Learning How to Fail

The robot has miscalculated the trajectory of its jump. It hits the wall and slides into a pool of goo, fizzling quietly as it dissolves. It’s the second jump to end in failure, but no one seems to mind.

This scene played out a while back as I watched my daughters play the video game Portal 2. In the Portal games, players use motion, trajectory, and strategically placed portals to progress through a series of increasingly complicated puzzle rooms. My daughters were playing in coop mode, which means they had to work together to complete each room. In the later stages of the game, when the puzzles started getting really hard, both players ‘died.’ A lot. 

The thing that interested me was that these repeated failures didn’t seem to bother my kids at all. Each failed attempt taught them something new about the puzzle and brought them closer to a solution. In some of the later puzzle rooms, there wasn’t even a clear objective, meaning that a series of failed experiments was the only way to understand the puzzle and its solution.

There’s no consequence for failure in the Portal games other than having to start over, and I was struck by how my kids seemed to take failure as a natural part of playing the game. All that seemed to go out the window, however, when it was time for homework, and failure to immediately grasp a concept or solve a math problem seemed like an insurmountable obstacle.

The problem is that failure gets a bad rap in our culture, even though it’s an essential part of both science and the creative arts. Scientists know that failed experiments are often just as instructive as successful ones, and nearly every product or creative design process builds on a series of initial failures.

“As educators, it’s our job to teach kids to be successful by teaching them how to fail—to help them develop the persistence and resiliency to get back up and try again.”

It’s easy to forget that Henry Ford’s first two companies failed; that Steve Jobs was fired by Apple in 1985; that J. K. Rowling was unemployed and on welfare when she started writing Harry Potter. These people are remarkable not only for their achievements, but also for their ability to persist and persevere in the face of failure.

Encouraging that kind of persistence and perseverance is a key part of what schools can do for kids. A school should be a place where students can challenge themselves and take risks, which inevitably entails the possibility of failure. As educators, it’s our job to teach kids to be successful by teaching them how to fail—to help them develop the persistence and resiliency to get back up and try again. It’s our job to help our students see failure as a natural part of the learning process instead of a disastrous dead end.

The third time, the robot hits the jump just right. It sails through the portal on the wall and is on its way, moving onward to the next challenge.

Editor’s Notebook column published in Connections

Inventing the Future

Imagine a mobile platform that uses a robotic arm to 3D print entire buildings. Imagine a medical lab the size of a computer chip that can give doctors nearly instantaneous test results. Imagine a car that can drive you to your destination while you sit back and relax.

All of this might sound like science fiction, but these technologies are being researched and developed in labs across the country. As a student at MIT and now a grad student at Stanford University, Nathan Spielberg ’11 is working on cutting edge technologies with the potential to transform the way we live. In a very real sense, the labs that Nathan is working with are inventing the future.

Nathan graduated from MIT last year with a degree in mechanical engineering. During his last two years, he worked primarily with 3D printers on projects that ranged from the very large to the very small. “I spent one year working with giant machines,” Nathan recalled, “and the next year working with machines where you needed a microscope to see the parts you built.”

His large scale project involved working with the Mediated Matter Research Group to help solve the engineering challenges of building a 3D printer able to work with precision on projects such as houses or other structures. The team that Nathan worked with developed a digital fabrication platform that consisted of a robotic arm attached to a boom arm truck. The device could build up entire structures layer by layer and has the potential to revolutionize how homes are built.

On the smaller scale, Nathan worked with the Mechanosynthesis Group on 3D printing a ‘lab on a chip,’ a miniaturized computer chip that can run a wide range of tests on a tiny sample of blood. The chip produces nearly instantaneous results, and Nathan believes there’s enormous potential in the technology for EMTs or military field medics.

Nathan believes that these extremes of scale are the future of 3D printing. “There are people trying to make medical devices that integrate with your body at really small scales, printing cells to make tissue, organs, or biologically compatible materials,” he explained. “There’s also printing at huge scales, like houses or cars.”

Nathan’s now a graduate student in mechanical engineering at Stanford, where he’s working with the Dynamic Design Lab on another futuristic project: autonomous vehicles, more popularly known as self-driving cars.

