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内容简介：今天的听读文章较以往略长，但值得花点时间一读。介绍一本新书"A Bend In The Stars"及其作者访谈。作者运用想象力，将1914年前后关于俄国的历史和爱因斯坦的故事写入小说中。让我印象深刻的是作者谈到的思考与勇气：我们是否也能经常问自己what am I doing? Where am I going, and is this where I want to be?是否有勇气打破陈规、挑战自我、改变自己?
Rachel Barenbaum's 'A Bend In The Stars' Tells A Tale Of Injustice And Romance
May 16, 2019
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:In 1914, Russia was on the brink of war, and Albert Einstein was on the brink of proving his theory of relativity. These two threads intertwine in a new novel called "A Bend In The Stars." The story centers on Vanya and Miri. They are Jewish siblings who might be able to escape Vanya's certain death on the frontlines if he can prove that gravity bends light. "A Bend In The Stars" is somehow a history of science, a story of injustice, a romance novel and an adventure tale. This is Rachel Barenbaum's first novel, and I began by asking her which of those threads was her starting point.
RACHEL BARENBAUM: I have to say it was really, for me, the science. I was reading this blurb in Scientific American in 2014, and it said a hundred years ago this month, Einstein was on the verge of proving relativity, and if he had only gotten to Russia or his team had gotten to Russia to photograph the total solar eclipse, he would have had his final piece of proof. He could have shown that gravity bends light. And I just thought before I even put the magazine down that that was a brilliant story idea. What if someone beat Einstein?
SHAPIRO: That idea of gravity bending light gives your book its title, "A Bend In The Stars." Did you have it from the beginning?
BARENBAUM: No. Actually in the beginning, I called it "The Measure Of Time," which is the name also of an essay by Henri Poincare, because really at its heart, the problem of relativity or the notion of relativity is really based in this question of, what is time? So time is a construct. We've invented it. What is a second? What is a minute? What is an hour? This notion of time is really what I was focused on.
SHAPIRO: For a first novel, this is such an ambitious project to take on, like, Einstein's theory of relativity and a century ago history of Russia. I mean, like, that's a big bite to take.
BARENBAUM: (Laughter) I guess. You know, I think maybe this is why - one of the reasons why I dug into it so deep and so hard - was because I think people shy away from relativity, from science. I hear a lot of people saying, oh, I don't do numbers. And I always wonder, well, why not, right? Some of these basic ideas - relativity is more philosophy. Einstein was more of a philosopher before he dug into the math, the proof of what he did. So I really want to be able to talk about it from the idea side, you know, not dig into the equation side.
SHAPIRO: What were the ideas that you wanted to explore?
BARENBAUM: Well, for starters, time, especially around the turn of the century. Trains were popping up. There are a lot of trains in the book.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
BARENBAUM: And in order for trains to work, you need schedules. And in order for schedules to work, you need to agree on a clock. So a clock in Switzerland might be 15 minutes ahead of a clock in France. There was no central clock, central time that everything was set to. And the problem was there was no way for all the clocks to be started at the same time so that everyone could agree on an exact time. So this was the problem of simultaneity and exactly what Einstein was working on in the patent office where he started - famously started out. There were these ideas of using pneumatic tubes or, you know, all kinds of ways of people were inventing to start clocks. And he realized really what we need to use is light.
SHAPIRO: I'm just thinking what you're describing about, like, trains and schedules sounds like it could be really, really dry, and yet you manage to make it sort of this, like, thrilling adventure caper romance on the brink of war.
(LAUGHTER)BARENBAUM: Yes, well, I mean, because it is a fascinating thing. We take it for granted now that, oh, you know, my plane is at 9 o'clock. I have to get there at 7 o'clock to go through, you know, security or whatever. But at the time, there was no standard schedule. That just blows my mind.
SHAPIRO: Yeah. Judaism is also central to your book. It's structured around the Jewish months of the lunar calendar. Why did you make this so central to the story?
