Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)
themarginalian.org
themarginalian.org
The beginning of the book contained a lot of cute letters between him and his wife Arline. I was curious how much of the book would be this, considering I know she died of TB, so I flipped ahead and saw a letter to her quite a few more pages in, so I figured she must survive until at least that point. I continued reading and was emotionally caught off guard when she died only a couple of pages later. I'm not sure why I was so distraught at the death of someone I did not know who died 80 years ago, but I was looking forward to, and had the expectation of, a few more cute letters between them.
When I got to the letter that I had originally flipped to, it was the one he was writing after her death as a form of therapy to himself.
FWIW, they had a very cute relationship and the letters are worth reading for that alone.
> PS Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don’t know your new address.
Not out of character for how I always imagined his personality.
You have got to be kidding me. And I thought academia was bad in the 21st century.
Love After Life: Richard Feynman’s Letter to His Departed Wife (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24204678 - Aug 2020 (1 comment)
Richard Feynman's Extraordinary Letter to His Departed Wife - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280764 - March 2019 (12 comments)
Feynman's Letter to His Wife - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10375283 - Oct 2015 (60 comments)
Richard Feynman’s Love Letter to His Wife Sixteen Months After Her Death - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7893757 - June 2014 (1 comment)
His second wife testified in court that he flew into a rage and choked her if she unwittingly interrupted his calculus. [1] She was granted a divorce due to his "extreme cruelty."
[1] p. 64-65 of FBI file - https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi...
I don't know about you, but physical abuse (e.g. choking his spouse if she interrupted him while he worked) goes way beyond asshole territory IMHO. We're talking about someone who was essentially an incredibly cruel, if not monstrous person.
But what generally happens with these types of things is that history tends to treat famous men very kindly and overlook or even completely erase their dark sides. That is indeed what has happened with Feynman.
Not making excuses for someone whom I don’t know or understand, but the toxic soup and paranoia associated with where and the nature of his work combined with what seems to a hard loss is a recipe for the type of mental anguish that might explain some of those behaviors.
> In many other states, especially California, the most popular allegation for divorce was cruelty (which was then unavailable in New York). For example, in 1950, wives pleaded "cruelty" as the basis for 70 percent of San Francisco divorce cases.[41] Wives would regularly testify to the same facts: their husbands swore at them, hit them, and generally treated them terribly.[41] This procedure was described by Supreme Court of California Associate Justice Stanley Mosk:
> > Every day, in every superior court in the state, the same melancholy charade was played: the "innocent" spouse, generally the wife, would take the stand and, to the accompanying cacophony of sobbing and nose-blowing, testify under the deft guidance of an attorney to the spousal conduct that she deemed "cruel."[42]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-fault_divorce#Bypassing_the...
> Admissible grounds varied from state to state. [...] In the other states, the common grounds were adultery, desertion, and cruelty; but there were all sorts of state idiosyncrasies. [...] Cruelty became the grounds of choice in the twentieth century; it overtook adultery in 1922, and in 1950 accounted for almost three-fifths of all divorces. Most states recognized cruelty as a valid reason for divorce—New York was a prominent exception.
> What accounts for this outbreak of marital cruelty? Nothing. It was, in fact, an outbreak of collusion. Most "cruelty" cases were uncontested. The plaintiff (usually the wife) filed for divorce. The husband made no defense. Divorce was granted, by default. Collusive divorce had become common in the late nineteenth century; in the twentieth century, it was absolutely pervasive. In legal theory, a collusive divorce was void. Husband and wife had no right to agree to split. In practice, collusion was the rule, not the exception; and the judges all knew it. Their (implicit) motto was: don't ask, don't tell.
> The precise form of collusion did vary from state to state. It mirrored the state statute; it was, in a sense, "cheating in the shadow of the law". In California, as in most states, cruelty was the courtroom favorite. In case after case after case, the wife complained that her husband cursed her and hit her, and made her life miserable. [...] In 1921 in San Francisco, the wife was plaintiff in 70 percent of divorce cases; and she alleged cruelty in 40 percent of the cases. By 1950 the percentage of accusations of cruelty had reached 70 percent.