“I’m currently in a lab that’s working on testing autonomous cars at the limits of handling and stability,” he explained. “If you can design algorithms that make autonomous cars handle better in extreme situations, that could help with safety in existing cars in any situation where the car loses control, like sliding on the ice.”

Although he’s mostly working on programming the software that controls the cars, Nathan said that he also gets to do some of the mechanical work he loves. “We have one car that you can program for any experiment you want to do. It’s an electric car that you can program as a race car or to do user studies. I’ve been helping with a rear-end redesign of that car. We’re putting the drivetrain from a Tesla in it.”

Stanford tests its cars at Thunderhill Raceway a few hours north of campus, and Nathan said that he finds it satisfying to see his work in action. “For a lot of people in this field, the furthest they get is verifying that their simulation works on a computer. We have the hardware and the cars to test it out on the track or in user studies. Whatever you’re working on, you get to test it out at the end of the day.”

Nathan loves mechanical engineering because it lets him do the building and tinkering he enjoys so much. Last summer, Nathan got to share his enthusiasm with a group of middle school students during the summer Maker Corps classes hosted in the KCD Fab Lab.

“That was a really great experience,” he recalled. “The whole Maker movement is really awesome, and I wish there had been more of that when I was growing up. All that technology is making it so easy and convenient to make anything you can imagine. All the kids this past summer made robot arms in less than a week. They were all laser cut and able to move around and pick stuff up. It was amazing.”

Looking back, Nathan said he’s grateful for the math and science classes he took at KCD. “They did a really good job of getting me set up for my first year at MIT,” he said. “It was definitely harder than KCD, but I think there were people there who weren’t as well prepared for it as I was.”

Nathan’s not sure where he’s headed after grad school, but he loves the forward-looking research he’s involved with. “You get to be a part of the future of the field you’re in. I think that’s really neat.”

Feature article published in Connections

The Hard Work of Diversity

Leafing through an old scrapbook the other day, I came across a Courier-Journal article from November, 1982. “Kentucky Country Day pursues a new look,” the headline stated; the article that followed described the school’s efforts to recruit more “minority and middle class students.”

I found this article striking because it’s a snapshot of the moment when KCD, along with many other independent schools across the country, began to push back against the perception that it was there to serve only white, upper-income families.

That push was hardly unique to KCD. For the last 30 years, we—along with many other independent schools—have worked to diversify our student population and create a more thoughtful, welcoming, and inclusive school culture.

By any objective measure, that work has paid off. This fall, the Admissions Office reported that 33 percent of our families self-identified as families of color. If you think back to that 1982 Courier-Journal article, that’s a remarkable success story.

Those numbers only tell part of the story, though. Getting diverse students in the door is one thing; truly meeting their needs in a meaningful way is something else. A truly diverse community requires both dialogue and mutual respect. It means allowing minority students to affirm their own backgrounds and identities rather than expecting them to simply fit into the status quo. It’s an ongoing learning process that can be challenging and occasionally contentious. It can actually be hard work sometimes. Like many kinds of hard work, however, it’s well worth doing.

“A truly diverse community requires both dialogue and mutual respect. It means allowing minority students to affirm their own backgrounds and identities rather than expecting them to simply fit into the status quo.”

There are pragmatic arguments to make, of course. Learning to negotiate a diverse school environment is essential preparation for success in both college and career. Diversity can spur the development of critical thinking by helping students learn to view issues or problems from multiple points of view.

I think that the most important thing that diversity can offer our students is the realization that not everyone is like them; that there are people whose lived experience is different than their own. This is an invaluable opportunity for students to step outside their own lives and recognize that their culture, background, and experience is only one of many possible ways of living. Over the years, I’ve come to believe that this is one of the most enriching experiences people can enjoy. I also believe it’s the starting point for one of the most valuable skills of all: empathy.

Institutions that are committed to the hard work of diversity can occasionally find the process challenging. Members of our community can and will disagree, sometimes strenuously, but as long as there’s trust and mutual respect, we can all pull together to move the institution forward. We may be gay or straight, Christian or Muslim or Jew, black or white or brown. At the end of the day, we are all Bearcats.

