On Oppenheimer, the “American Prometheus”
“Prometheus stole fire and gave it to men. But when Zeus learned of it, he ordered Hephaestus to nail his body to Mount Caucasus. On it Prometheus was nailed and kept bound for many years. Every day an eagle swooped on him and devoured the lobes of his liver, which grew by night.”
Every work of nonfiction is an argument. Even the most mundane of scientific textbooks make a case that the knowledge they hold within is worth memorializing for generations of students to come.
Works of historical nonfiction carry their arguments more openly than others. When you delve into and unpack the history of something — whether it’s a specific time period, a singular event or one important person — you have to make a case to look at whatever it is in some way versus another.
Not every fact of a person’s life or of a series of monumental events can be published; not every nuanced perspective can be elucidated. These arguments come as much from omission as they do from what’s actually written.
The argument put forth in “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer" by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, and Christopher Nolan’s three-hour long movie based upon it, make a uniquely compelling case that the man, J. Robert, Oppie, whatever you want to call him, is in the echelon of the most important figures in American and, when condensed to the 20th century, world history. The way that case is made, and what it leaves out, is worth a bit of exploration.
The argument, and how it was made
At it’s most basic, “American Prometheus” is a chronological exploration of the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer. It traces Oppie’s life from childhood in New York City to studies in England and Germany to professorship in California to the building, structure and science of Los Alamos to Trinity to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Washington, D.C. to a cramped hearing room to Princeton to the beaches of St. John, the small Caribbean island outside of which his ashes would be spread.
But the novel is much more than that, of course. In telling the story of Oppenheimer’s life, it argues for J. Robert as one of the defining characters — if not in some ways the defining character — of his generation of science. His rise to scientific prominence came at the tail end of Albert Einstein’s crusade through the field of theoretical physics, a time when the discipline was reformulating itself around a new foundation. Oppie played a defining role in that reformulation, Bird and Sherwin argue, despite never earning a Nobel Prize for his efforts.
His escapades outgrew science, however, and catapulted Oppenheimer from renowned professor who built the University of California-Berkeley’s theoretical physics program to an influential government and military actor — a line that Oppie towed to various degrees of success, the two authors explain. In the end it was American capitalist and militarist forces that J. Robert would bang his head and his heart against, to little to no avail. His presumptuousness would be his downfall, the scientific transgressor swept under in the 1950s wave of McCarthyism and general Soviet paranoia.
That such a targeted offensive — or “assault,” as Bird and Sherwin write — would find Oppenheimer as its target makes enough of a case in and of itself to justify placing Oppie at the center of mid-20th century geopolitics. Lewis Strauss, the shoe salesman turned Atomic Energy Commission Chairman, lead that “assault.”
“Lewis Strauss had prevailed. The nuclear secrecy regime would remain in place and nuclear weapons would be built in dizzying numbers. Oppenheimer had once thought Strauss merely an annoyance, a man not likely to ‘obstruct things.’ Now, with a Republican administration in control of Washington, Strauss was in the driver’s seat, and his right foot was pressing his political accelerator to the floor.” — AP, 470
The whole argument makes sense and is somewhat hard to disagree with. Of course the man who led America’s effort to create the most powerful weapon ever used in combat — so powerful it hasn’t been used again since — who then thrust himself into the geopolitics surrounding the proliferation of future weapons of mass destruction and the relations between science and government should be counted among the most influential in that defining century of world history. Nuclear deterrence and all of its complexities entangle countries around the world to this day; a pair of the most significant wars in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning part of the 21st might not have been fought if it weren’t for that infamous test in southern New Mexico.
But how do Bird and Sherwin succeed so resoundingly in making such a convincing argument?
For one, the pair built a trove of knowledge on the life of not only Oppenheimer but the people who surrounded him. Pages 601–684 of the novel consist of hundreds of notes detailing the plentitude of facts and attributions that construct the 591-page narrative. A 14-and-a-half-page bibliography follows. It’s abundantly clear the depth of knowledge and factual detail Bird and Sherwin unravel, from first-hand testimony through interviews to scores of both public and private documents. “American Prometheus” is a meticulously researched masterclass in character profile.
Such depth of knowledge allows Bird and Sherwin to write with a certain authority that might not feel as earned if the pair’s foundation of research wasn’t as solid. There are many examples of facts expressed loosely as opinions, especially in the latter half of the narrative surrounding that infamous security hearing.
Take, for example, this sentence, one page after the quote referenced earlier — “While Oppenheimer enjoyed a leisurely trip to Brazil, Strauss spent the summer of 1953 feverishly preparing to finally put an end to his influence.” (AP, 471) The use of the adjectives “leisurely” and “feverishly” here point to Bird and Sherwin’s authoritativeness. A lesser researched history would of course know Oppie traveled to Brazil around the same time Strauss’s security hearing plan kicked into motion. But the two authors’ depth of knowledge allows them to paint a more eloquent picture of this stage in the Oppenheimer-Strauss battle — a picture of Oppie relaxing in South America while Strauss and his confidants pore over troves of documents in cramped D.C. offices.
