Flash of Genius

"Flash of Genius and Other True Stories of Invention" by John Seabrook, the New Yorker staff writer, is an anthology of stories written ostensibly about people who exhibit such eponymous trait. The title essay, written in 1993, is about the notoriously cantankerous Robert Kearn, the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper. It is story of David vs Goliath, even if David was kind of an asshole. It is a compelling read, about the decade-long legal battles over intellectual property, how the automakers were willing to pay millions to settle the suit, only to find themselves up against someone who sued them not for money for his own sense of right and wrong.

Other stories, while compelling in their own right, don't quite fit the title. Will Wright, whose creations SimCity, SimAnt, the Sims, and Spore, is more than just a flash of genius- his body of work would make him among the fist inductees of computer game Hall of Fame were there to be one. Nor is the late Stan Winston, whose work in special effects in movies such as the Terminator and Jurassic Park, can strictly be considered an "inventor". The one story that turn out to be a bust was Calgene's flavr savr: while significant as the first genetically designed tomato, the whole production was unprofitable and only lasted a few years.

If the book had ended one essay short, then I would have rate this book as interesting and fascinating, but ultimately not the most memorable books I have read.

But it does have one more story to tell, and the "Spanish King", the very last story in the book, might be one of most moving and memorable stories I have ever read. It is so well-written that I highly encourage everyone to read it (here).

It is hard to encapsulate the story: John Seabrook's grandfather was the owner of one of the most successful farming operations during the mid 20th century. And from that a multitude of narratives: the Japanese Americans who, amidst WWII anti-Japanese hysteria, found dignity and normalcy in backbreaking farm work offered by CF Seabrook. The grandfather he never really knew, whose Gatsby-esque demon haunted him to his grave. His father, the scion of the considerable family wealth, a once playboy whose name appeared in gossip columns with Eva Gabor and Ann Miller and his subsequent fall from family grace, who lost it all and made it all back. An excerpt:

When members of the younger generation ask their parents about the camps, they often hear the phrase shikataganai, a Japanese bit of stoicism that translates as "It couldn't be helped." Richard Ikeda, who was at Seabrook as a boy and is now a physical chemist at DuPont, across the river, told me that shikataganai is a way of saying, "O.K., life is unfair. Now get back to work." Josie Ikeda, Richard's mother and a longtime Seabrook resident, says that parents downplayed the terrible experience of the camps, partly in order to protect the children. "When we were in camp," she told me, "I was very bitter, fighting everything, but then I became concerned that my bitterness would pass to my children, and so I tried to change my attitude. I did not want them to grow up feeling bitter toward their country. I wanted them to love their country."

And there is symmetry between the Japanese-American experience in this context and the Seabrook family. For John Seabrook, son of the dispossessed heir, shikataganai is a term of common commiseration. Writing about a grandfather who is revered by thousands of Japanese Americans for giving them a home when they had none, all the while created this giant, dysfunctional family within his own kin, the contradiction exists not to be resolved but to be recorded. I like to think that the author found catharsis through this exercise. Life moves on, shikataganai.