I bought this book on a whim because it's wee. Yeah, it's tiny and that was the deciding factor. I didn't want this book to end but, unfortunately, it's short and I felt almost melancholy when it ended.
The setup is fairly simple. It is 1905 in Berne, Switzerland and Einstein is working on his paper outlining his theory about time while reviewing patent applications (and sometimes anonymously correcting them if he spots errors). He meets occasionally with his friend Besso but never tells him about the dreams he has every night about time and how people relate to it.
The rest of the book reads like a diary with the telling of that night's dream. Okay, time is a huge concept and, I believe, one that we personally wrestle with even if we don't acknowledge the struggle. This book reminded me, in a way, of Swift's Gulliver's Travels in that an outsider is able to observe a different society but manages to learn things about his own in the process.The dreams themselves are, by definition, episodic but it feels like there is continuity because each dream examines the same subject: In the dream of May 8, 1905, the date of the end of the world is known and the dream explores the possibilities of a world with an expiration date, how the people would treat each other as the day draws closer; June 2, 1905 brings a dream reminiscent of Benjamin Button, where time moves in reverse and people move from infirmity to youth. This is followed on the next night by a dream in which people live the span of their lives in 24 hours.
My second favourite was the dream of May 10, 1905 where people choose a place to stop time in their lives, one neighborhood lives in the 15th century, a mother holds imaginary conversations with a young son who has long since grown to be a disappointment. It sounded a little absurd until this passage:
Just now, a man in one of the houses below the mountains is talking to a friend. He is talking of his school days at the gymnasium. His certificates of excellence in mathematics and history hang on the walls, his sporting medals and trophies occupy the bookshelves. Here, on a table, is a photograph of him as captain of the fencing team, embraced by other young men who have since gone to university, become engineers and bankers, gotten married. There, in the dresser, his clothes from twenty years, the fencing blouse, the tweed pants now too close around the waist. The friend, who has been trying for years to introduce the man to other friends, nods courteously, struggles silently to breath in the tiny room.I think I went to school with that guy. Lightman ends that dream with "The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone." Rings true to me.
My favourite dream was May 15, 1905 (I swear, I read more than just May and September) which is about a world where there is no continuous timeline, just still images. The dream follows like an exercise in free association with pages of images, some detailed, some stark but still descriptive. This reminded me of the second half of Michael Ende's Never Ending Story (which didn't find it's way into the movie, I might add). Without going into details, Bastien goes to work in a mine where he spends all day pulling glass plates out of the rocks, each with a still image on it. One day he picks up one that he vaguely recognizes and the readers learn that these images are collected memories frozen in time (seriously, read the book).
This has gone on a little long but it was a great book for me. One last thing, Berne has the best street names in the world:
Aarbergergasse
Brunngasshalde
Kramgasse
Spitalgasse
Bahnhofplatz
If I ever go to Berne, I'm buying a good map because there's no way I could ask anyone for directions.
