J. Robert Oppenheimer, For Example

J.ROBERT OPPENHEIMER, FOR EXAMPLE is a polite, ironic polemic inspired by the life of “the Father of the Atom Bomb” and by the recent biography of him by Ray Monk. Frederic Raphael's (Eyes Wide Shut, Glittering Prizes) theme is the ambivalent role of the Jewish intellectual and the use which Christendom (to employ a clear, if antiquated term) has made of “The Jew”, as scapegoat, villain and intellectual genius: paragon and victim. Its uniqueness comes of fishing in the lacunae, about motives about all, which orthodox, responsible biographers leave undisturbed. J Robert Oppenheimer is famously known as America’s ‘father of the atom bomb’. What is less well known is what motivated the behaviour of this exceedingly strange, chilly and unpleasantly haughty human being. Most people, finding no obvious explanation for this enigma, might pause but then pass lightly on. For Frederic Raphael, by contrast, one detail in particular in Oppenheimer’s childhood inspired a rumination that not only puts plausible flesh on the prodigy’s austere skeleton but takes off into a dazzling tour d’horizon of the motivation and experiences of exceptional men throughout history – and of the people who tormented them. What preoccupies Raphael above all is the extent to which the experience of being bullied or scapegoated may have contributed to creating the exceptionalism of towering figures. The most egregious example of this phenomenon throughout history is the hatred of the Jews. It is the enduring enmity towards these ultimate outsiders that Raphael excavates with forensic savagery and scathing wit. And having done so, he turns over a further stone or two and exposes to the light the many ambiguities and paradoxes of human motivation.