Editor’s Notebook column published in Connections

Trash to Treasure

When the waters of the Great Flood of 1937 began to recede from the streets of Louisville, they left a soggy mess behind. Floodwaters had submerged large sections of the city, but one neighborhood had been almost completely destroyed. The Point had been a posh neighborhood, full of mansions built in the 1840s by wealthy transplants from New Orleans. The area flooded several times over the years, but the Great Flood of 1937 sealed the neighborhood’s fate once and for all. The Point had been washed away by the floodwaters and would never return.

Instead, the sodden wreckage from those mansions was hauled to a 23-acre site along Ohio Street that eventually became known as the Ohio Street Dump. This once-grand neighborhood was now a scene of urban blight. Wild pigs scavenged for scraps in the open dump, and the dumping of coal ash frequently caused fires that would smolder for days at a time.

The landfill was finally capped with 25 feet of dirt in 1973, and the site sat quiet and empty for nearly 45 years. All that’s changing now, thanks to the Waterfront Botanical Gardens organization and its executive director, Kasey Maier ’77. “There have been efforts to build botanical gardens in Louisville for more than 30 years,” Kasey said. “It’s been very rewarding to be part of making that dream into a reality.”

In 2013, Waterfront Botanical Gardens sealed a development deal with the city of Louisville, allowing them to buy the 23-acre site for a dollar. Starting with an initial $1.5 million bequest, the organization has raised another $6 million to date—enough to break ground on the first phase of an ambitious three-part plan.

For Kasey, who joined Waterfront Botanical Gardens as their first full-time employee four years ago, it’s been exhilarating. “When I got involved, my goal was just to raise awareness in the community. I started doing everything I could to get the word out, on hardly any money—having events, using social media, newsletters, everything we could do to get our name out there.” The word has certainly gotten out: more than 300 people attended the groundbreaking ceremony on September 15, including many former and current city and state government officials.

photo by Weasie Gaines

The first phase of the project will focus on construction of the Graeser Education Center, a 6,000-square-foot, glass-enclosed facility featuring classrooms, a kitchen, and conference facilities. “We’re starting with the education center because environmental education is what our mission is all about,” Kasey said. “The event venue will hold 250 people and will let us start bringing in revenue to support our operations.” This phase of the project will take about 18 months and is scheduled to open in April of 2019.

Following the completion of the education center, development will focus on creating a plaza and education gardens around the building as well as an overlook over Beargrass Creek, which runs along the eastern side of the site.

Further plans include more gardens surrounding a visitor center that will include a restaurant, gift shop, and offices. “The visitor center will be a beautiful, sloping building with a green roof. We’ll actually have green grass growing on top of the roof, which slopes up to give you a beautiful view of downtown and the bridges.”

The final phase of the project focuses on a conservatory, which will also offer sweeping views of the Ohio River and downtown.

Kasey said that it’s been thrilling to be a part of the greening of Louisville’s waterfront and the revitalization of the communities around it. “Neighborhood revitalization is a big part of this project,” she said. “It’s impacting the surrounding neighborhoods in a big way. Butchertown’s getting ready to skyrocket—first the botanical gardens and hopefully the soccer stadium next.” [On October 26, Louisville Metro Council approved a deal paving the way for a $200 million development district around a new soccer stadium—Ed.]

Kasey believes that the botanical gardens will be an important cultural asset for the city. “For me, the most important thing it can offer is environmental education. We want it to be available to every child in the city. They can get their hands in the dirt and start learning what it means to take care of a garden and what it means to take care of the Earth—why clean soil is important, why clean air is important. They can have those experiences and have fun at the same time.”

Kasey spent the first part of her career in banking and finance. Facing a career transition in 2008, she realized that her skills could be put to good use in the nonprofit world. “I found that the business skills I had developed in the banking and finance world over all those years mapped over to the nonprofit world quite beautifully,” she recalled.

“I learned that the point is not to be the best, because there’s always going to be somebody who’s prettier, smarter, or more talented than you are. The point is to find where you belong on a team and how to contribute to make that team successful.”

