James Watson’s Double Helix was first published in 1968. How does it stand the test of time?
There is a strong argument to be made for this Double helix by James Watson is one of the greatest science books of all time – but I can’t recommend anyone to actually read it. Many parts of him are distant, especially in light of the hateful old man Watson has become.
“Double helix he reinvented scientific memory. “Watson described science not as a bloodless march from fact to fact, but as a passionate adventure whose direction depends on the individual personalities of the scientists,” says Nathaniel Comfort of Johns Hopkins University, who is writing Watson’s biography. “That was really new, and it attracted countless young people, men and women, to science, which was a big part of his intention with the book.”
Double helix is Watson’s account of how he began working on the structure of DNA with Francis Crick between 1951 and 1953. The pair eventually cracked it with the help of data from Rosalind Franklin and her boss Maurice Wilkins – although if you believe Watson’s account, it was largely down to his own brilliance.
The thing is, you shouldn’t trust Watson’s account. “It’s a novelization, it’s not a memoir,” says biologist-turned-historian-of-science Matthew Cobb, whose biography of Crick was published last year.
“What’s confusing about the book is that it’s a mixture of fact and fiction, but Watson doesn’t tell us that,” says Comfort.
Cobb says Watson was heavily influenced by the 1966 book In cold blood Truman Capote, a dramatized account of a series of murders considered by some to be the first “non-fiction novel”. Watson seems to have realized that his book also needed a villain and chose Rosalind Franklin.
“The real villain was probably Wilkins,” Cobb says.
When it came out in 1968, Watson’s disparaging and sexist remarks about “Rosy,” as he calls her, were very much in keeping with the zeitgeist. “I read the book as a science student when it first came out and accepted its sexist attitudes as the everyday normality I encountered in the laboratory,” says Patricia Fara, a historian of science at the University of Cambridge.
But today’s readers are outraged, or should be. And that’s not the only problem with the book. Watson is rude to almost everyone, and it mostly comes off as nasty and schoolboyish to me, rather than gentle, heartfelt digs at friends and colleagues.
“He’s incredibly immature,” says Cobb, who points out that Watson started college at 15. “He was particularly unpleasant as a young man – and as he got older he became unpleasant in different ways.” Cobb refers to Watson’s racist views that led to him being fired in 2007.
But Comfort thinks the book has been almost universally misread. “What people miss about Watson’s book is that it’s a comedy, from her classic first line ‘I never knew Francis in a humble mood’ to her last ‘I was twenty-five and too old to be unusual.’
Comfort could be right. For example, one of the scenes that I find really jarring is the confrontation with Franklin where Watson says he was afraid he was going to hit him. This makes more sense if seen as an attempt at humor – but to me it’s not funny at all.
“I think I should make it clear that not all jokes are going to land,” Comfort says. “Many go down like a pancake.”
To put it in context, Jim Watson’s portrayal of himself is also very unfavorable. “The character of Jim is lazy, vain, clumsy, dishonest, deceitful, horny — an unreliable narrator in every sense,” says Comfort. Watson actually wanted the book to be titled Sincere Jimwhich was meant to be ironic.
This unreliability may extend to the depiction of how it essentially cuts through Franklin’s data. Cobb and Comfort found documents that suggest that Crick and Watson’s relationship with Franklin and Wilkins was much more collaborative than the book portrays.
There’s no denying that for all its flaws, Watson manages to write an engaging report, which is no mean feat for a chemistry book. Double helix was a bestseller, estimated to have sold over a million copies.
“It was a book that was incredibly influential in its time,” says Cobb.
“Is it one of the biggest science books? Yes, in terms of sales and impact,” says Fara. “But it can’t really be called ‘brilliant’ when it openly advocates an ethical position that conflicts with the values of science and presents a false picture of how research is done.”
Is it still worth your time today? Cobb’s recommendation is the opposite of mine. “I encourage everyone to read it, but to read it like a novel. Although sometimes you get very cross with the characters because they’re not very nice.”
topics:
Leave a Reply