> In New York divorce was available, practically speaking, only for adultery. This was an extreme situation; but any and all attempts to amend the law ended in shipwreck in the legislature. The demand for divorce, however, was as strong in New York as it was elsewhere. One end-run around divorce was annulment. Annulment is a declaration that a marriage never was valid, because of some kind of fraud or other impediment; in most states, annulment was a rare beast—usually fewer than 4 percent of all dissolutions of marriage. But New York was an annulment Mecca. By 1950 there were ten counties in New York which granted more annulments than divorces; and for the state as a whole, there were two-thirds as many annulments as decrees of divorce.
> New York also developed a weird form of collusive adultery—one might even call it soft-core adultery. A man would check into a hotel, a woman (usually a blonde) would appear, together with a photographer; the photographer would take pictures of the couple, in pajamas or underwear or even naked; the woman would get her fifty-dollar fee, and lo and behold! here was evidence of adultery. The flavor of this charade is neatly captured in the title of a magazine article from 1934: "I Was the Unknown Blonde in 100 New York Divorces".
Taking the above at face value, we have strong evidence that lots of people went to major lengths to establish a legal pretext for divorce. Cruelty allegations going from 40% to 70% in one city, and apparently making similar changes elsewhere, is certainly very suspicious—does it seem likely that husbands' behavior actually changed in that way? Allegation statistics varying significantly from state to state would also be rather suspicious; the book alludes to that but doesn't give details. The cited book itself has citations for several of the numbers and the magazine article, which one could chase down if one wants more detail and confirmation.
The crime and violence wave of the century was beginning, which would end with a whisper in the 1990s as crime and violence dropped everywhere in the US regardless of enacted laws.
Women's rights were taking hold. Men's behavior didn't necessarily change - the social ability to escape that behavior did.
I don't think that social sciences are as technically advanced as you want them to be. They are in their infancy.
He never noticed until he had the right frame of reference. It was easy to gloss over each individual instance because the songs weren't referring to him. He experienced an entirely different reality based on his perspective of existence.
There are ugly patterns in Feynman's writings about women. Not everyone has the luxury of ignoring these patterns as they read his work.
https://cirosantilli.com/feynman-was-a-huge-womanizer-during...
A cursory Google reveals...
> Neither were Feynman's escapades limited to bars; more than one of his biographies have documented affairs with two married women, at least one of which caused him considerable problems.[0]
Charlie Munger seems to be a source for claims that he would sleep with the wives of his undergrad students[2].
And then there are these passages[1], which appear to be from his own autobiography. This isn't necessarily cheating, but assuming that what he's written is true, they serve to make the accusations of infidelity more plausible.
> "... You must disrespect the girls. Furthermore, the very first rule is, don’t buy a girl anything –– not even a package of cigarettes — until you’ve asked her if she’ll sleep with you, and you’re convinced that she will, and that she’s not lying.”
>I adopted the attitude that those bar girls are all bitches, that they aren’t worth anything, and all they’re in there for is to get you to buy them a drink, and they’re not going to give you a goddamn thing; I’m not going to be a gentleman to such worthless bitches, and so on. I learned it till it was automatic.
>I think to myself, “Typical bitch: he’s buying her drinks, and she’s inviting somebody else to the table.”
>I stop suddenly and I say to her, “You… are worse than a WHORE! ... You got me to buy these sandwiches, and what am I going to get for it? Nothing!”
This Baffler[3] piece also focuses on this subject...
>He worked and held meetings in strip clubs, and while a professor at Cal Tech, he drew naked portraits of his female students.
>Even worse, perhaps, he pretended to be an undergraduate student to deceive younger women into sleeping with him. His second wife accused him of abuse, citing multiple occasions when he’d fly into a blind rage if she interrupted him while he was working or playing his bongos.
[0]https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunctio...
[1]https://restructure.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/sexist-feynman-...
[2]https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/richard-feynman-a-woma...
[3]https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/surely-youre-a-creep-mr-fey...