In 2009, she became the business partner of Louisville artist Churchill Davenport, helping him launch what is now the Kentucky College of Art & Design at Spalding University. “We built [the art school] from nothing,” she said. “When I left in 2013, we had 11 full-time employees, 35,000 square feet, and 50 students.”

Changing careers can be a daunting task, but Kasey says that the confidence she learned at KCD has been invaluable. “What makes you successful is having the guts and confidence to keep moving forward,” she said. “KCD was an environment that helped me build confidence in so many different ways. Anything I wanted to be involved in, I could be involved in. I learned that if I wanted to do something, I could learn to do it and do it well, and that there were people there to guide me.

“At KCD, I learned that the point is not to be the best, because there’s always going to be somebody who’s prettier, smarter, or more talented than you are. The point is to find where you belong on a team and how to contribute to make that team successful. It’s about finding out where you belong, and I found that at KCD.”

For now, Kasey has found that she belongs with the Waterfront Botanical Gardens. As she walks the site, describing the gardens and buildings that will soon take shape there, you can tell that she’s caught up in the excitement of bringing these plans to life, this dream of a garden growing on this forgotten spot on the banks of the Ohio River.

Feature article published in Connections

Cabinets of Curiosities

The world would be a far less colorful place without people like Paul Collins and Ricky Jay. In these two recent books, both Collins and Jay delve into the obscure corners of history and emerge with the stories of some of the most remarkable, eccentric, and outright amazing individuals that ever lived.

Banvard’s Folly is a lovingly-researched tribute to the forgotten, the mistaken, and the discredited. The book profiles 13 historical figures, many of whom were among the most well-known figures of their day. Each, however, pursued his or her genius to a historical dead end, and their reputations and achievements have long since vanished into obscurity. Although each of these profiles is ultimately a study in failure, these ill-fated individuals demonstrate a brilliance, eccentricity, or audacity that is often breathtaking. Collins’ subjects may be failures, but they are spectacular failures—visionaries and dreamers who failed with an astounding degree of ambition, style, and verve.

Banvard’s Folly
Paul Collins
Picador USA

These short biographies make for compelling reading, and Collins has a knack for digesting and presenting a great deal of biographical and historical information in a manner that reads like a short story. There are several portraits of once-lauded geniuses now consigned to oblivion, including a fascinating biography of the American painter John Banvard, whose moving panoramas of the Mississippi River earned him a vast fortune and international acclaim in the 1850s. Banvard, unfortunately, met his match in showman P. T. Barnum, who ultimately helped drive Banvard into ruin. There is also a remarkable portrait of A. E. Beach, who in 1870 had the audacity to construct—without permits—an underground pneumatic train line running beneath New York’s City Hall—a project that foundered when confronted with the corrupt administration of New York City Mayor Boss Tweed.

There are several other vastly enjoyable chapters, including a fascinating account of William Henry Ireland, whose forgery of Shakespeariana in the 1790s caused a national uproar. Collins’ account of René Blondlot is equally engrossing. Blondlot’s 1903 discovery of N-Rays gained the attention of the worldwide scientific community, and scientists around the world verified and expanded on Blondlot’s theories. If you’ve never heard of N-rays, you might want to consult Collins’ book for an explanation—it’s not what you might expect.

Banvard’s Folly is great fun and is easily one of the most fascinating books I’ve read in the last year. The same is true of Ricky Jay’s most recent book, Jay’s Journal of Anomalies, which reproduces the first 16 issues of the eponymous fine press illustrated quarterly that Jay wrote and co-published from 1994–2000.

In addition to enjoying a reputation as one of the world’s great sleight-of-hand artists, Jay has established himself as an authority on the history of magic and unusual entertainments. The fruits of his research are harvested in this beautifully presented book, which offers definitive accounts of some of history’s strangest entertainments. These pages are populated by ceiling walkers and levitators, flea circuses and professional fasters, automaton chess players and speaking machines. Jay’s chapters on (apparent) nose amputations and theatrical crucifixions reach a new pinnacle of strengeness and offer incontrovertible evidence that, while truth may not always be stranger than fiction, it often gives fiction a run for its money. Jay’s wry take on the trials faced by professional fasters makes this chapter unexpectedly hilarious, as is his account of the many perils facing the 18th century gentleman in that pernicious den of iniquity—the bowling alley. One of the book’s most fascinating chapters recounts the extraordinary career of Wolfgang Kempelen, whose ingenious speaking machine led indirectly to Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone.

