Divine Fury (53 page)

In an age as suspicious of “greatness” as our own, it is worth recalling that truth, and recalling that, although those who prostrate themselves before idols make themselves small, those who fail to take the measure of true stature are similarly diminished. Great men and great women still have their uses. As Emerson put it over a century and a half ago in a passage that serves as an epigraph to this book, the genius of humanity continues to be the right point of view of history. “Once you saw phoenixes: they are gone; the world is not therefore disenchanted.” May it never be.
²³

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I
HAVE UNDOUBTEDLY SUFFERED
from many delusions in my life—and undoubtedly suffer from many still. But being a genius is not one of them. Exacting, if loving, parents saw to it that their son never “got too big for his britches,” as my father liked to say, and an exacting, if loving, family does much the same today. Truth be told, I am far more likely to go through the week thinking of myself as an imbecile—unable to properly assemble my children’s toys, baffled by modern technology, and forgetting (yet again) to take the laundry out of the dryer—than to suffer
la folie de la grandeur
. My own failings have much to answer for. But there may be an institutional explanation as well. For, in the early 1970s, as a child in the California public school system, I was administered an aptitude test for “Mentally Gifted Minors.” It was, as I recall, somewhat akin to an IQ test, with shapes and pictures and the like, and although many of the specific details of this test have faded from my memory, I know for sure that I didn’t pass. It hardly helped that I was told I
almost
passed. To be almost gifted is likely as satisfying as being almost pretty. As I watched my little friends trundle off each week to special classes for the specially endowed, the thought provided little consolation.

I recount the story here not only in an effort to combat (however imperfectly) my own sense of self-importance, but also because this book is in part about the power of labels and those who grant them, and the tremendous difficulty of measuring anything as elusive, as multicausal, and as complex as giftedness, creativity, or genius. When I recently spoke with a teacher who helped to oversee the administration of the test I took in California—one of the many fine teachers, I should add, who did their best with those of us who were apparently cheated at birth—she laughed as she recalled the students who had “passed,” and those who had not, and how they eventually turned out. Suffice it to say that she didn’t put much stock in the predictive value of this sort of exam.

Much of the material chronicled in this book would likely reaffirm that basic skepticism. And yet that doesn’t mean that the impact of such tests—and the assumptions that tend to undergird them—are any less powerful or enduring than we typically assume. At an early age, I was told, with all the objectivity of science, that I was not the recipient of gifts. I might have just thrown in the towel then and there, but I am a stubborn sort, and I spent many years disputing the verdict, working away to prove to myself and to others, dammit, that I had not been slighted at birth. It was only much later that I realized that this little exam had unwittingly done me a favor—and not simply because intellectual self-doubt
is an ideal disposition for writers and scholars. I had been freed at the outset from a burden that might well have been difficult to sustain. There is evidence to suggest that an exaggerated belief in the strength of one’s innate capacities can actually harm a child’s development, sapping motivation and initiative. And there is even more evidence to show how damaging it can be to tell young people that, according to the numbers, they just don’t measure up.

Standardized tests have been with us since the early twentieth century, and they are here to stay. But at a time when they are assuming an ever greater importance in our educational system, it is worth thinking seriously about their impact, and about the assumptions they entail. For, as this book takes pains to show, despite our foundational belief in the self-evident truth that all are created equal by birth, we in the West (and elsewhere besides) have shown ourselves to be deeply invested in an antithetical proposition, continually reaffirming the natural and inherent superiority of the few.

Why this should be so is as much a question for psychologists, evolutionary biologists, and political philosophers as it is for historians, who might consider together why it is that human beings evince a need to draw hierarchical distinctions, even (or especially) in conditions of nominal equality. We might also ponder why it is that we show a propensity to base these distinctions in nature and the fatality of birth. By focusing on the tremendous fascination with genius and geniuses in the modern world, this book hopes to begin an answer.