BARENBAUM: So this again comes back to the question of time. (Laughter) I think I'm a little bit obsessed with this notion of time. Because the Jewish calendar is different from the Gregorian calendar that we use in the U.S., everything about it, including days - Jewish days start at sundown, not at midnight. And so I wanted to draw attention to this idea that there are different ways of tracking time, tracking days. But also there's a soul to the characters.Two of the main characters are Jewish, Miri and Vanya. And you know, the turn of the century, anti-Semitism was rampant. Jews were Jews in Russia, not Russians. And so I wanted it to really come to the front of the book that being Jewish in Russia - it was a very hard time, and that was affecting their decisions - you know, what the characters were doing, where they were going and why.
SHAPIRO: Judaism also imposes rules and laws on your characters in the same way, you could argue, that science imposes rules and laws on the world. And there are these constant questions about whether laws are absolute and whether rules can be broken. How do you reconcile this question of whether rules and laws are immutable or made to be broken?
BARENBAUM: I think this goes to the heart of Einstein because Einstein - you know, he sat in his classes, and he said Newton was wrong. And at that point in time, Newton was the gold standard, right? Isaac Newton was the most brilliant, the genius that constructed all of the rules of the universe. And he challenged them, and he had the guts, the courage to stand up and say, maybe we're thinking about this wrong; maybe we need to look at life, the way the universe is working in a different way. And I think that is so important, so crucial to progress, to growing. And I think it's an important thing for everybody to think about.
SHAPIRO: Tell me about your own path. I know you went to Harvard Business School. You worked at a hedge fund. This is your first novel. How did you find your way to this?
BARENBAUM: So I have been writing novels pretty much forever.(LAUGHTER) Since the third grade I've been writing. I have always wanted to be a writer.
SHAPIRO: The third grade novel has yet to be published.
BARENBAUM: (Laughter) Yes, that...
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
BARENBAUM: That's still in the drawer, but maybe I'll revise it next.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
BARENBAUM: I just have always wanted to do it, and, you know, I couldn't afford it coming out of college. And I actually remember my second year at Harvard undergrad, I had a creative writing class with Jamaica Kincaid.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
BARENBAUM: And she's an amazing, incredibly talented writer. And she sat me down, and she said, you know, if you're going to be a writer, if you're going to write fiction, you need to spend all of your time writing fiction. And at the time, that was this crushing blow because there was no way I could afford (laughter) to - you know, to write full time coming out of college. I had loans, and you know, I was already working at the gym, handing out towels. Like, I - you know, I couldn't do it. So I went into business, and that was an easy way to pay off those loans - and, you know, sort of worked my way up and my courage up to the point where I finally said in 2015 I'm going to do this full-time.
SHAPIRO: This might be a stretch, but I feel like your characters are sort of rewriting the path that life has laid out for them, and what you've just described sounds like a way of doing the same thing.
BARENBAUM: It's funny. Yes, I mean, I think, again, back to this idea of Einstein and challenging the base - right? - the base of what you believe, I think that we can always turn around and change our path and change who we are. And, you know, we need to just have the courage to look up and say, what am I doing? Where am I going, and is this where I want to be?
SHAPIRO: Rachel Barenbaum, congratulations on your debut novel, and thanks for talking with us about it.
BARENBAUM: Thank you so much, Ari. I really appreciate it.
SHAPIRO: Her book is called "A Bend In The Stars."
知识点笔记：
1.on the brink/verge of:在...的边缘，将要...
e.g.1.The company had huge debts and was on the brink of collapse.
2.Failure to communicate had brought the two nations to the brink of war.
2.the theory of relativity：大名鼎鼎的相对论
3.two threads intertwined...线索交织
e.g.1.Three major narratives intertwine within Foucault's text, 'Madness and Civilisation'...
2.He intertwines personal reminiscences with the story of British television...