Jay’s Journal of Anomalies
Ricky Jay
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Like Jay’s previous book, Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women, Jay’s Journal is exhaustively researched and profusely illustrated with contemporary broadsides and lithographs. Although its documentation is scrupulous enough to satisfy any academic, the whole affair is enlivened by Jay’s eccentric and often understated sense of humor. Even more importantly, the book is infused with Jay’s enthusiasm for the obscure entertainments and performers he unearths. As he states in the conclusion, he really does love this stuff, and his excitement proves contagious.

The price of admission is a bit steep, but the show is well worth it. This is one of the most beautifully designed and lavishly produced books I’ve seen lately: two-color printing is used throughout, along with abundant full-color illustrations, all printed on high-quality heavy paper. For those with an interest in unusual performers, the history of show business, or a general curiosity about the bizarre, it’s well worth the price.

Published in Louisville Eccentric Observer

Green Girls, Black Dogs, and Comfortable Shoes

If literary talent were traded on the stock exchange, I’d urge you to invest in Kelly Link as soon as possible. I guess that is what I’m urging you to do. Buy this book. Immediately. Don’t be surprised if, after reading it, you want to buy a copy for everyone you like.

Stranger Things Happen is Link’s first collection of short fiction, although her stories have been appearing in various magazines since the late ’90s. Link is apparently not prolific, but the strength of the stories collected here establishes her as one of the most consistently intriguing and inventive of contemporary fantasists, as well as an exceptionally fine writer.

These stories are unquestionably fantasies, but think Angela Carter rather than Ursula Le Guin. Link shares Carter’s penchant for the surreal and her interest in fairy tales, but this collection establishes a sensibility that is distinctly and unmistakably her own. These are wonderful stories about travel, feet and footwear, and the intricacies of relationships. They combine horror, humor, and surrealism with fragments of myths and popular culture, all shot through with a deceptively simple but utterly engaging narrative voice. I hesitate to use the word quirky, which often implies affectation. Endearingly odd might be a better description. These stories concern a woman who only seduces cellists, a farmer with a collection of artificial noses, and a group of tap-dancing bank robbers. Those unwilling to tolerate ambiguity in fiction may find these stories frustrating. Link resolutely refuses to reduce the complexities of her stories to an orderly rationalism, and many of the central images and happenings of these stories are never fully “explained.” Incredibly, it almost always works, and these stories use their very indeterminacy to create a powerful sense of tone and mood.

Stranger Things Happen
Kelly Link
Small Beer Press

None of which would matter very much if not for Link’s true strength: her understanding of fantasy’s potential to give unique shape to such basic human realities as longing, isolation, and the need for love. Even when they are couched in surreal imagery or unconventional narrative forms, these stories reveal a directness and emotional honesty that is all too rare.

Although not all the stories here are up to the same level of accomplishment, the collection displays a remarkably consistent level of quality. Of the eleven fine stories in Stranger Things Happen, there are a number of standouts.

“Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose” is an exceptional piece—a series of letters written by a dead man to the wife whose name he can’t quite remember. Link captures a tone of sorrow, regret, and furtive loneliness in a series of superb and often unsettling images: a deserted beach and a hissing ocean surf that increasingly suggests a dead cat. A painfully honest story about the small cruelties and betrayals of a relationship.

“Travels With the Snow Queen,” which won the Tiptree Award in 1997, reinvents the Hans Christian Andersen story in order to illuminate the pain of a failed relationship. Like the subject it explores, Link’s story is by turns numbing, desperate, and anguished as the narrator travels a trail of broken glass in search of the lover who has abandoned her. Along the way, she finds that she has outgrown her need for him.

“The Specialists’ Hat,” winner of the 1999 World Fantasy Award, is a classic ghost story in the tradition of M. R. James. This story of twin girls, a haunted house, and a babysitter who may not be quite what she appears is a masterpiece of persistent creepiness and a slowly escalating sense of dread. 

