Patsy Pridgen

Wow, talk about debunking a hero. I have always admired Albert Einstein—who hasn’t—but after reading The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict, I’ve taken a second look at the scientist most often credited with E=MC2.

The book is fiction, but it is based on the very real Albert Einstein and his first wife, Mileva Maric, a gifted Serbian mathematician and physicist. Einstein met Mileva Maric in 1897 while they were both students at the prestigious Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, an elite school for the study of science and mathematics in Zurich.  Mileva Maric was the only female student in the class.

As the story is told in The Other Einstein, Mileva unintentionally sacrifices her own ambitious dreams when she marries Albert.  Thinking theirs would be a union of intellect as well as love, she aids him in his early studies, significantly contributing to the theory of relativity.

Albert Einstein uses her brain but not her name, giving her no credit on his famous reports that built his reputation and eventually earned him a Nobel Prize. He treats Mileva as a traditional early 1900s wife, relegating her to cook, housekeeper, and childcare.

And he is unfaithful to her as well, eventually causing their divorce when he consorts with his cousin Elsa Lowenthal, who eventually became the second Mrs. Einstein.

A most interesting read, but how much of this is true? Articles I found on the Internet acknowledge there has been debate as to Mileva Maric’s role in Einstein’s work, especially in the question of whether she co-authored his 1905 paper on special relativity.

But many of the sources I read go on to say there is no hard evidence that Mileva Maric was instrumental in her husband’s work. These critics say that letters Einstein wrote to Mileva speaking of “our work on relative motion” are just the babblings of a young man in love.

Who knows for sure the extent of scientific contribution by the other Einstein, Mileva Maric? No one, it seems.  Still, The Other Einstein is an entertaining and thought-provoking read.

Thirteen years ago, when my newly formed book club was mapping out its first year of reading, one of our original members declared, “Okay, ladies, just let it be known:  I’ll read anything except throbbing thighs and heaving bosoms.”  We all got a good laugh, but I was glad she spoke up.  I don’t like modern romance novels either. 

By the number of such books on the market, however, it seems somebody does.  Sales of romantic and its naughty cousin erotic fiction for 2016 were estimated at $1.5 billion—yes, that’s billion with a “b.”  It’s the top-selling sector of the book market, beating science fiction, mystery, and literary novels.

Wow.  If only I could bring myself to write such stuff.  But I can’t write what I don’t want to read.  I barely got through the first Fifty Shades of Grey, which I felt compelled to check out of the library to see what all the hoopla was about.  I don’t know what happened to Anastasia and Christian after book one, and I don’t care–unlike lots and lots of other people, who bought the second and third volumes of the trilogy and went to see the movie.

I’m afraid Jane Austen has ruined me.  My romance novels have to be gentle, full of intrigue and social commentary.  I sigh over Mr. Darcy, now forever imagining him as Colin Firth portrayed him.  Ever so much more refined than that kinky Christian Grey.  And I’ve yet to see a modern-day romance with anything close to the great line that begins Pride and Prejudice.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” 

Oh, my.  I think I just felt my bosom heave. 

As that great philosopher Jimmy Buffett sings, “If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane.”  I so agree.

I often incorporate humor in my writing by depicting the absurdity of life.  And in the South, you don’t have to look very far to find something—or someone—absurd.  In the scene below, taken from a chapter of my novel-in-progress, Ms. Dee Ann, an unsophisticated woman named Bertha is being interviewed as a potential babysitter by the narrator Dee Ann, a young mother who is soon to start a part-time job.

“I know my home ain’t nothing fancy,” Bertha said. “Me and Buddy don’t have much. We spend what Buddy makes on the young’uns.  You know, when you have young’uns, you ain’t gonna have much else.  Course I wouldn’t trade ’em for nothing.”  Bertha paused a moment after this declaration of motherly love.

“So’s I told Buddy that to help out some, I thought I could set myself up keepin’ babies here at the house for these young mamas what’s got a job,” she continued.  “Babies is my specialty, you know.  I plan to call my business Bertha’s Babies.  Don’t that have a nice ring to it?”

Bertha searched my face, obviously wanting approval.  “Yes, that’s a very catchy name,” I said.  The two B’s did give it alliteration, I thought.

I noticed something else.  Bertha wasn’t giggling. She had smiled plenty and her wandering eye had rolled around some, but I hadn’t heard a single silly titter out of her yet.  But Sensible Bertha suddenly vanished.

“You know, every year I enter that Reader’s Digest Sweepstakes, but I don’t never seem to win nothing.  Do you think that contest is real?”  Bertha leaned toward me as if I had the inside scoop.

“I guess there are winners,” I answered, somewhat flustered at the turn the conversation had taken, “but the odds are something like, oh, I don’t know, one out of ten million that a person’s number would be drawn.”

“Well, no wonder I don’t never hear nothing back from them folks.  One out of ten million!  Who knew?  Boy howdy, it’s a good thing I done decided to keep babies instead of waitin’ for that ship to come in.”  For the first time that day, Bertha giggled.