Performing in a Mine Field

I Am Radar by Reif Larsen

[I]n every death, someone suffered and someone triumphed, and often those two were the same person... 

—Reif Larsen, I Am Radar

I have exactly two experiences of novels by Reif Larsen, and both are richly developed, densely entangled with science, observation, and time; and both show Larsen is willing to kill off characters the author has spent some time introducing and weaving into the narrative.

The first for me was the wonderful The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, with its 10-year-old scientist protagonist. That novel was joyful and celebrated love and family by the device of separating young Spivet from his far western roots, sending him on a long journey by train, where he reflected on family history, geology and water flows, bird flock movements and their deep connections to the immense land he was traversing. If you happen to encounter and enjoy the movie The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet, trust me, the book is a richer and more succulent exploration than the film.

Because I loved T.S. Spivet, I ordered the other novel, I Am Radar, and dug in, hoping for the same joyful info-rich experience. I was simultaneously disappointed and elated to discover a completely different exploration, this time relating the weird effects of quantum entanglement and sub-atomic forces with the experience of surviving the conflicts and deprivations of war. Info-rich it is, but there is very little joy here. The characters observe their embattled environment from a distance, and comment on it via a series of complex and never fully-explained "performances."

“Observation is precisely the problem. Observation, as we understand it, is the nemesis of understanding,” said Bohr. “We’re obsessed with this act of witnessing—yet witnessing is an action that irrevocably affects the subject. As it turns out, we can only witness the witnessing...” Maybe telling a story of the event was more powerful than witnessing it yourself....

As with young T.S. Spivet, the title character Radar is a child through much of the narrative. In fact, he is an infant at the novel's outset, and a young man in his twenties at its conclusion. His life, as well as his mother's and father's, are entangled by the circumstances of his birth, and then by their attempts to "cure" his condition. Entanglement is a concept both explored and demonstrated throughout the novel, with some of the "spooky" effects of quantum physics simply tossed into the narrative and then ignored, as if it is sufficient to introduce them like a splash of paint onto an abstract stage backdrop.

“Olfaction operates via quantum electron tunneling—we actually smell a molecule’s vibration and not the molecule itself...."

and

There’s evidence that epilepsy is a quantum phenomenon.

I Am Radar was a more immersive read for me than T.S. Spivet, and yet with each I resurfaced at the end knowing that I would want to reread, that there is more to discover, that I must have missed a few points along the way.

And as Radar observed, "To see the stars, you must be able to first see the night."