“The Girl Detective” is a stunning piece that eschews both linear narrative and a stable point of view, offering instead a collage of images that are part homage to the resourceful girl detective (you know the one), part recasting of the fairy tale of the twelve dancing princesses, and part psychological exploration of the effects of childhood loss. It’s a tour de force that is simultaneously baffling and brilliant, humorous and poignant.

These pieces are the cream of the crop, but there’s plenty of other good stuff here as well. It’s a landmark collection, and if my instincts are right, it will emerge as one of the best of 2001. If you’re looking for stories that are literate, smart, sad, funny, and creepy—often at the same time—don’t let this one pass you by.

This review was previously published in a slightly different form in the Louisville Eccentric Observer.

Pulp Fiction Treasures

A square-jawed detective stares grimly into a shadowed hallway filled with lurking menace. A bug-eyed alien monster threatens a female astronaut. A clean-cut cowboy grips the handle of his revolver and eyes his adversary with steely resolve. These images and many more populate the pages of Pulp Culture, Frank Robinson and Lawrence Davidson’s wonderful tribute to the golden age of fiction magazines. This is not the first book to explore the literary and artistic heritage of the pulps, but it is one of the best. Boasting a beautiful design, clear and concise commentary, and (most importantly) hundreds of gorgeous full-color reproductions of pulp magazine covers—most in pristine condition—Robinson, Davidson, and Collectors Press have gotten it right.

During the 1930s, readers could find a wide variety of pulp magazines specializing in science fiction, fantasy and horror, westerns, mysteries, romances, and much more. Robinson and Davidson cover all of these, as well as bizarre niche titles such as Wall Street Stories, Marriage Stories, Pirate Stories, and even—for all you zeppelin enthusiasts—Zeppelin Stories. Although the authors keep the commentary to a minimum, they manage to provide a reasonably comprehensive introduction to what is a dauntingly diverse field. Their coverage of pulp writers is more cursory, but even readers who’ve never heard of the pulps will recognize a list of writers who got their start there, including Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler. 

Pulp Culture
Frank M. Robinson & Lawrence Davidson
Collectors Press

The real focus, however, is on the art, and it is here that Pulp Culture really shines. The book reproduces hundreds of magazine covers of a variety and quality that is simply staggering. Some covers don’t reproduce well at small sizes, but most of what is included here is impeccable. There is artwork ranging from the lurid to the jaw-droppingly brilliant, and much of the finest work included here was done for legendary titles such as Astounding Science Fiction, Weird Tales, and Black Mask. Other titles boasted artwork that was perhaps less sophisticated but just as much fun. Haven’t you always wondered what kind of artwork a magazine called Strange Detective Mysteries or Saucy Movie Tales would place on its front cover?

Many of these publications, unfortunately, have not survived. Printed on the cheapest grade of paper available, pulp magazines were meant to be read and then discarded. Prone to disintegration, they are now increasingly scarce and highly collectible, all of which makes Pulp Culture even more remarkable in its depth and quality. By the 1950s, most of the pulps had vanished, the victims of wartime paper shortages and the rise of another publishing phenomenon: the paperback novel.

The rise of the paperback is chronicled in Richard Lupoff’s The Great American Paperback, which is both more and less than its predecessor. Lupoff’s commentary serves as far more than an introduction, and separate chapters document the histories of major paperback publishers such as Pocket, Ballantine, Bantam, and Fawcett in some detail. Long-time paperback readers will find Lupoff’s text bringing back fond memories of such publishing oddities as Dell mapbacks (whose back covers pictorially summarized the novel’s plot) and Ace doubles (which offered two novels printed back to back, essentially presenting the reader with a book with two front covers). Fortunately, the added text doesn’t mean that the cover reproductions are given short shrift, although it does result in a longer (and correspondingly more expensive) book. The design is not quite on par with Pulp Culture, and the brightly-colored page backgrounds can sometimes distract from text and art alike. These, however, are just quibbles about a book that is in most respects quite marvelous.

