Customer Reviews

Good Benito

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Alan Lightman has written a series of vignettes about the passage of an idealistic youth into not-very-rewarding adulthood. Although Benito (as his best friend John dubbed him) has success in theoretical science, it is not matched when it comes to his personal encounters later in life, where relentless bad fortune is visited upon him as he grows older.

Possibly because I grew up similarly in the warm grasp of science, I thoroughly enjoyed Bennett's childhood experiences and his close friendship with John, who shared his interests. Later, Bennito was most at home in the detached world of mathematics, where a clean sheet of white paper and a pencil opened the magical doors to his creativity. He naturally was led to a career in science, which provided him with all the satisfactions and rewards he seemed to need.

But it did not prepare him to share his life with other people. Nor did his meager interactions with his parents, particularly his father, give him a good foundation for life. Lightman suggests that to be successful in physics, one must be obsessed by it until age forty. Benito was. And it paid off careerwise. But there is still the last half of one's life to be lived. Benito found a wife, a beautifully sensitive creature, but she was not really meant for this world. Their relationship developed promisingly at first. But then what happened? What makes people act in self-destructive ways? A lack of preparation in youth, perhaps. But whose fault, or responsibility, is it?

I liked this book mostly for its insights into the creative process. In describing Bennett's brilliant teacher Davis, Lightman wrote: "...It seemed to Bennett that Davis took more pleasure in being wrong [about scientific problems] than in being right. When he was wrong, he learned something new."

Ultimately, however, Bennett's story left me with an inner vacant feeling, almost as if I had witnessed the sacrifice of an beautiful idealistic youth upon the altar of science.

Good Benito seems to have been somehow overlooked amid the attention to other Alan Lightman greats like Einstein's Dreams and The Diagnosis. That's unfortunate, since Benito shares equally with those two books in its ability to linger and continue growing larger in your mind long after reading it. This one has the curious twist of centering on an alter ego of the author, as with Orson Scott Card's "Lost Boys," with parallels eerily close enough to make you wonder how much or how little the author is taking liberties with biographical experiences. To see for yourself, compare fictional Bennett Long's breakthrough in globular cluster dynamics in Benito, with real-life Alan Lightman's breakthrough in globular cluster dynamics in the Review of Modern Physics (Volume 50, page 437, published 1978).

As such, the novel stands as much a creative quasi-autobiography as an apological defense for leaving a profession in physics. For Bennett strives constantly for a rational universe capable of becoming well-understood. But while his study of physics delightfully rewards this instinct, the vicissitudes of human life and the mysteries of human behavior are far more ambiguous and troubling. This plays out almost in a series of vignettes not unlike Einstein's Dreams in structure, with serial encounters and comraderies punctuated by modernist episodes of detail-laden solitude. A pot-smoking MIT roommate, a brilliant but estranged childhood friend, a gambling-addicted uncle, a compassionate nanny, and a harried astronomer, among others, all puzzle Bennett with their irrational motivations. The novel is book-ended by the most notable subjects: the last is a beautiful and talented but implacably narcissist lover, while it begins with the most incomprehensible of all possible crazies in Bennett's world: a great physicist devoid of ego. The cumulative exploration of the limits of human reason is tied up nicely at the conclusion, wherein Bennett and his nephew float on a fishing boat amid an incoming fog and test their reactions to feeling lost in the blank shroud of human existence. Lightman's writing style conveys profound insight with sparse dialogue offset by revealing details of action and form. The questions it raises are subtle to the point of seeming to arise spontaneously in the reader's mind. An obliquely haunting story.

A great break from frilly, over-written fiction, this book is beautifully written and wonderfully imaginative. Benito is a real charcter--finally someone that the intelligent portion of the population can identify with. I liked it very much and plan to read it again.

This book is a novel about Bennett Lang, a scholar of theoretical physics, and is told in short vignettes about his life, in terms of his relationships. These are in the form of relationships with teachers, lovers, friends and colleagues.

While the book purports to be a novel, as opposed to how skillfully and beautifully Einstein's Dreams was told in short, distinct and separated vignettes, it doesn't have the main aspect that we expect in a novel, which is that we expect to be able to connect the dots in the story to form a line of plot. While I think this book has something to offer in terms of some of its ideas on academia, ambition and relationships, they are not presented cohesively enough to make themselves known in a real and felt way for the reader.

Around 10 pages from the end of this book, I asked my husband, "Will we find out what this is ABOUT soon?" I think it would be more effective if it were more definitely divided a la "Einstein's Dreams" or more overtly connected, in the form of a more traditional novel. I would recommend skipping this one, and picking up "Einstein's Dreams" if you haven't already. That is a beautiful book!

Throughout this book, the reader is drawn into Bennet's beautiful, sometimes comedic, but ultimately fruitless quest to reconcile his scientific, absolutist philosophy with the quirks and challenges of life. His decision to leave his wife, based upon a pseudo-mathematical reasoning, is a perfect example of this. The decision makes him sick with grief, yet he follows his reasoning and leaves. How can a scientific man face the all-to-emotional experience of life? Lightman shows the reader, through Bennet's strained relationships, that it is nearly impossible to do so, and the ambiguous ending leaves the reader to wonder if Bennet will allow him to bring his mind and heart into alignment. I thought that "Einstein's Dreams" was one of the best books I had ever read, but this work leaves me breathless every time I pick it up. By the way, does anyone know of where I can get my hands on the book mentioned in Good Benito, "Tactile Mountains," by Lucien?

If you have read "Reunion" or "Einstein's Dreams", you'll be quite upset with this novel.

It seems rather limited in its scope, and is lacking metaphor like Lightman's other works. He has developed as a writer since this book, however. Don't let this one discourage you from exploring his other wonderful novels.

I would probably give this novel 4 stars, but I'm giving it 5 to boost up its average. Do ignore the other negative reviews. Though the plot of the story is by no means extraordinary, Lightman makes up for it with his elegant prose. His writing is poetic, subtle, and sensual. Artistic rationality. I would read his writing for the turn of the phrases, for the cadences of the speech.

This is a somewhat engaging book with some nice stretches, but all-in-all a bit slight. Lightman's exposition on mathematics and physics and the lure of discovery in those areas was quite well done, but Bennett never really came alive for me and when the end came I was glad the book was over. I wasn't wanting more.

I think Einstein's Dreams is a better book.

Lightman becomes most lyrical when he's writing about physics and math. These are two subjects I know nearly nothing about, but I felt as if I had an intuitive understanding of them as I read this book. I'm not sure whether the science carried the plot or the plot carried the science, but this was an enjoyable read with provocative highlights.

Alan Lightman's Good Benito brilliantly tells the story of Bennett Lang; a story that is greatly augmented by Lightman's use of a non-linear storyline. Through the glimpses into Bennett's life, the reader is able to closely relate to the triumphs, confusions, and heartbreaks that shape Benito. The author brilliantly uses simple sentence structure in describing difficult subject matter, from high level physics to the depths of human emotion, to allow the reader an enormous sense of clarity in reading the novel. A must read for anyone who suffers a need for control bordering on the psychotic.