For those of you who’ve been away on holiday and are struggling with your first few days back at the bench, I feel your pain, brothers and sisters. It is a truth universally acknowledged that in the wind-down to significant time off, the tendency is to postpone the most painful analyses and manipulations until your return – during which they fester, accumulate gravitas and loom like the world’s largest activation energy barrier to pummel you into submission on your return.
If only I had reserved a few of those light tasks I had taken such pleasure crossing off my list on that frenetic final day in the lab: mindless mini-preps, lazy ligations, a spot of breezy biochemistry. As it was, this afternoon found me mired in front of a computer screen, confronted with a mammoth set of dense hierarchical phenotypic clustering results. As the microarray-style matrix began to slide into a blur of crimson, green and black amid the post-lunch somnolence, I only wished I had a petite PCR or dozy digest to divert my brain’s compass away from vacation mode towards the more productive poles of the scientific method.
Rogue genes A gripping noir tale science and passion
For those of you who’d like to ease back into science in a more civilized fashion, I can heartily recommend the novel Mendel’s Dwarf by Simon Mawer, which is the book choice for our next Fiction Lab at the Royal Institution this coming Monday evening. First published eleven years ago, this little gem is a lab lit classic about an achondroplastic geneticist who studies his own disorder. Dark, erudite, poetic, sexy and extremely funny, this story is guaranteed to get your neurons back to full firing capacity.
If any of you live in the London area and fancy coming along on Monday, you’d best get your skates on. Like nearly all of the millions of novels published any time after the old classics but before a few years ago – that sad, gaping literary wormhole – it is nearly impossible to find in any bookstore. But there are still a few used copies available for quick dispatch in the United Kingdom on the Amazon marketplace, and it’s a speedy and entertaining read. I will leave you with this excerpt:
I pipetted a drop of glutinous fluid onto a slide and lowered the coverslip with consummate care. … I peered, adjusted the diaphragm, turned the nosepiece to the big lens. It locked into place.
One million million spermatozoa, all of them alive. Small exclamations of blind and culpable intent! Interrogation marks asking what absurd question? A thousands periods, each bearing its potent, muddled message…They shimmered and shook, nosing towards God knows what dimly perceived ovum, and I knew, oh I knew that of every thousand that I saw within that brilliant circle of light, five hundred carried the command for height, for normality, for happiness and contentment; and five hundred bore the curse.
But which?
Was that an epiphany? Was that the moment when something, someone – the bleak and austere muse of science – spoke to me?
Nice. As I’m eating gelato too… :p
Lucky you!
Hang on, I thought it was Henry who had the monopoly on dwarf sex?
You might want to explain that a bit more for the folks at home, Richard. That’s how rumors get started.
I’ve said too much already.
Oh, for goodness sake.
Aw, you’ve spoiled it now. I was hoping for a News of the World front page at the very least.
I’m sure the WebMasters of Nature Network will be curious as to why the search-engine traffic directed to NN has suddenly changed demographic….
thanks for this jennifer. It is a lovely review that you wrote. I will buy the book.
If only I were on commission, Pamela.
The other intriguing thing about the book is that the protagonist is a descendant of Gregor Mendel, about whom there is a lot of irreverent historical asides. And a splash of IVF ethics.
Dwarf sex?
Oh, now I get it. I was wondering what I had to do with this, and how it related to guinea pigs.
My evil genius isn’t a dwarf. He’s just on the short side, that’s all.
It is all relative, my dear Henry. I’m sure your guinea pigs think he’s absolutely massive.
But, my dear Jennifer, you haven’t seen the size of my guinea pigs.
ahh.. that book is really nice. Fun story and intriguing. Too bad that I’m still on the wrong side of the Atlantic…
ahh.. that book is really nice. Fun story and intriguing. Too bad that I’m still on the wrong side of the Atlantic…..and yes, how about being tired and confused in bench work due to no vacation? ;)
ahh.. that book is really nice. Fun story and intriguing. Too bad that I’m still on the wrong side of the Atlantic…..and yes, how about being tired and confused in bench work due to no vacation? ;)Good luck getting back into the wheel. And analysing the large data sets.
Åsa, can’t you take a bit of time off?
It’s funny, I first read that book when it came out and I recalled it being a lot blacker and depressing. Now I think it seems funnier because, having been in science for so long, you sort of have to learn how to laugh at the whole lifestyle to survive.
ah, shouldn’t have complained. I’ve been trying to wrap some things up. Famous last words! Needless to say it always takes longer time than one thinks, doesn’t it? You try and finish and it is very interesting and the experiments go well but all of a sudden it is…. no longer summer ;)
I’ll be off a long weekend this Fri-Sun so that will be some vacation!!
I remember the book being one of those where I didn’t really like the main character (his personality etc) but I still liked the book. It’s been awhile since though so maybe I’ll pick it up again and see if I get some new feelings after being in science for longer?
Does it come across as more plausable the second reading? YOu are hinting at that in the “lifestyle to survive”?
Yes, the protagonist is one annoying bastard; we’re supposed to think that. I think his personality leavens the otherwise potentially sickly scenario of ‘scientist with personal connection to the disease he studies’. It’s hard to feel sorry for Lambert as he’s leering up lady’s dresses, which makes the whole story much easier to swallow — and then when you do feel sorry for him despite his being a jerk, it makes even more of an impact.
I was very naive and idealistic about science when I first read it; I wasn’t so prepared to accept any denigration of my beloved new profession. Not so now. I can see science now, warts and all, and still love it.
That’s the trick isn’t it? To see things for how they are, for real, and still love them.
Anyway, before I get too sentimental, I’ll have to see if I can beg/borrow/steal a copy, even if I can’t make it to the Fiction Lab this time around.
I was rereading my nature magazine and I was struck by your piece titled “The Pair-Bond Imperative” in a way I never had been with a piece of literature scientific or otherwise. We’re about ready to leave for college, and I wanted to show the piece to my friend before she left. Would it be possible to send me the text so I can email it to her? If not, that is quite alright. Please keep writing that beautiful prose of yours. :)
Dear Philip
Many thanks for very kind words. I’ll reply to you by email.