Michael Dirda

Perhaps the best example of Feynman's self-understanding lies in his attitude toward money. After some happy years at Cornell, Feynman is lured to Caltech, where he is even happier. But one day the University of Chicago offers him "a tremendous amount of money, three or four times what I was making." He writes back:

"After reading the salary, I've decided that I must refuse. The reasons I have to refuse a salary like that is I would be able to do what I've always wanted to do -- get a wonderful mistress, put her up in an apartment, buy her nice things. . . . With the salary you have offered, I could actually do that, and I know what would happen to me. I'd worry about her, what she's doing; I'd get into arguments when I come home, and so on. All this bother would make me uncomfortable and unhappy. I wouldn't be able to do physics well, and it would be a big mess. What I've always wanted to do would be bad for me, so I've decided that I can't accept your offer."

As one reads along, Feynman's own mantra-like motto rings forth again and again: "This could be interesting." The phrase echoes through his mind when he sees a beautiful Japanese girl lingering outside his hotel room or when he accepts the task of trying to understand why the Challenger blew up as it rose into space. (The last hundred pages of this omnibus recount how Feynman slowly determined what went wrong on that heartbreaking day and his reactions, largely negative, to Washington political life.)

Feynman spoke most of these stories into Ralph Leighton's cassette tape recorder, and we must be grateful for his friend's care and intelligent editing. Above all, and notwithstanding all the racy and amusing anecdotes, the scientist's conversation could be mined just for its wisdom about how we might live:

"I learned from her [his mother] that the highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion."

"That's the way the world was: You worked long hours and got nothing for it, every day."

"Have no respect whatsoever for authority; forget who said it and instead look at what he starts with, where he ends up, and ask yourself, 'Is it reasonable?' "

"Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on. It is our responsibility to leave the people of the future a free hand. . . . If we suppress all discussion, all criticism, proclaiming 'This is the answer, my friends; man is saved!' we will doom humanity for a long time to the chains of authority, confined to the limits of our present imagination. It has been done so many times before."

Like Boswell's biography of Samuel Johnson or Robert Craft's diaries about Stravinsky, Classic Feynman brings a highly unusual man to vivid, blazing life. So if you somehow missed the original two books back in the '80s, here's yet one more reason to acquire Classic Feynman -- the chance to rectify your error. Good scientists, after all, learn from past mistakes. ?

Michael Dirda is a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for Book World. His e-mail address is mdirda@gmail.com, and his online discussion of books takes place each Wednesday at 2 p.m. on washingtonpost.com.