Instead of learning to play the bongos he dropped a series of EP's detailing how he really felt about the opposite sex.
We'll never know what we missed in this timeline, the Tom Lehrer of gangstah rap was never born in our universe.
It's funny how we like to think we're not animals when we really are.
> But no matter how effective the lesson was, I never really used it after that. I didn’t enjoy doing it that way. But it was interesting to know that things worked much differently from how I was brought up.
Regardless, this behavior was clearly inappropriate and should not be tolerated at a university. It does not appear to be actually criminal or predatory, unless I am still missing something.
If the love of my life were to be cut down in the prime of her life, I imagine I'd be emotionally scarred for life. Sure, I'd make every effort to move on, but I just can't imagine the amount of emotional scar tissue that would remain permanently.
Feynman has been a huge influence on me. His outlook on science and the world helped shape my own. But we can’t ignore the flaws of our heroes, and it really sounds like he had a dark side.
This is how the crime of "Solicitation of Murder" came to be.
I do not believe “that is on the wife to say no, not on him”. If these allegations are true, he was a teacher engaging in predatory behavior. That is simply unethical due to the power imbalance. And the fact that he was asking people to cheat is unethical.
People do good and evil things. But a person, in virtually all cases, is not "good" or "evil". Even if Feynman was engaging in the two behaviors you are thinking of at the same time (whatever those behaviors are - I'm not commenting), it still doesn't make him some kind of paradox. It does so much damage to think like this. This false dichotomy is especially prevalent for sexual topics, because they trigger stronger emotions and push us towards our "that guy good, that guy bad" instincts.
So Woody Allen went from being an adored auteur to someone who not only was declared guilty of a horrible crime in public opinion, but also people felt entitled to declare his cinema was never good to begin with (where were these people before Allen fell in disgrace? Nowhere. They only declared his movies trash once he fell in disgrace).
Same with Feynman. Same with Asimov. Same with Picasso. And the list goes on forever.
People cannot bear the thought that artists, scientists and public figures in general are real people, with flaws and all.
Feynman was a notable scientist but he was also one of the most famous scientists, he was a great populizer of science especially later in life. Finding out he was a sex pest or womanizer or worse has tangible consequences to that role. Was he a good mentor in general, or only to women he wanted to fuck? Or only ones he didn't? Were there any women pushed out of science because of his inappropriate attention or advances? We now have to ask these questions, and their answers can retroactively change how we evaluate his later life's work as an advocate of science.
Similarly woody allen makes movies that are compelling because of their portrayal of human connection and vulnerability. As you said, what woody allen is accused of is a great crime, far far beyond routine human flaws. It does change the context and the meaning of the movie to know that this is what its creator thinks of human connection as well. You can decide not to believe the allegations, but for people who do believe them I don't think it's an error or transgression for them to evaluate his movies in light of them.
And it is certainly not true that no one criticized these figures before their "faults" were known. Orson Welles famously with woody allen, Picasso was not always revered, and I disliked feynman from reading his own memoirs. It's just these criticisms are not generally welcomed or amplified for figures in the prime of their accolades. Which is an interesting subject itself, I think.
Yes, this is a fair assessment. The criticisms are given voice and spread once the person falls in disgrace. They are sometimes declared "unpersons", which I find deeply irritating. I suppose this happens to artists or scientists nearer in time; nobody cares to censor/cancel a Greek philosopher if he abused boys, it's just a footnote in their biography.
On the other hand, what if we could -- would we cancel all those Greek philosophers, or artists and scientists of antiquity? Strike them from the classroom, or focus the lesson entirely on how bad they were as people? Would mankind be better if that were the case?
As in, criticism is silenced until it breaks.
I want to make clear that when someone commits a horrible crime (not a minor transgression) they should be held accountable. So rape/abuse/murder is horrible, being a bad husband/wife or an uncaring parent is bad but not "horrible", etc. Also, people are flawed, and everyone engages in bad behavior that wouldn't stand up to public criticism. Your mileage may vary, of course.
