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Einstein’s Dreams

Alan Lightman

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Mar 11, 2009 Lynne rated it really liked it

Einstein in the early 1900s is a struggling patent clerk, and this book details the dreams he has every night while he is working on, as he calls it, his “special theory of relativity.” Each chapter portrays a sort of vignette centered around the idea of time. Each “world” that Einstein visits demonstrates time behaving differently: In one world people are doomed to repeat their actions—whether triumphant or disastrous—over and over again, another is very “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and everyone is f Einstein in the early 1900s is a struggling patent clerk, and this book details the dreams he has every night while he is working on, as he calls it, his “special theory of relativity.” Each chapter portrays a sort of vignette centered around the idea of time. Each “world” that Einstein visits demonstrates time behaving differently: In one world people are doomed to repeat their actions—whether triumphant or disastrous—over and over again, another is very “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and everyone is frozen in time, and in still another everyone lives forever. Each of these different possibilities causes the people within the worlds to adopt very different mindsets both intra-and inter-chapter.

In my favorite story, people can have visions of the future; of those who have had their vision, some choose to embrace it and others do everything they can to avoid it, which, of course, in true Oedipus fashion, leads them right to it. The people who have not yet had their visions are flummoxed and feel as if they can't make a move without knowing the future. The last passage of this story poses some thoughtful questions (and not just because they are Lost related!): “Who would fare better in this world of fitful time? Those who have seen the future and live only one life? Or those who have not seen the future and wait to live life? Or those who deny the future and live two lives?”

Despite the subtitle, A Novel, this is more like a series of short stories, and they each actually seem more poem than story to me in a Borges-like manner; the narrative style—fairly abstract and metaphysical—mimics the very elusive nature of time. That said, this book actually clarified some of Einstein’s ideas for me because Lightman presents these ideas to us in real-life settings rather than just theoretically; we not only get the cause but also the effect (which, by the way, is the focus for yet another world described and cause doesn’t always precede effect there). This book is definitely a trip (in every sense of the word).

My favorite quote (and not just because it has Lost implications!): “In this world, time is like a flow of water, occasionally displaced by a bit of debris, a passing breeze. Now and then, some cosmic disturbance will cause a rivulet of time to turn away from the mainstream, to make connection backstream. When this happens, birds, soil, people caught in the branching tributary find themselves suddenly carried to the past.”

Unfortunately, when I sought out the titles of other books that Lightman has written (there are a LOT), I learned that this book has been turned into a musical that revolves around Einstein and a beautiful yet unattainable woman of his dreams. I can only shudder at how disastrous this could be. If anyone happens to see it, be sure to tell me how right I was.
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