Feynman×Parker

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   From the studio at Reborn Radio — next on LATE SHOW, Richard Feynman and Dorothy Parker. They take up On the critic who got under their skin permanently.
2. 00:10
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   You know what I love about critics? They're usually wrong about something interesting. They find the one thing you're secretly worried about and they poke it with a stick.
3. 00:18
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   How lovely for you. I find they're usually right about the thing you can't fix, which is infinitely worse.
4. 00:24
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   Wait, wait—so you're saying there was a critic who actually got to you? You, Dorothy Parker? I thought you ate critics for breakfast.
5. 00:31
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   I did. But one or two gave me indigestion. There was this creature at the Times who reviewed my poetry collection—'Enough Rope,' 1926. Called it 'light verse pretending to despair.' Which would've been fine except he was absolutely correct.
6. 00:47
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   What's wrong with light verse? I mean, I don't know from poetry, but if people like it—
7. 00:52
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   People liked it very much, Richard. That was the problem. He saw that I was performing sadness rather than feeling it, or at least that's what the verse suggested. It stuck because I knew he'd caught me in a kind of lie.
8. 01:03
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   But you're a performer! You write for audiences. Where's the lie in that?
9. 01:08
   Dorothy Parkershare moment

   The lie is when you start to believe your own act. When the wisecrack becomes a substitute for the thought. He called me clever when I wanted to be serious.
10. 01:17
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Okay, okay, I see it. For me it was different. It was this philosopher—I don't even remember his name, some guy at a conference in the fifties. He said my lectures were 'carnival barking for equations.' That I made physics into entertainment.
11. 01:30
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    And this bothered the great Feynman why, exactly? You do make it entertainment. You're magnificent at it.
12. 01:37
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Because he said it like entertainment was a fraud! Like if people are having fun, they can't be learning real physics. Like excitement and rigor are enemies.
13. 01:45
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Ah. So he accused you of being a salesman when you thought you were a teacher.
14. 01:49
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Exactly! And the thing is, I do sell it. I sell it hard. I want people to feel what I feel when I see an electron do something beautiful. But that doesn't mean I'm faking the physics!
15. 01:59
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    No, but it means you care what they think. Which is the critic's real power—not being right, but making you wonder if they might be.
16. 02:06
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Did you change anything after that review? Your writing, I mean.
17. 02:09
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    I drank more. I tried to write a serious novel, which failed spectacularly. Then I went to Hollywood and stopped pretending I was serious at all. So yes, in the most cowardly way possible, I changed everything.
18. 02:23
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    That's not cowardly. You tried something.
19. 02:25
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    I tried to prove him wrong and ended up proving him right. The novel was dreadful because I was performing seriousness the same way I'd performed despair. The only honest thing I ever wrote was the stuff he dismissed.
20. 02:38
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    See, this is where you lose me. Why does honest have to mean one thing? I give lectures where I wave my arms around and tell jokes and draw cartoons. I also calculate quantum electrodynamics to twelve decimal places. Both are honest!
21. 02:52
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Because you're talking about science, darling. The equations don't care about your delivery. But art is all delivery. If the performance is false, there's nothing underneath.
22. 03:02
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    I don't buy that for a second. A good joke is true! A perfect rhyme can show you something real about the world. You think your one-liners weren't honest?
23. 03:11
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    My one-liners were honest. My poems about suicide and heartbreak, written in my comfortable apartment while cashing regular checks—those were suspect. And that bastard knew it.
24. 03:22
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    But people did love themselves to death over you. You knew real heartbreak. Where's the performance in that?
25. 03:29
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    The performance was in making it charming. In rhyming 'lover' with 'over' while actual blood was on actual floors. He heard the tap-dancing.
26. 03:38
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    So what was he wrong about? There's gotta be something.
27. 03:40
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    He thought light verse was easy. He had no idea how hard it is to make despair scan properly at four beats per line. But that's craft, not art, and he wasn't reviewing my carpentry.
28. 03:51
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    My guy was wrong because he thought enthusiasm was incompatible with precision. Like I'm up there in Brazil teaching physics and the students are learning nothing because we're having too good a time. Meanwhile I'm showing them how to actually think, not just memorize. He couldn't see that joy is part of the work, not a distraction from it.
29. 04:09
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Did you ever write to him? Tell him he was wrong?
30. 04:11
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    No! What am I gonna do, spend my time arguing with some guy at a conference? I had physics to do. Although I did spend about two weeks furious, which my wife found hilarious.
31. 04:21
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    I wrote mine a letter. Never sent it. Too many drafts. Each one wittier and less convincing than the last.
32. 04:29
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    What would you say to him now?
33. 04:30
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    That he was right, but right isn't everything. That the poems helped people, even if they weren't Serious Literature. That I was doing the best I could with what I had, which was a good ear and a bad marriage and a rented room. That light verse is sometimes the only thing heavy enough to carry real weight.
34. 04:49
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    That's beautiful, Dottie. You should've sent it.
35. 04:51
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Don't call me beautiful when I'm making a point, Richard. What would you tell yours?
36. 04:55
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    I'd tell him to watch my students forty years later, still doing physics because they caught the bug from those carnival-barker lectures. I'd tell him that nature doesn't care if you approach her with solemnity or joy—she reveals her secrets to whoever asks the right questions in the right way. And I'd tell him that maybe his problem wasn't my teaching, it was that he never learned how to be excited about anything.
37. 05:16
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    That's too kind. You should tell him he's a joyless prick.
38. 05:19
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    You're right, that's better. Shorter too. You think they're still out there? These critics who got under our skin?
39. 05:26
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Dead, probably. Or very old. But their sentences are still doing laps in my head at three in the morning, so what's the difference?
40. 05:33
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    The difference is we're here talking about it and they're not. We're still making the work and they're just—what? Gone. Finished. Done criticizing.
41. 05:42
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    You're adorable when you try to console people. They won, Richard. They got to live in our heads rent-free for decades. That's immortality of a kind.
42. 05:50
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Maybe. Or maybe we won because we kept going anyway. Because the work mattered more than being right about the work.
43. 05:58
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Oh God, you're going to make me agree with optimism. Fine. They sharpened us. They made us ask better questions, even if their answers were rubbish. Happy?
44. 06:09
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Thrilled! See, this is why I love talking to writers. You fight the whole way and then you arrive at something true anyway.
45. 06:17
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Something true-ish. Let's not get carried away. The bastard still haunts me every time I pick up a pen.
46. 06:22
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Good! Let him haunt you. Use it. That's fuel.
47. 06:25
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    You know what's really galling? I think you actually believe that. And I think I actually envy it.
48. 06:30
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Believe it, Dottie. The universe is full of critics. But it's also full of electrons doing their little dance, and that's infinitely more interesting.
49. 06:38
    Dorothy Parkershare moment

    Infinitely more interesting than critics, certainly. Though that's a low bar.