Alan Lightman
Alan Lightman
Alan Paige Lightmanis an American physicist, writer, and social entrepreneur. He is a professor of the practice of the humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of the international bestseller Einstein's Dreams. Einstein's Dreams has been adapted into dozens of independent theatrical productions and is one of the most widely used "common books" on college campuses. Lightman was the first professor at MIT to receive a joint appointment in the sciences and the humanities. He is also...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTeacher
Date of Birth28 November 1948
CountryUnited States of America
For my students who are trying to learn the craft of writing in a writing class - contemporary literature is what's most useful.
I have always loved magic realism as a form of writing. I have also been fascinated for a long time with the intersection of science and religion.
Franz Kafka is an idea person. His books begin and end in ideas. Ideas have always been important to me in my writing. To the point that I have to be careful that they don't take over.
Another strand of my writing is the importance of the idea. If you think about fiction writing as a spectrum, where at one end of the spectrum in the infrared, are the story tellers, and the people for whom creation of wonderful characters and telling a good story is the most important thing.
In fiction writing, I would say there are several different strands that have been woven through my own writing, and each influenced by a different group of writers.
Every essay - the subject matter of every essay - is ultimately about the essayist; him or herself. That ultimately, every essayist is writing about his or her view of the world.
My writings are an exploration, and I think a lot of writers would tell you this, but in writing, you're not simply putting down things that are already known to you. You're actually discovering in the writing process, you're actually creating knowledge.
One day I'm going to write a book about osprey . It has really gotten deep into my bloodstream. So when you ask what else I do, I feel like this is part of what I do....is to watch these birds.
I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jose Saramago, Michael Bulgakov, and Salman Rushdie. I also like the magic realist writers, such as Borges and Marquez, and feel that interesting truths can be learned about our world by exploring highly distorted worlds.
I think it is always a long shot getting a book made into a film. Making that book into a film is going to be quite a challenge.
I re-read a lot of books that I like a lot. There are some books that I try to reread every couple of years. A good book changes for you every few years because you are in a different place in your own life.
You say, "Something important really happened here. I really had hold of something I was visited by the muse." And that's enough to make you continue the months and years to finish the whole book.
That's the fine balance of a fiction writer...to be able to give your characters enough freedom to surprise you and yet still maintain some kind of artistic control.
The Diagnosis is by far my most ambitious book. I such great hopes for it... there was so much I wanted to do with the book. I was extremely insecure about it for several years. Just didn't know whether I would finish the book much less for it to come close to what I intended. I think that for any novel you never know exactly how the book is going to turn out...