Ghosts

I went to see Dr. John Leinhard speak. The NPR commentator on ingenuity talked about ghosts in books, how the spirits of individuals remain in the volumes they’ve written or have read. He spoke about the ahead-of-her-time Jane Marcet, who’s Conversations on Chemistry was one of a number of educational books she wrote around 1806. Even more unexpected, she wrote them in the form of a conversation between two girls and herself.

Leinhard owns a copy with an Ex Libris entry by the great scientist Michael Faraday. Conversations fell into Faraday’s hands when he was a fifteen-year old bookbinder in London. This was certainly one of the books that started him on his destiny with electricity. Leinhard takes great pleasure in the fact that Marcet’s book would eventually be updated, in the 1800s, with an experiment by Faraday.

I gave Leinhard my Bumpspark* proposal and he enjoyed it. He said great conversations usually entail the counterparts’ willingness to be wrong and he wondered how many would be so willing, while on camera. My hope is that there are more than we would think. Speaking with both Robert Pinsky and Alan Lightman recently, I brought up Leinhard’s question and they both felt, or hoped, they would be that open.

Preparing for my meeting with Professor Lightman, I read my old copy of his Einstein’s Dreams again, full of jottings and highlights. I realized he is a part of my project because I learned from him and my ideas and projects come from his. Lightman confessed he remembers all the drafts of his books, not only the sentences he finally gives the printer, but all the versions of each sentence that came before. When reading them in public, he sometimes gets confused.

When our talk was over he signed my old copy of his most famous book and I thought of Leinhard’s ghosts. I am anxious to make my show.