Re: A Bio And A Movie: Nash/epilog

[Brian Whatcott <betwys@DIRECTVINTERNET.COM>]

At 01:47 PM 10/12/02, Rosaline Secrest, you wrote:

> I would be very interested in the opinion of any of you who both read the
> book and also have seen the movie:  A Beautiful Mind.  It seemed to me that
> the John Nash described in the two were in many ways two very different men.
> The movie was very popular and therefore the book became a best seller; but,
> as a colleague told me, it is probably one of the least read best sellers.  I
> suspect the book, while not an easy read, was not only more complete but more
> truthful in presenting Nash's story.
>
> Rosaline


Here is what Sylvia Nasar told me this evening:

"Ron Howard's movie I considered as a work of art, and in this light
it gets to the heart of the matter. Nash's delusions were to do with
 messages from extra terrestrial aliens. His wife divorced him when
he began to see her as an enemy.
"His teeth became decayed almost to the gums. He neglected the
natural son from before his marriage. I think of these as details.
I saw the strangeness, the arrogance, the sense of humor and the
 love story as core elements portrayed.

"It is true I wrote a book about a mathematician who developed
paranoid schizophrenia, then on a narrow majority decision of the
Academy, was awarded a Nobel while still mad. It won awards,
and did well on that basis.
 The film took the book to new audiences and was indeed
 responsible for many more sales. Alicia did support him for thirty
years of wilderness roaming. They remarried last June.
His younger son suffered the same disease. His older natural son
was untouched.
[Sylvia Nasar is Professor of Business Journalism at
 Columbia Graduate School. She spoke at MSU, Wichita Falls,
 this evening.]

Brian Whatcott
  Altus OK                      Eureka!

This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or the AAPT.