.
It will be interesting to someday compare Nasar's Nash biography with another perhaps more objective one. In the meantime both this book and the film appear deeply flawed by their attempts to present overly sympathetic views of their subject.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Many of the posters here have mentioned that Nash was a "bisexual, schizophrenic, deadbeat dad" not deserving the lovable storyline. This really hacks me off! Have you people learned nothing? Bisexuality is a natural fact, nothing to be ashamed of..and nothing to be scorned. Also, schizophrenia is a mental disorder, again something not to be stigmantized but something to be dealt with as a disease. Dead-beat dad? Well ok but that guy was bat-out-of-his-gourd for most of his life so maybe his priorities werent exactly in order. In his day, there was no viable treatment for schizophrenia, just a bunch of pseudoscience mumbo-jumbo that probably just made things worse.
That fact is the man, flaws and all, made some major contributions to mathematics despite serious personal difficulty.
The question is -HOW?
How do you get work done without being eccentric?
Feynmann rightly noted that thinking about things requires long uninterruptable periods of time. He compared thinking to building a house of cards.
Other "geniuses" have agreed. (They are also almost universal in saying that there is nothing particularly special about their brains or way of thinking. Einstein was quite adament about this.)
The question in my mind is: How do you do it?
I'm addicted to thinking, but I also value the happiness of the people around me. Feynmann was okay with declaring himself irresponsible in order to make time for his intellectual persuits, but what is the father of a needy daughter to do?
Torvalds has two kids, but I get the impression that he neglects them, given the way that he holds his behavior in contempt ("I'm not a nice person; I'm a hard-boiled bastard who doesn't give a damn about anything but the technology", or something like that). If I recall right, Feynmann had his kids after he did his major works.
Einstein is famous for rocking a cradle while working on a paper. That's relatively easy; I've written architecture on paper while rocking Sakura's when she was just 1 month old. I'm sure anyone could; 1 mth olds don't really DO much. Einstein has attributed much of his ability to work on problems to time available at the patent office.
So, can you think a lot and Love your Neighbors at the same time? I'm not really all that sure. I think you just have to wait for steady blocks of time to show up, or start fucking people over with an angry temper.
I think that's a very unfair reading of Nasar's writing.
She makes it clear throughout the book that many of Nash's colleagues were also geniuses, and that there were all very different from him and from each other. Some were also assholes; some were extraordinarily generous. She gives them their credit both as being geniuses and as not all fitting the same "genius" mold.
Nasar does make the argument that Nash's particular genius and his particular personality were tied together, which is almost certainly true. Certainly Nash was a driven, competitive, egotistical fellow -- and that had a great deal to do with what problems he chose to tackle (usually the ones that would grab the most attention if solved), and how he tackled them (angrily, obsessively, jealous of others working on the same problem).
I didn't read that as anything other than a description of Nash. It is one model of one genius, and certainly Nasar does not present it as a model for all geniuses everywhere. I think your reaction may be based on a (very reasonable!) general irritation with the myth of the genius, and what you read into the book based on that irritation.
As for the movie, I haven't seen it and can't comment on it.