What I object to is canceling a person's work because of alleged crimes. People confuse "I don't like what it's alleged this person did in their personal life" with "this is not relevant art/science, I wish cinemas/schools/museums didn't mention this person anymore".
There is also difference between "not mentioning person existed" and refusal to celebrate that person as hero or moral founder. Or just, putting contemporary complains about historical character into context. The "do not mention this person" is quite rare, actually. What people object about regarding cancelation is adding shade of grade to the person story or refusal to celebrate them.
Cinema students are literally asking teachers not to include Woody Allen in their syllabus. I don't know if everywhere, but I'm telling you of a second hand account of someone I know who witnessed this. And it's not the only example.
> There is also difference between "not mentioning person existed" and refusal to celebrate that person as hero or moral founder.
This brings us back to the initial comment I posted in this thread: why celebrate a public figure as a hero or moral founder? People seem to want to do this. Everyone must be either a hero or a villain; and a hero who falls from grace and turns into a villain in the public eye is doubly reviled!
It's fascinating but also irritating how we are so eager to create gods and then destroy them.
Possibly related to the Fundamental Attribution Error in psychology:
"The fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias or over-attribution effect) is the tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional or personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing situational explanations."
https://www.simplypsychology.org/fundamental-attribution.htm...
To enjoy entertainment of anyone not a saint makes you a bad person. And I want to state emphatically for the record I am a good person. I believe in all the right things, and disbelieve all the wrong ones. When those things change next year or tomorrow, I too will change and forget that I ever believed otherwise.
It feels a bit off to me. People are not good or bad. First of all what is good or bad depends on culture/geography. Second, every person has many good and bad treats according to any culture.
Hardly. I always knew they weren't saints, and always disliked them for being Nazis.
Bad people can't be talented or skilled. If they were, it would be as if the universe was condoning their behavior.
The commenter is using irony to make a point.
What did Asimov ever do?
Excerpt:
> "It is in this correspondence that we can find how the conrunners of the time treated Asimov’s harassing behavior. To be explicit, Asimov was well known for pinching the asses of women who were unlucky–or unwarned–enough to get on an elevator with him alone."
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2020/01/08/isaac-asimov-p...
https://daily.jstor.org/asimovs-empire-asimovs-wall/
...and those are just the first few that came up on Google. I'm too sad to look for more... :-(
Asimov made many women uncomfortable with his behavior, yes. He was also an all-around friendly and approachable guy, a bright mind, one of the giants of sci-fi, and also a great science communicator.
He had this flaw. It's on us to deal with it, and not let it mar his otherwise great memory. (It's not like he raped women either, however bad his behavior was. Not all sins are equal).
The majority of humans -- or even the subset of most of his readers, women or men -- never even met him personally and so this personality flaw never affected them. I acknowledge it was however a very uncomfortable experience for young women who got to meet him face to face (or hand to butt, I suppose), which is unfortunate. I also see how his behavior would have discouraged women who wanted to write and would have sought his mentorship; that is truly unfortunate.
I wish he hadn't behaved like this, but this doesn't define Asimov. His contributions far exceed this personality flaw, and therefore I don't feel particularly sad.
To further clarify, note this sentence in my comment:
>it still doesn't make him some kind of paradox
I did not say, e.g.
>it still doesn't make him, on par, more bad than good
If you're going to argue for a gradient of perspective while assessing the character of a person there are better examples than Feynman.
The degree of the subject's immorality has no bearing on my point. In fact, it's arguably better to use a "worse" example, by your definition, since it actually challenges the reader to consider the point more carefully. If the subject's crimes are petty, the reader might accidentally ignore my point, instead just jumping to the easy and fallacious thought, "yeah I agree, that person didn't do anything terrible", and moving on.
That said, to be clear, I don't have an opinion on where Feynman's indiscretions fall on the spectrum. I don't know the details beyond womanizing/objectifying/going after women in relationships. Again, I'd make the same comment regardless of the answer.
But people will keep lopsidedly downvoting when someone veers towards the judgement-side. As if putting people on pedestals is any better.
