A Beautiful Mind

Stella Daily writes: "The unlikely subject of Ron Howard's film A Beautiful Mind , based on the 1998 Sylvia Nasar book of the same name, is John Forbes Nash Jr., a mathematical genius whose doctoral thesis earned him a Nobel Prize -- and a schizophrenia patient whose illness kept him out of the academic community for decades. The John Nash of the film is a brilliant young man who doesn't quite fit in, ignores his classes, is gawky with women and, above all, is consumed with a desire for an original idea. It is easy to like this Nash, with his Southern drawl and his earnest demeanor, and to sympathize with him as he fights his way back from insanity." Stella explains below why things aren't quite that simple. A Beautiful Mind author Sylvia Nasar pages 464 publisher Simon & Schuster rating 9 reviewer Stella Daily ISBN 0684819066 summary A beautifully written biography, more complex and troublesome than the film it inspired.

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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Comments

Autobiography

[sid_vicious]

I saw the movie, and it got me wondering about the real John Forbes Nash, Jr. He's got a short (but interesting) online autobiography here, although he skips over his schizophrenic years and focuses on his academic work.

Re:Autobiography

[JabberWokky]

He's got a short (but interesting) online autobiography here [nobel.se], although he skips over his schizophrenic years and focuses on his academic work.

There was an interview with Sylvia Nasar on NPR yesterday (I think it was Fresh Air, meaning it should be online right now), and she seems to approve of the movie. As she puts it - when you write about a while person's life, you have to pick facets. When you compress it into a book, you have to pick and choose what to focus on. In the movie, they only had two hours, and chose to focus on the relationship Nash and his wife had. She also adds that she was at their second wedding last June (John Nash is 74 and very much alive), and that the wedding was merely a reaffirmation of a relationship that has always been a marriage. She said (and I'm badly quoting from memory: "John [Nash] called it a 'retraction of a mistake'. Something you would expect a mathematician to say". Apparantly they have been together these 40 years, with all the ups and downs that a long relationship with serious stress would be expected to have.

It's important to remember that the focus of the movie needs to be tighter (less room to explore), but that the book *also* has to focus on certain aspects, and that it should not be taken as a 'more factual' account - in the HBO 'behind the scenes' piece "Inside A Beautiful Mind", they interview Crowe, but in the background of a few scenes, you can see an elderly couple in two chairs watching from near the director and camera - I wonder if that was Nash and his wife?

--
Evan

Sugar coating. *Mini-spoiler*

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah the movie was too much of a "feel good" one for me to believe that it was all true. So I did some reading on the net about him and found out about how RAND fired him for suspected homosexuality, and his illegitimate son.

I also thought the movie portrayed him a little too "Forrest Gumpish" like he was retarded in some way but they never made any reference to it.

The bad thing thing was how the movie strung you along to believe that he was actually sane the whole time. Even the whole scene where Nash was being shot at while speeding along in the car. I know its hard to imagine, but it they made it seem real enough.

I guess when you question how a scizophrenic person can imagine such strange things and believe them, I think about when humans dream. How many strange dreams have you had that were totally unbelievable yet you didn't question them in the dream? A person with this disorder just has part of their dreams occurring during the day while awake.

I guess if they told the real story of John Nash, you'd not like him as much, and Russle Crowe wouldn't be getting so many accolades for this movie if he portrayed John Nash as a bisexual, draft dodging, dead-beat dad.

Review is right on target

[melquiades]

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.

Mental Illness and the media.

[ImaLamer]

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.]

Nasar's flawed image of genius

[gonerill]

A weakness of the book that irritated me more and more as I read it was Nasar's determination to push the idea that Nash's genius was what made him such an awful person. His appalling behavior to colleagues, friends and loved-ones was inextricably tied up, according to Nasar, with his mathematical genius. Nash was an all-round asshole prior to his terrible illness. The first half of the book can be summarized as: Nash produces little work; Alienates, insults or abuses everyone he comes into contact with. Nasar continuously pushes the idea that Nash acted this way because Nash was a genius. His unworldly brilliance set him apart from (and above) his mediocre peers; he had no time for little minds; such behavior is what we must expect from great intellects, and so on. The film has even more of this attitude --- all the other faculty members are small-minded fame-grubbers jealous of Nash's brilliance.

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.

Hero worship & makeover

[maggard]

I also heard Terri Gross interview Sylvia Nasar on Fresh Air yesterday and your quotes are about right.

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.