(The annotated and the Illustrated) Double Helix

Author: James D. Watson

Publisher: Simon & Schuster 2012 

(The original book was published in 1968.)

… Often, he (Doudna’s father) would bring home a book for her to read.  And that is how a used paperback copy of James Watson’s Double Helix ended up on her bed one day when she was in sixth grade, waiting for her when she got home from school.  … “When I finished, my father discussed it with me,” she recalls.  “He liked the story and especially the very personal side of it—the human side of doing that kind of research.”

— From “The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race”—

Watson’s “Double Helix” may have inspired Doudna to pursue a carrier in science, and likewise Schrodinger’s “What is Life?” influenced Francis Crick to abandon physics and pickup biology to search for the structure of DNA.  Watson joined Crick at the Cavendish laboratory and together they abandoned their other scientific goals in the pursuit of the structure of DNA.  Linus Pauling at Caltech, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin at Kings College London were their rivals in pursuing the same goal.  Pauling was using a model building technique, while Wilkins and Franklin were looking at x-ray crystallographic images of the DNA.  

Watson and Crick choose the Pauling’s model-building method and then combined it with examining x-ray crystallographic images produced by Franklin to discover the structure of DNA before the others.  This is the story of that discovery written by Watson.

Watson was relatively young, and he included some details of his social life in this book.  Here is one such activity that resonates with that of my younger days.  

“Peter (Pauling’s son) and I had both been too young to observe the original showings of Hedy Lamarr’s romps in the nude, and so on the long-awaited night we collected Elizabeth (Watson’s sister) and went up to the Rex.  However, the only swimming scene left intact by the English censor was an inverted reflection from a pool of water.  Before the film was half over, we joined the violent booing of the disgusted undergraduates as the dubbed voices uttered words of uncontrolled passion.

(The Ecstasy is a 1953 Czech film.)

When Crick, Watson and Wilkins won the Nobel prize for the discovery of DNA in 1962, Watson received thousands of letters mostly congratulatory, but he also received letters that he describes as “writer’s personal hobbyhorse kind”.  The following is Watson’s recount of receiving one such letter.

… One from a Palm Beach man, for instance, declared that marriages between cousins are the cause of all great evils that have afflicted mankind.  Here I thought better of writing back to ask whether there had been any such marriages among his ancestors.

He also received a congratulatory telegram from Feynman.  “… and there he met the beautiful princess and they lived happily ever after.”  Feynman was referring to a daughter of the king of Norway.  Unfortunately, Watson did not get to sit next to a princess during the Nobel price ceremony.  

Like Doudna’s father, I too “liked the very personal side of the story—the human side of doing that kind of research.”

Warlight

Author: Michael Ondaatje
Publisher: Vintage Books 2018

I enjoyed reading this novel.  I did not feel bored anytime while reading it.  I actually felt that he did not elaborate some complex relationships enough.  For example, the relationship between the daughter and The Moth was hardly explored.  Perhaps, that was by design.  The author wanted to concentrate on the relationship between the mother and the son.

The son was at least trying to understand why she left them by investigating mother’s actions.  Even though she was living with fear, she tried hard to show her love for her son and was trying to protect him and also prepare him from any foreseeable danger.

The following conversation between the mother and the son captures how the son felt about his mother soon after the reunion.

I complained about our abandonment.  She responded too quickly.  “Well, Olive was around you for a while.  She kept me up-to-date.”

“Wait a minute—Olive?  You knew Olive Lawrence?”

She drew back, as if she’d revealed too much. 

“I kept in touch.”

“Wonderful.  You kept in touch.  For your sake!  I am so glad.  You left us without a word.”

“I had work to do.  I had responsibilities.”

“Not to us!  Rachel hates you so much she will not even talk to me.  Because I’m here with you she hates me too.”

“Yes, I have been damned, by my daughter.”

I picked up the plate in front of me and flung it underhand viciously towards a wall as if that would finish our conversation.

Obviously, she had to do a lot of work to keep her son from leaving her too.  But as usual a bondage between a mother and a son is not easy to break.

It seems that the entire population of England felt that they were in grave danger during those early years of the second world war.  Ondaatje has done a masterful job in this regard by describing extreme steps that were taken in great detail to protect the country from a possible invading army.

There were some nostalgic moments for me in this story.

The gas fire sputtered, and The Moth got on his knees and put a coin in the meter to revive it. (Page 29)

It seems like things have not changed for nearly 40 years as I had to put in coins to keep the heat going while staying at a girl’s hostel at Oxford in May 1984.

He wiped the oilcloth on the table with a paper napkin before leaning his elbows on it. (Page 103.)

Every “hotel” in Colombo had oil cloths on tables when we were growing up.  Even my mother put an oil cloth on our dining table at home.  At least this practice was not in fashion in Oxford in 1984.

Reading a book in this day and age is a different experience from my younger days when there was no Internet.  I stopped reading and listened to Schumann Op 25 Mein herz ist schwer (My soul is dark) (Page 151) and also glanced through some Balzac novels. (Page 166.)  I also want to taste a sandwich with tomatoes, cheese, onions, and honey.  (Page 139.)  This I have not tried yet.

I have not read an Ondaatje novel before even though I have five Ondaatje novels including the award-winning "English Patient".  Judging his work only by this novel is probably unfair to him.  It is very possible that this is not his best novel.  He did not move me as much as Coetzee did with his “Disgrace” or as Carver did with his “Will You Please Be Quiet Please?” stories.  That does not mean the book is bad; far from it; but I expected more from an author who won the Booker prize twice.