One of the few times I'm reminded how much time I spend posting in an online text forum, and oh boy what a bubble we enjoy conversing in.
This is a false premise and an oversimplification motivated by (understandably) bitter emotions (I go into this more in another comment).
People change and perhaps I’m being harsh. I just thought the paradox was interesting.
They don't agree, but are somehow still good people.. lol
Am I a bad person?
Public education is free for everyone. We all pay for it because it is in our best interest collectively. What makes you think you deserve access to other public programs and assistance, given that you’re not willing to extend others the same courtesy?
It certainly doesn’t excuse any behavior of his, but perhaps it explains it.
I'm having a hard time imagining how the cause you posited could conceivably lead to the effect in question. Let's also remember that when a guy "plays the field", it doesn't always have a deep story behind it! :)
I have zero evidence to back this up, it’s just how I felt after reading his books, and the biography by Gleick.
> sexual predation
I don't think this term is appropriate for anyone who is less than an attempted rapist.
There are many existing words to describe Feynman's behavior. Pervert, philanderer womanizer, consummate cheater.... Let's use existing words that lead to the correct assumptions by those unfamiliar with his sexual behaviors.
A sexual predator evokes Harvey Weinstein. AFAIK, Feynman sounds more like an 80s rock-star, and all the positive + negative behaviors associated with that stereotype.
I still think Harvey Weinstein is worse, like you say, but I think it's disingenuous to pretend like they're completely different types of people.
Those are completely different types of people. It is not that professors should sleep with students, it is that Weinstein went far far beyond that. Suggesting it is the same is minimizing what Weinstein did.
Feynman was a successful, charismatic man with insatiable curiosities about many things. He may have caused women to do things they later regretted, but it's unlikely he forced anyone against their will.
Our puritanical culture just doesn't like it.
> those bar girls are all bitches, that they aren’t worth anything
> I’m not going to be a gentleman to such worthless bitches
> I think to myself, “Typical bitch"
> I stop suddenly and I say to her, “You… are worse than a WHORE!"
Ya, it's just our puritanical culture...
He talks about how he struggled getting back into dating after his wife died and initially he tried dating very chivalrously, being kind and buying drinks for ladies. He found that most women would take his free drinks and ditch him.
The lines you quoted from his book are about his mental shift, and after he started doing that it actually worked! He was successful with that tactic, women wanted to sleep with him after he started thinking and acting like that.
He didn't break any laws, force anyone to do anything against their will, or hurt anyone. If that's the case, and the women actually responded to it, then what's wrong with it?
That's why I think everyone is being puritanical about it. Yes our cultural sensibilities don't like it, but nobody was hurt and he's being honest about something that actually worked, why is that bad?
You actually have zero idea who or how people were hurt because this is one side from Feynman. It's bad for the same reason that a goal of making lots of new friends and then backstabbing them is bad. Sure, it can be highly successful to making new friends. Not so long term beneficial, friendly, or moral though...
How is getting consent to have sex and then later having sex equivalent to stabbing a friend in the back? I don’t understand the analogy.
Unless you think one-night stands are morally wrong, I don’t really see any problems with his actions.
If the option to ditch him wasn't there then the drinks weren't really free, were they? It sounds more like him buying someone a drink came with expectations attached.
The funniest was probably Marilyn Manson. These women really didn't know that he was a disgusting pervert just from seeing him, then dated him for years, complaining a decade later? Manson is an awful person and makes no attempts to hide it. No one could say to the accusers, "you really had no idea this guy was a horrible person from second one?"
If Manson can be attacked and canceled any man can be.
The rumors and stories from himself suggest he was very successful at dating a lot of women, who were all consensual adults. Are you talking about something else?
We are simultaneously told that women are equal to men, and yet we also are told there are male predators and womanizers who women need special protection against.
This dismisses women's sexual agency. Specifically that women may choose, consciously, to exploit their sexual attractiveness to get something from a man.
If women don't have agency, i.e. men can manipulate them into damaging sexual relationships which they are helpless to avoid, this posits women as less than equals to men, as men are expected to stand up for themselves when someone attempts to manipulate them.