I
N WRITING THIS BOOK,
I have benefited immensely from the kindness and expertise of others. If that is the case with all creative endeavors, it is especially so with this one, since genius touches on so many different domains. Science, psychology, sociology, historical aesthetics and the study of literature, music, art, and even theology and demonology all find their way into the study of genius, not to mention political history and the history of celebrity and fame.

For helping me to negotiate this varied and difficult terrain, I wish to thank, first of all, a number of institutions and individuals who helped me to organize conferences and symposia that were of great assistance in shaping my thinking. The ever-generous Martin Seligman and Angela Duckworth at the University of Pennsylvania helped bring together an extraordinary group of experts, including James Gleick, Douglas Hofstadter, Anders Ericcson, Rebecca Goldstein, Robert Scales, David Lubinski, Roy Baumeister, and Dean Keith Simonton, for two days of rewarding discussions in Philadelphia. Sarah Buck-Kachaluba, the humanities librarian at Florida State University, my own institution, along with the obliging staff at FSU’s Strozier Library, have been of great service in a number of ways, most immediately by helping to organize a one-day symposium, “Facets of Genius,” in February 2012, along with Professor Christian Weber and myself. Finally, the Huntington Library in Pasadena, California, generously allowed my friend and colleague Joyce Chaplin and me to bring together a dazzling array of scholars in May 2012 to consider genius for two days in the most congenial of settings.

Antoine Lilti graciously invited me to deliver a series of lectures and spend a month at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris in the spring of 2010, which
proved of immense value (at least to me). David Armitage and Peter Gordon arranged for me to speak to an engaging audience at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University; Dan Edelstein and Keith Baker did the same at the French Culture Workshop at Stanford University; and Tony Judt, in the months before his death, had me one last time to the Remarque Institute at New York University to share my thoughts on genius before a stimulating group and to steal a precious moment with him. For much of my professional career, Tony served as a guardian angel and
genius bonus
. I am grateful to have known him, and I miss him every day.

I am also grateful to Carolina Armenteros for an invitation to deliver a keynote address at Jesus College, Cambridge, amid the Fifth International Colloquium on Joseph de Maistre; to Annie Jourdan for her hospitality and invitation to speak about evil geniuses before the faculty of European Studies at Amsterdam University; to Ivo Cerman for a chance to consider the “religion of genius” at the Historical Institute of the Czech National Academy of Science in Prague; to Hans Stauffacher for the opportunity to speak on “geniology” at the Institut für Religionswissenschaft at the Freie Universität in Berlin; and to Steven Vincent, Tony La Vopa, Malachi Hacohen, and the gracious participants at the Triangle Intellectual History Seminar at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina for an invitation to present a chapter of my work and for their temerity in reading it, much to its improvement. I also delivered papers on the subject of genius at the Western Society for French Historical Studies, the Consortium on Revolutionary Europe, the American Historical Association, and Potsdam University. I am grateful to the audiences at all of these places for their comments and consideration.

I am likewise grateful to my colleagues at Florida State, who provided a great deal of helpful feedback during the two work-in-progress talks I delivered at the Department of History. Rafe Blaufarb, Ron Doel, Charles Upchurch, George Williamson, Fritz Davis, Nathan Stoltzfus, and Robert Gellately kindly read individual chapters with particular care and offered much helpful advice. John Marincola in the Department of Classics did the same with his generous and discerning eyes, and François Dupuisgrenet Desroussilles brought his astounding erudition to bear on two chapters that eventually became one. Edward Gray heard me out on many occasions, lifting my spirits even as he did damage to my liver. And for professional assistance and personal relief, I must also thank the brothers of the Order of St. Walpurgis—John Corrigan, Thomas Joiner, Neil Jumonville, David Kirby, John Maner, Mark Petralunga, David Scott, and Mark Weingardner—for their robust courage in doing battle against the demons of academic pomposity, intellectual laziness, provincialism, boredom, and excessive sobriety. The three other members of the “4 D’s Dining Club,” who in the interest of discretion shall remain nameless, have done much the same.

