The Scientists: A Family Romance
By Marco Roth
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
A frank, intelligent, and deeply moving debut memoir from n+1 cofounder Marco Roth
With the precociousness expected of the only child of a doctor and a classical musician—from the time he could get his toddler tongue to a pronounce a word like "De-oxy ribonucleic acid," or recite a French poem—Marco Roth was able to share his parents' New York, a world centered around house concerts, a private library of literary classics, and dinner discussions of the latest advances in medicine. That world ended when his father started to suffer the worst effects of the AIDS virus that had infected him in the early 1980s.
What this family could not talk about for years came to dominate the lives of its surviving members, often in unexpected ways. The Scientists is a story of how we first learn from our parents and how we then learn to see them as separate individuals; it's a story of how precociousness can slow us down when it comes to knowing about our desires and other people's. A memoir of parents and children in the tradition of Edmund Gosse, Henry Adams, and J.R. Ackerley, The Scientists grapples with a troubled intellectual and emotional inheritance, in a style that is both elegiac and defiant.
Marco Roth
Marco Roth was raised amid the vanished liberal culture of Manhattan’s Upper West Side. After studying comparative literature at Columbia and Yale, he helped found the magazine n+1, in 2004. Recipient of the 2011 Shattuck prize for literary criticism, he lives in Philadelphia. The Scientists is his first book.
Related to The Scientists
Related ebooks
Pieces of a Poet’s Heart Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBotany Bay Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDracula Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAt the Mountains of Madness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Kryptonite Kid Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCars and Jails: Dreams of Freedom, Realties of Debt and Prison Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNarrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoor Sap Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Swayze Year: You're Not Old, You're Just Getting Started! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOur Revolution A Future to Believe in by Bernie Sanders....Summarized Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Ralph Ellison's "Shadow and Act" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPaintwork Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fear The Sky Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnfinished Cathedral Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Les Misérables Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThat Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Black Actor's Guide to Not Working: Journal and an Original Screenplay. Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Apple II Age: How the Computer Became Personal Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wallet of Kai Lung Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart of Darkness (Legend Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsbecause God loves the wasp Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwo-Man Tent Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain's Underclass Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ulysses Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSwing State: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFlying Scotsman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All The Colors We Cannot See Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSecuring the City: Inside America's Best Counterterror Force--The NYPD Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Study Guide: Children of the Mind (A BookCaps Study Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings2020: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Personal Memoirs For You
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Diary of a Young Girl Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dry: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Stolen Life: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Glass Castle: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm Glad My Mom Died Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bad Mormon: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Child Called It: One Child's Courage to Survive Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mommie Dearest Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: the heartfelt, funny memoir by a New York Times bestselling therapist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Mercy: a story of justice and redemption Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Taste: My Life Through Food Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Yes Please Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mediocre Monk: A Stumbling Search for Answers in a Forest Monastery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Becoming Sister Wives: The Story of an Unconventional Marriage Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Stash: My Life in Hiding Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Solutions and Other Problems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Whiskey in a Teacup: What Growing Up in the South Taught Me About Life, Love, and Baking Biscuits Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Scientists
2 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Meh. The first few chapters were intriguing and heartbreaking--the perspective of an adolescent whose father is dying of AIDS and carrying the burden of that dreadful family secret. But then he goes on...When friends told him he reminds them of Woody Allen, I don't think they meant his looks. I think they meant his neurotic tendencies. In grad school, he intended to write a book that would explore his father's psychology through books. He never completed the project but devotes several chapters to those themes which, frankly, I skimmed. The essence of this book would have made a very solid magazine article.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I got a copy of this book from Goodreads First Reads. Thanks!
The first thing I should say about Roth's memoir is that it is very well written. Roth is an expert in his language, and uses his words in ways that flow as well as twist. To this, I should add that if you are not familiar with literary criticism, or "theory," or philosophy, and it irritates you that a writer uses references to the likes of Benjamin, Mallarme, and to other books, like the Red and the Black and Oblomov, then I suspect that you may not enjoy this memoir as much as others who are familiar with this turf. If you are not at all familiar with academia and the humanities, you may miss out on some satisfactory laughs.
I found Roth's voice, and Roth as the teenager, and then the lost 20-something-year-old man, to be perfectly likable. Even his mother, his father, and his aunt, as well as his various friends, seemed to be well flawed, yet likable characters. Sure, Roth does go through the expected teenage rebellion in his own way that perfectly suits his family, and sure he is privileged, and he knows it, and he is, luckily, half troubled and half thankful for it, and sure he is angry at his father and his mother and his aunt at different points in his life, but none of this makes him unlikable. It all just makes him and those surrounding him more human.
Anyone who is familiar with the academic humanities circles, especially in the Ivy Leagues, will find a lot of familiar scenes in this memoir. Roth's depiction of social events, as well as classes and discussions are very accurate. Even to the point of ridiculously familiar, like when the department head orders too many bottled of wine and the grad students take some home after the department party. Wow, takes me back! There is plenty for those familiar with the academia on the science end of things to nod knowingly, too (though we'd always have some hard liquor, because despite common opinion, us scientists always party more/harder and jollier than those humanities people!)
All prospective graduate students, graduate students, and postdocs should read page 141-142. When I read the lecture the person who is trying to unionize grad students gives them, I could not believe how Roth's account was almost EXACTLY the same as the conversations I have had with academics in the past. And yes, my graduate student friends all believed that they would be the 1 out of 5 who would become that hot shot professor at a good university; and no, none of them managed to achieve their lofty, irrational goal. There are some sad truths in Roth's account of the state of academia and research that apply to the humanities and the sciences alike, and I am afraid this is nothing new to those of us who have lived in academia, though it may be an eye opener for those who are not in those circles.
Overall, Roth's memoir is a painfully personal, cathartic, and introspective account of a family's past, and a light, stronger than expected, illuminating its present and future.
Recommended for those who like Fun Home, Fairyland, those who love or hate academia, the humanities, literary criticism, and philosophy, and New York City. Oh, and how can I forget; recommended for those who like reverse transcription, hematology, immunology, and malaria research.