3.Her fate intertwined with his.
4.这句对于书籍的介绍写得很棒："A Bend In The Stars" is somehow a history of science, a story of injustice, a romance novel and an adventure tale.
5.eclipse：
- solar eclipse/eclipse of the sun: 日食；lunar eclipse/eclipse of the moon: 月食
- 引申义：使...黯然失色
让我记住这一含义的就是读到《福尔摩斯探案集》，开篇第一个故事介绍一位女子，In his eyes, she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. 能让大侦探福尔摩斯有如此高评价的女子，该是怎样冰雪聪明啊？哈哈
6.a brilliant story idea极好的故事点子
7....a big bite to take用在这里是比喻义，指涵盖的理论和知识多,呼应前面"an ambitious project to take on"
8.dig into在这一段里出现了三次。dig是挖掘的意思，可以联想到引申义dig into: to try to find out about something unknown or secret调查；研究
e.g.1.So I started doing some digging into your background.
2.We'll be digging into the implications of that elsewhere in the program.
注意后一段的...the ideads that you want to explore?explore和dig的引申用法类似。
9.shy away from:（因害怕或信心不足）躲避；避免做这里shy很形象
e.g.These people shy away from risky investments in new technology.
后面有举例I don't do numbers.我数字不好。do是万能动词，回忆昨天的文章里"We have blood on 48000 women..."的have。
10.pop up: to appear, sometimes unexpectedly突然冒出
e.g. 1.Click here, and a list of files will pop up.
2.Her name keeps popping up in the newspapers.
pop-up可用于指弹出式（广告）
e.g....a program for stopping pop-up ads.
回忆复习:pop用于表示食物咬一口爆汁的感觉
e.g. The tomatoes pop when you bite into them.
11.schedule:（汽车、火车、轮船、航班）时刻表
e.g. Can you read the bus schedule on that sign?
12.dry: boring, very serious, and without humour. 这里的引申义和中文一致。干巴巴的，枯燥的
e.g.1.In schools, science is often presented in a dry and uninteresting manner.
2.a dry debate on policies
13.anti-Semitism:反犹主义，后面一句话举例说明了这个词。(…the turn of the century）…Jews were Jews in Russia, not Russians.
14....whether laws are absolute and whether rules can be broken.
这一段末尾还有一句类似:
...whether rules and laws are immutable or made to be broken
law：定律，回想一下以前学习过的许多定律...e.g.newton first law
rule：规则
immutable：cannot be changed不可更改的；不变的。编程里学数据结构也会遇到这个词 e.g.In Python, lists are mutable, while tuples are immutable.
15.gold standard：金本位，这里比喻义，金科玉律
e.g. AS all fans of crime fiction know, DNA is the gold standard of forensic science.
16.the guts:后面跟着相同意思的一个表达the courage
e.g.1.It takes guts to start a new business on your own.
2.No one had the guts to tell Paul what a mistake he was making.
17.Tell me about your own path.这一句path用得很妙，指人生经历、人生道路。后面还有一个，...rewriting the path...
18.hedge fund：对冲基金（避险基金）
hedge有篱笆的意思，引申为避险、保护
19.debut：首秀；首次登台
e.g.1.Dundee United's Dave Bowman makes his international debut.
2....her debut album 'Sugar Time'.
3.Oh, that's right. The twins' stage debut.
最后，再次分享访谈中作者说的两段话：
- And he(Einstein) challenged them, and he had the guts, the courage to stand up and say, maybe we're thinking about this wrong; maybe we need to look at life, the way the universe is working in a different way. And I think that is so important, so crucial to progress, to growing. And I think it's an important thing for everybody to think about.
- ...back to this idea of Einstein and challenging the base - right? - the base of what you believe, I think that we can always turn around and change our path and change who we are. And, you know, we need to just have the courage to look up and say, what am I doing? Where am I going, and is this where I want to be?
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