The Great American Paperback
Richard A. Lupoff
Collectors Press

Once again, the real attraction here is the artwork: 600 full-color reproductions of vintage paperback covers. The variety and quality of the art Lupoff has assembled here is impressive, encompassing both subtly evocative masterpieces and the decidedly campy art adorning titles such as The Brass Cupcake and Horizontal Secretary. Perhaps the best thing about this book is that it provides the only look most of us will ever get of such rare and highly collectible first editions as James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me, Philip José Farmer’s notorious science fiction porno novel Blown, and William Lee’s Junkie (William S. Burroughs’ first, pseudonymously published novel).

Both of these titles are a treasure, and unless you’ve got a great deal of time and money, this is your best opportunity to see all these increasingly scarce (and expensive) titles assembled in the same place. Either one would look great on your coffee table.

Published in Louisville Eccentric Observer

Stiff: Adventures After Death

For most of us, death is the end of the line. After we die, most of us will have our bodies quietly and unremarkably disposed of—cremated or interred in a mausoleum or casket. As Mary Roach demonstrates in her new book, however, some bodies go on to do remarkable things. They help medical students learn anatomy and surgeons to practice their technique without risk to living patients. They help FAA investigators understand why a plane may have crashed. They help auto-makers design safety features that save thousands of lives each year. Perhaps most importantly, they offer the very ill a new chance at life by providing them with desperately-needed hearts, livers, and kidneys. The adventures of these remarkable bodies are the subject of this compelling new book, which explores in some detail the ways in which cadavers are put to use by doctors, scientists, and other researchers.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Mary Roach
W. W. Norton

At this point, some of you are probably asking, ‘Why would anyone want to read a book like that?’ (I leave it to Ms. Roach to address, as she does in her introduction, the question of why someone would want to write a book like that.) It is by its very nature an offputting subject, and there are certainly moments in this book that are (to put it mildly) pretty uncomfortable. It is certainly not a book for the squeamish or the faint of heart. It is, nevertheless, fascinating stuff. Let’s just say that I’ve always been a curious guy and leave it at that.

The anonymous cadavers that are the subjects of Stiff could hardly have found a more sympathetic chronicler than Mary Roach. Roach has managed to write a book that balances sensitivity and respect with a wonderfully sharp wit. In fact, Stiff is unexpectedly and quite blessedly hilarious, although the humor never comes at the expense at the dead bodies that populate its pages. Instead, Roach uses humor as a kind of psychic safety valve, a vital and much-appreciated tension release from what is, at times, some very intense subject matter.

Roughly half the book covers the use of cadavers in medical and scientific research. These chapters include visits to a medical school’s dissection lab, a university lab studying impact tolerances in car crashes, and a research facility in which forensic scientists seek to improve crime scene investigative techniques by studying bodies in varying states of decomposition (this one was the hardest for me to get through). Roach also attends a surgery in which organs are being recovered from a “beating heart” cadaver—a cadaver whose brain functions have long since ceased and whose body is being artificially kept “alive” until its organs can be removed. The procedure raises some powerful questions about the boundaries of life and death, and Roach provides a long account of the scientific, legal, and ethical attempts to define the concept of death that makes this one of the most fascinating chapters in the book.

Roach also turns her gaze on some of the less reputable uses that doctors and researchers have historically made of cadavers, many of which now seem to fall well outsides the bounds of both sanity and ethics. There’s the doctor, for instance, who in the 1930s crucified cadavers in an attempt to authenticate the Shroud of Turin. Roach also provides a droll and utterly hilarious history of body snatching, a short overview of medicinal cannibalism (human mummy confection, anyone?), and the spectacularly strange account of Dr. Robert White, a neurosurgeon who in the mid-1960s performed a series of operations that could be considered as the first head transplant (or full body transplant, depending on your point of view). I found these chapters to be among the most entertaining of the book, but keep in mind that this is coming from someone who enjoys reading books about cadavers.

This is obviously not a book that’s going to suit everyone’s taste, and although Roach handles her subject respectfully, I would hesitate to recommend it to anyone who has recently experienced the loss of a friend or loved one. Adventurous and curious readers, however, will likely find Stiff to be a wonderful and engrossing exploration of a subject most people are reluctant to talk about.

Published in Louisville Eccentric Observer