Chemical Education Today
Book & Media Reviews Menachem’s Seed Carl Djerassi. University of Georgia Press: Athens, GA, 1997. xi +196 pp. 14.2 × 24.0 cm. ISBN 0-8203-19252. Hardcover. $21.95. (Coming in paperback, fall 1998. Putnam: New York, 1998. ISBN 0140277943. $12.95.)
Carl Djerassi is well known to readers of the Journal of Chemical Education for his pioneering research and as the recipient of numerous awards—including the 1973 U.S. National Medal of Science (for the first oral contraceptive, leading to his designation as “Father of the Pill”, although Djerassi, an avowed feminist, prefers the appellation “Mother of the Pill”); the 1991 U.S. National Medal of Technology (for novel approaches to insect control); and the 1992 Priestley Medal (the American Chemical Society’s highest award). But he is also founder of the Djerassi Resident Artists Colony, an avid art collector, and Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University. Most pertinent here, after a half-century of dual research careers in industry and academe, Djerassi, like chemist-spectroscopist-novelist C. P. Snow, has embarked on a third career in creative writing, which we have followed in this Journal and others with a mixture of growing interest, admiration, and anticipation (1–5). Djerassi’s nonresearch writings include individual and collected short stories, poetry, autobiography (The Pill, Pygmy Chimps, and Degas’ Horse: The Autobiography of Carl Djerassi, 1992 [1]), essays (From the Lab into the World: A Pill for People, Pets, and Bugs, 1994 [2]), a television and videocassette program (The Atom That Makes the Difference: A Scattering of Ashes (Carbon), 1991 [3]), and a projected tetralogy of novels, which exemplify what he calls “science-in fiction” to differentiate it from the better known science fiction. In this genre, which he uses to “make comprehensible [to nonscientists] the culture and behavior of scientists—uncommon in contemporary fiction”, most of his characters, fictional as well as real, are scientists, and “everything [he specifies] does or could exist.” For more on this genre and an excerpt from the first chapter of Menachem’s Seed, visit his Web site: http://www.djerassi.com. Cantor’s Dilemma, the first novel (1989), dealt with the themes of trust, ambition, the mentor–protégé relationship, and women in science (4). The Bourbaki Gambit, the second novel (1994), a fictionalized account of the development of the Nobel Prize-winning polymerase chain reaction (PCR), dealt with scientists’ passionate desire for recognition by their peers, the inherent collegiality of science, and the “graying” of Western science as prominent scientists age and face the prospect of retirement (5). Menachem’s Seed, the third and shortest novel to date, moves from the familiar turf of laboratory and home portrayed in the first two novels to encompass venues of international policy—the fictional Kirchberg Conferences on Science and World Affairs, based on the Pugwash Conferences, where jetsetting scientists, including Djerassi himself, gather to discuss the global implications of their discoveries. Although it has been involved in the previous novels, here sex—more precisely, human male reproduction—occupies center stage. (In his more than four decades of research and teaching Djerassi has devoted himself to reproductive biology with emphasis on fe1096
male contraception.) At one of these conferences, the legend of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba brings together at a coffee break, an evening sauna, and working sessions Mr. (he insists he does not possess a doctorate) Menachem Dvir, a fiftyish Israeli nuclear scientist who bears a strong resemblance to the late Shalheveth Freier, vice president of the Weizmann Institute of Science (to whom the book is dedicated), and Dr. Melanie Laidlaw (née Sutherland), the late-thirtyish childless widow of a prominent biochemist and the American director of REPCON (Reproduction and Contraception), a foundation supporting research in reproductive biology. The two become romantically involved and make love in a variety of locales, which are described in explicit detail. Dvir, “a vice president in charge of all kinds of things” at the Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, is a married man rendered “infertile” by exposure to radiation. Nevertheless, Melanie devises an ingenious scheme to steal his sperm (the “Menachem’s Seed” of the title) to use in ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection), the revolutionary fertilization technique of the early ’90s involving injection of a single sperm into an egg. Djerassi lucidly explains this treatment for male infertility, a field relatively ignored compared to male contraception, and uses the name of its inventor, the Belgian scientist Andre C. Van Steirteghem, for one of his cameo characters. The book abounds with minor characters such as Prof. Felix Frankenthaler of Brandeis University; his wife, Shelly; his postdoc Renu Krishnan; Yehudah Davidson of the Hadassah Medical Center; the chain-smoking nuclear physicist Luc Morand (le gourou); the Palestinian chemist Ahmed Saleh; and Rabbi Alice Goldklang. These well-developed characters interact in a web of captivating complications, constant surprises, and engrossing plot twists that make the book a real “page-turner”. Djerassi skillfully employs italics to designate stream-of-consciousness thoughts that provide flashbacks, fantasies, and character motivation, and he uses offset type to designate correspondence between Melanie and Menachem regarding their son Adam and other matters. In preparation for writing the book Djerassi interviewed a large number of scientists, clinicians, rabbis, and authorities in diverse fields, as well as colleagues and students in various countries. The reader will be enlightened on such topics as scientific grantsmanship, the Bible, the Koran, music, opera, population and nuclear bombs, nuclear terrorism, nuclear test ban and ABM treaties, Middle Eastern politics and negotiations, religious conversion, Jewish laws, customs, and holidays, the biological function of nitric oxide (selected a few years ago as “Molecule of the Year” by Science magazine), artificial insemination, single motherhood, woman’s biological clock, and, of course, science itself. We are extremely pleased to observe the progress that Djerassi has made in his fiction writing. The dialogue flows easily and naturally, the plot is complex and absorbing, and his characters, particularly the women, are fully developed individuals about whom we grow to care and with whom we come to empathize (even though the heroine, Melanie, is a trickster). We are delighted to give Djerassi two thumbs up for Menachem’s Seed. Because its conclusion leaves a number of issues unresolved, we eagerly anticipate the publication later
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 75 No. 9 September 1998 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
Chemical Education Today
this year of the last novel of his tetralogy, NO, a title that stands for both the simple negative expletive and the chemical formula for nitric oxide, which plays a key role in penile erection. All the characters from the first three novels will reappear in NO, which will resolve the ethical question posed in Menachem’s Seed: Does a woman have a right to appropriate without his consent the discarded sperm of a man who believes himself to be infertile, in order to achieve pregnancy via today’s “miracle” techniques? We shall see. Literature Cited 1. 2. 3. 4.
Kauffman, G. B.; Kauffman, L. M. J. Chem. Educ. 1993, 70, A53. Kauffman, G. B.; Kauffman, L. M. J. Chem. Educ. 1995, 72, A109. Kauffman, G. B.; Kauffman, L. M. J. Chem. Educ. 1993, 70, A51. Kauffman, G. B.; Kauffman, L. M. Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. Engl. 1990, 20, 1488. 5. Kauffman, G. B.; Kauffman, L. M. Chem. Heritage 1995–96, 13[1], 15. George B. Kauffman and Laurie M. Kauffman California State University, Fresno Fresno, CA 93740-0070
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