The very evening of Truman’s announcement, Oppenheimer felt obligated to attend a party at the Shoreham Hotel, celebrating Strauss’s fifty-fourth birthday. Finding Oppenheimer alone in a corner, a reporter walked up to him and said, “You don’t look jubilant.” Oppenheimer muttered in response, “This is the plague of Thebes.” When Strauss tried to introduce his son and daughter-in-law to the famous physicist, Oppenheimer brusquely offered them a hand over his shoulder—and then turned away without a word. Understandably, Strauss was incensed.
