History Of The Washington National Monument And Of The Washington National Monument Society ... Book

I’ve been looking forward to reading this book for quite a while—partially because it has gotten such good reviews online, and partially because I like reading essays on biology. But now, after finishing it, I am both confused and disappointed.

With most books, even if I don’t like them, I can still understand and appreciate what the author was trying to achieve. Not with this. The only thing I can think of that could have motivated Lewis Thomas to write this book is sheer egoism. He’s the kind of guy you wouldn’t want to be seated next to at a dinner party. He would talk your ear off, and I bet he laughed at his own jokes too.

(When I try to imagine Lewis Thomas, I picture a paunchy, white-haired fellow with a round, ruddy face. He is in his New England home, furnished with dark oak furniture, dressed in a scarlet robe, sipping coffee and typing his essays. Thomas types in spurts—banging out a few sentences and then pausing to look out his window at his well-kept yard. He always has a smile on his face when he writes, and laughs under his breath every once in a while when he thinks he has been clever. And whenever he is particularly impressed with one of his own sentences, he calls his wife over, who is an expert in feigning enjoyment.)

The best part of this book is the writing, but even here I think Thomas is irritating, vexing. He has the annoying habit of sticking in an extra tidbit after every sentence, like this. It is as if he always has something extra to say, an afterthought. After a while I just want him to shut up, be quiet. That he compared his style with Montaigne’s is obnoxious, offensive. Montaigne’s writing is free, easy; Thomas’s style is mannered, affected.

Even if Thomas could be excused for being a middling writer, it is hard to excuse his vapid ideas. The real, solid biological information contained in this book could be found in any intro-level biology textbook. But instead of actually explaining this information, Thomas just uses his educational background to pepper his essays with technical terms that a layreader will have to look up. He has no interest in educating the public in his field, but only wishes to be admired for his broad learning.

When Thomas strays away from these basic biological facts (which is often), the quality gets even worse. I would be willing to bet that, if Thomas was only slightly less intelligent, he would have ended up being a conspiracy theorist, and might have been given a show on the History Channel chasing aliens. I say this because these essays are filled with pseudo-science. Thomas repeatedly says that the majority of life on Earth is symbiotic, and this is true. But he fails to mention that the majority of these symbiotic relationships are parasitic—which undermines his rosy-eyed portrait of life on this planet, if you ask me.

Thomas seems to think that it is a biological mistake when a virus makes its host sick. I have no idea how a doctor could believe this. Most normal symptoms of sickness—sneezing, coughing, runny nose, diarrhea—are ideal ways for a virus to spread.

He also includes an essay on ways to train our internal organs, in the same way dogs can be trained. What?! Was he high when he wrote this? Wait a minute. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Lewis Thomas was a stoner, which explains why many of these essays have intellectual sophistication comparable to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

Let me summarize one of his essays, “Living Language”: “Dude, what if, instead of language being a tool for humans, humans were a tool for language. Like, language is totally alive, for real! Woahhhh!”

In fact, let me summarize the whole book: “Dude, what if, like, the world was really a cell. Not, like, metaphorically though, like for real. Like, wouldn’t that be trippy? Woaahhhh!”

So I’m perplexed by the number of people who find Thomas to be “thought provoking”. I would say he is just about as thought provoking as a conversation with an intoxicated, college-aged biology major.

To summarize, I am sincerely confused as to why people like this book. The writing is pompous, and the subject matter alternately frivolous, commonplace, or provably incorrect. Thomas might have made a good science fiction writer, but he is not a good science writer.