Because of this authority, Bird and Sherwin’s narrative — again, especially in the latter half — reads almost as theater. The authors weave together the tight political dance between Oppenheimer and Strauss, sprinkling in its supporting characters to add depth and detail while always focusing on the nuclear scientist’s personal reflections on his somewhat helpless fall from political grace.
It’s no wonder a movie director would find that central tension between Oppenheimer and Strauss the core narrative to build a cinematic adaptation around.
Speaking of the movie …
Christopher Nolan pins his 180-minute long film to Oppenheimer’s 1954 security hearing. The film extracts the most remarkable parts of Bird and Sherwin’s theatrical retelling of the history and crafts its narrative around them.
How Nolan does that is interesting. Instead of following the novel’s chronological narrative, the movie jumps between events at the security hearing and moments in Oppenheimer’s life. I think that was a smart decision. It gives viewers something to latch on to, outside of the character of Oppenheimer himself. It heightens the drama. It makes for some of the film’s best moments that wouldn’t carry anywhere near the weight they do if it weren’t for the security hearing playing such a central role. (Think Kitty’s testimony, or the meme of Cillian Murphy’s wide-open eyes as he’s grilled by Roger Robb, the man who led the hearing against Oppenheimer)
For the sake of not making this section a full film review, I’ll add only briefly that I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and believe my viewing experience (in IMAX, mind you) was heightened by having read “American Prometheus” beforehand. Knowing all of the beats the movie would hit made it go by faster; I can see how it might have dragged without that prior knowledge.
When you do take a historical narrative from a book and turn it into a film, there are some moments that are undoubtedly going to feel a bit goofy and decisions that feel strange. The most notable one that jumped out to me is the scene where Jean Tatlock, played by Florence Pugh, made Oppenheimer read from the Bagavad Gita while in bed together. A strange choice, not because of the sexual aspect of it but because of the decision to deliver that moment in that way — which I guess can’t really be separated from the sexual aspect of the scene. Anyway.
Other decisions Nolan got more correct. The way the movie ended, for one, I thought was brilliant — an ambiguous, foreboding encapsulation of the new, destructive world Oppenheimer had helped create and would subsequently fail to deter.
Overall, I think Oppenheimer the movie follows the argument laid out in “American Prometheus” to a tee, and heightens the authoritative theater pulled forth by Bird and Sherwin. In that sense I think the film did its job, even though some of the choices it made left ample room for criticism and conversation.
What was omitted?
If historical arguments are made as much from omission as they are from what’s told, “American Prometheus” is again a case example.
The novel leaves out any serious details of combat in World War Two, on either front. (In fact, it offers more detail about combat in the Spanish Civil War than it does the Second World War) That’s aside from top Washington officials’ discussions regarding whether to use nuclear weapons in combat or not, in which the classic “Japan wouldn’t have surrendered and the U.S. would have lost upwards of one million troops through an invasion of the mainland” is referenced.
That omission seems due to the fact Oppenheimer, at the time the two bombs were used, was far removed from that decision making process. He learned of the bombings via a radio broadcast while at Los Alamos. He was also far removed from combat. The story of Oppie and the bomb has little to do with the story of the invasion of Normandy, the Luftwaffe, Soviet counter-offensives, etc.
Closer to home, “American Prometheus” also leaves out much discussion of settling Los Alamos or the effects on New Mexicans from the Trinity Test. Indigenous Pueblo people of New Mexico and their involvement and prolonged disturbance caused by the Manhattan Project are left out of both the book and the movie entirely. There is an overt reference when President Truman asks Oppenheimer what he thinks should be done with Los Alamos.
“Give it back to the Indians,” Oppie responds.
The book, in explaining Oppenheimer’s first encounter with New Mexico as a teen and subsequent return trips to the Land of Enchantment, alongside his “Perro Caliente” vacation home in the state, stinks a bit of settler sentimentality. Oppie, and the two authors therefore, treat New Mexico as tourists might, glossing over the people that had called that land home for centuries.
There are stories of other folks who had settled in New Mexico, including the ones at the dude ranch where Oppenheimer stayed when first visiting the state and where he learned to ride horses (what would become somewhat of a motif throughout the book). But displaced Indigenous people don’t find a place in the story.
Nor, as mentioned, do those permanently affected by the dropping of the first atomic bomb near Alamogordo, near what is today White Sands Missile Range, in south central New Mexico. The effects of the bomb’s radiation on those people — the “Downwinders” — and their future generations are well documented, but up until now the various inhabitants of the area have received little recognition and even less compensation for those unintended damages.
I’d highly recommend reading a piece published in Searchlight New Mexico, a nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organization in the state, in early August — The Terrible Emptiness of “Oppenheimer” — that details the New Mexicans the book and the movie leave out. It’s a moving encapsulation of people and history missed.
I’d also recommend an L.A. Times film column that offers a slightly alternative perspective to the Searchlight piece. It’s well-argued and delves into another major omission from the film — in not depicting combat from World War Two, the movie, and the book likewise, offer no visual or written details of the heinous bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or their terrifying aftermath.
History is stories, not facts. What historical works choose — and choose not to — say offer distinct arguments into how those stories should be told. “American Prometheus,” the encompassing novel by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer film, offer two examples of how to craft an argument and a drama out of history, as well as important discussions of how and why that argument should be told.