Very special thanks are due to several individuals who read the draft manuscript in its entirety. David Bell, whose insight and generosity is unsurpassed, has more to do with this project’s improvement, and less to do with its shortcomings, than anyone I know.
Merci, bonne étoile
. David Armitage,
copain
and
comrade in arms, read through the draft with his characteristic brilliance and wit, keeping me laughing and enthused for great stretches of its composition; and Steven Englund, whose Paris drawing room is a rejuvenating place of sweetness and light, offered the wise judgments of a writer who is also a very fine historian.

A great many other individuals shared knowledge, references, insight, or unpublished work. A complete list would run to several pages, but let me at least express my gratitude to Kathleen Kete, John Carson, Adam Potkay, David Bates, Pascal Dupuy, Lauren Gray, Nathalie Heinich, April Shelford, Rob Riemen, Eric Eichman, Robert Folkenflik, Mark Juergensmeyer, Kent Wright, Jeremy Caradona, Daniel Roche, Jacques Revel, Eva Giloi, Laurel Fulkerson, Christine Zabel, Larry Fischer, Michael Carhart, Julianna Baggot, Danny Markel, Cyril Triolaire, Philippe de Carbonnières, Peter Hicks, Thierry Lentz, John Randoph, Rolf Reichardt, John Merriman, Eliyahu Stern, Mark Lilla, Stéphane Van Damme, Matthew Day, Will Hanley, Sophia Rosenfeld, Thomas Meyer, Sonja Asal, Shalyn Rae Claggett, W. Warner Burke, James Younger, Lynn Hunt, Irina Sirotkina, Margaret Jacob, and the late Frank Turner, who died too young, but taught me much.

Tarah Luke, Katherine Cox, Darren Darby, and Antje Meijners all assisted me with research and tracking down materials. In Berlin, Dorit Brixius was of invaluable assistance in helping me with German sources. And my doctoral students in Tallahassee, Joe Horan, Cindy Ermus, Shane Hockin, Bryan Banks, and Jonathan Deverse, were all pulled into the process at one stage or another and helped out with great efficiency and good cheer.

Much of this manuscript was written in Berlin, that remarkable city that has known so much suffering and inflicted so much pain, and yet has transformed itself into a capital of great enlightenment and pleasure. I am immensely grateful to the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung for sponsoring my time there as well as to Günther Lottes, who was a model host, ever generous in his friendship, ideas, and wit. Iwan d’Aprile was similarly forthcoming, and the many wonderful graduate students at the University of Potsdam made this a lively and welcome retreat, just as Irmela Schautz, Christian Ridder, and their daughter, Salome, helped to make our rented flat in Prenzlauer Berg a genuine home. Finally, my professional residence, Florida State University, was no less generous in granting leave-time and resources, including a Council on Research and Creativity grant that helped get this project off the ground.

My wife, Courtney McMahon; my agent, Tina Bennett; and my editor and publisher, Lara Heimert, are a trio of Muses—strong, intelligent women who could inspire even the dullest of minds. They have inspired me. Courtney, above all, withstood my distractions to help create a space in which I could create in peace, at no small sacrifice to her own. By contrast, my children, Julien and Madeleine, to whom this book is dedicated, did everything they could to delay the project, and with some success, peering in my office door, jumping on my back, and waking me in the middle of the night. If only the book had taken longer.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1
. See, typically, David Harris,
The Genius: How Bill Walsh Reinvented Football and Created an NFL Dynasty
(New York: Random House, 2008); Danny Goldberg,
Bumping into Geniuses: My Life Inside the Rock and Roll Business
(New York: Gotham Books, 2008). The BBC film led to a book, edited by the director Christopher Sykes, entitled
No Ordinary Genius: An Illustrated History of Richard Feynman
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1995). James Gleick’s excellent biography of Feynman is entitled simply
Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
(New York: Vintage, 1992).

2
. “Think Like a Genius: How Exceptional Intelligence and Creativity Arise,”
Scientific American Mind
, special issue, November/December 2012. The title is also that of Todd Siler’s
Think Like a Genius
(New York: Bantam Books, 1999).