Choose Strong
For Tim.
In January, I read two books by Simon Winchester,
- The Professor and the Madman(1998, the Madman book), A Tale of Murder,
Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, and
- The Man Who Loved China(2008, the China book), The Fantastic Story of the
Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom.
The Madman book tells a series of stories, evolving around the life of William
Minor, the retired, gifted, and satyric U.S. army surgeon who today could've
been classified extreme PTSD after witnessing frontline bloodbaths and partaking
in extraordinary cruelty in the American Civil War.
The book opened with the fatal drama where, out of the paranoia of being hunted
down ever since he branded an Irish soldier for deserting in the war, Minor shot
and killed George Merrett, a stoker at the Red Lion Brewery on his way to an
early morning shift in Lambeth, London. The Victorian justice system, however,
found him not guilty but locked him up in the Asylum for the Criminally Insane,
Broadmoor (1872).
Unbeknown to Dr. Minor, the universe had long been moving to craft the next part
of his legacy and it was in his bedlam sanctuary that he first saw a slip
calling for volunteers for the monumental Oxford English Dictionary. There
sprang his limerence with the project as he devoted the next decades to seeking
and supplying quotes for the lexicographers in Oxford and in time became one of
its key contributors. Dr. James Murray, the editor, paid the first visit (1891)
to Minor after years of collaboration, where he mistook the asylum warden for
the man: "...for you must be, kind sir, my most assiduous helpmeet, Dr. W. C.
Minor." Both Murray and Minor died (1915, 1920 respectively) before the 70-year
labor produced the first edition of the OED on New Years Eve, 1927.
The rest of the book supplies the background for the main story: Minor's
childhood in Ceylon, James Murray, the American Civil War, the Irish Brigade,
the Dickensian Lambeth, Broadmoor, English dictionary-making, Shakespeare, Dr.
Samuel Johnson, etc., all written with elegance and humor.
The China book is about a Cambridge genius, Joseph Needham. An established
biochemist and left-wing socialist, he first fell in love with a Chinese
scholar, Lu Gwei-djen, who left her hometown Nanjing for London on the brink of
the war with Japan, then was smitten with her native language and country, and
devoted his life to the making of the 24-vol "Science and Civilization in China."
During his visit as an attache to the British embassy in Chongqing, he supplied
war-time scientific research in Chinese universities, befriended Communist
leaders(backed the winning horse, per Winchester), including Zhou Enlai, and led
eleven expeditions venturing to places including Dunhuang and Fuzhou to gather
information on Chinese inventions on which his magnum opus was based.
Maybe "the booby nation" (Emerson) was not even worth refuting, but many of
Needham's findings refreshed my memory and reminded me of the greatness of the
civilization I came from: the abacus, the compass, the 256-BC Dujiangyan, the
world's first open-spandrel segmental arch bridge (610AD), etc. Appendix I
quotes Needham and lists eleven pages of Chinese firsts. It took a pair of
foreign eyes to appreciate the wonders which I was taught once and had since
forgotten.
Post WW2, Needham was the guy that put the 'S' for science in the name of the
new organization, UNESCO. His subsequent fall from grace started when he
accepted the task to investigate the alleged U.S. bio-weapon attacks in
northeast China during the Korean War. He was aware of the data-for-amnesty deal
between the Americans and the Japanese unit 731 in the last war. He trusted his
Chinese colleagues' scientific integrity and found the Americans guilty. In
truth, the Mao government had ruthlessly exploited the naivete of their "old
friend" in realpolitik and he was utterly discredited in the West. It was
"Science and Civilization in China," to which he devoted the rest of his life,
that revenged him and exalted him to new heights.
Given the long Chinese history of inventions, Needham asked "why not develop?"
as modern science broke out in the west and for the past century China had been
struggling to defend herself against industrialized nations. He never fully
worked out the answer.
One reviewer of the China book said "Winchester could probably write circles
around most writers on the planet." I myself certainly found it engaging.
Reading this book, I learned about the author Robert van Gulik, whose Chinese
detective stories are still available from the library! I learned about Rewi
Alley and his "Gung Ho" movement, mobile factories in the hinterland for the
Chinese war effort, the MoGao Grottoes and the Diamond sutra (printing before
the West), etc. I learned interesting words such as cwm and trencherman which,
used to describe Needham, an intellectual giant and over six feet tall, gave me
a good laugh.
Happy reading!