A Beautiful Mind

Sometimes, meaning is hidden in what isn't there. You've heard this vague explanation before. I've heard it. Usually from a pretentious sot. Sorry, sirs and ma'ams and doctors and such. But most of what you spew (at least a plantation's worth) means as much as a politician's apology speech. Although, that in itself proves the original premise. ... So what is hidden in a premise about what isn't there? Would there be something there if we weren't here to read it? Folks, I'm bored by the laziness of that last question. You?

Ah-hah! Your boredom has propelled you unawares into my waiting... Point (I don't have real arms here, on my white and your grey screens, and the whole thing would be weird. Is weird).

Ah-hah! What is missing in the title A Beautiful Mind? That isn't rhetorical. It's time to work, you (pl.).

The movie is based on the book, this book we are stripping. So I'm going to assume the title fits the book better than the movie. > Yes, Dr? a pretentious sot is flashing hypertext at the blogger I'm going to interrupt your long and circular speech to agree with you: that you can't use words like 'better' to compare things like this. The title fits the movie in a different way. downloading app to delete hypertext 

'Different', it fits the book differently. (Where 'different' means better. I'm reviewing here, not writing a thesis! Or an apology speech.)

Ah-hah! Have you worked out my interpretation of the title as better applied to the book than the movie? The book is a biography of man who experiences severe psychotic episodes. Oh and by the way he is a brilliant mathematician, a bit like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, without the janitor-ing and without his good looks. Also without his endearing personality (on and off screen).

Aside on that note, Matt Damon casts the same light on Jason Bourne, where in the book he's a wild card. A card covered in blood and mud, and that growls like a creature in the dark.

John Nash is calculating and nasty, according to the book. Not a horrible person, mind. The author, Sylvia Nasar, treats the man with respect and seems almost surprised by what she finds. But (and this is my reading not hers) it is almost as though he is lopsided - his intelligence is a parasite (not a negative but biological term) sucking away at his sense of empathy.

Is this only my reading though? The stereotype of the 'mentally ill' (or 'creative'...) is of some lowborn character in a Greek myth, given the gifts of intelligence and creativity in return for... how to say this... emotions. (There is always a catch.) How romantic, right? Or Romantic? This myth is much easier to translate into a movie and scale the box office. Here's a vague comment: People tick different boxes on the same checklist and we can draw correlations but sometimes the correlations are just superficial and blinkered.

Ah-hah! That is just to wake you up. Diatribe over. That one at least.

Because you have been scribbling away at the answer, let's get to the Point. The title points to one part of the body: the mind; not 'soul' or physique or personality. Because we know what to expect, a tale of genius and 'madness', we don't notice that hiding place. There's another: 'beautiful'. Not usually a term we apply to the sparks within that wrinkled sponge knocking around in our skulls. Ideas, yes; emotions, yes; physique, definitely. Especially since you don't get much prettier than 'beautiful'.

But Nasar, an intelligent and experienced author (the book is 900-and-something pages long, in this size font, with footnotes), must have known what growling creatures live in the title. But she rarely invokes the Romantic myth, and when she dabbles with it, it's to see how it fits. The only section I suspect contains unfairly subjective judgements is the marriage between Nash and his first wife. She suggests their marriage rewarded them both with gifts of social acceptance: she is 'high-born' and he rising among the intellectual elite.

Then there are the opinions of the subjects themselves. Apparently the family withdrew their support for the book during the manuscript phase. Who wants to be described as calculating and nasty (my words) and a social climber? Even if the next breath you are brilliant. That's one of the hazards of biographies. Advice: rather don't authorise your biography, ever.

I called off one diatribe, but here is another. See it as intermission. As a writer, I struggle with the ethics of portraying other people. Even if I stitch on other limbs, I have appropriated something from that person. If a journalist takes a photo of you, she has to get your ok.  I don't, but does that give me the rights? You could argue in certain circumstances that a character constitutes libel. In this case (to refer to previous diatribe), lazy readers will jump straight into the stereotype while looking for the movie-like action.

I watched the movie before the book, which explains my surprise at the tone of the book. Measured, researched, considered and consciously objective. The life of John Nash is not Romantic; it is tragic, in the Aristotelian sense. It is not a story: if it is, it is deeply unsatisfying. And it uses the stereotypes of mental illness as shorthand. There are creatures here so stop looking! I enjoyed the movie, I cried, I can remember shots and scenes from it. But as bibliophiles before me have cried, it's not the book!