Word: einsteins
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...century had its share of great thinkers. Einstein, most notably, was the greatest theorist since Newton, whose universe he overthrew. Einstein's ideas led to making the 20th a century of physics, one marked by manipulations of subatomic particles in ways that produced everything from atom bombs to silicon chips...
...century will also be remembered for its brilliant tinkerers. The ability to transcend gravity, brought about by folks from the Wright brothers to Robert Goddard, affected the way we live as much as Einstein's ability to figure out what gravity actually is. Philo Farnsworth's ability to turn electrons into television images was likewise as influential as figuring out what electrons actually are. Indeed, our century may be noted most for those who went out to their garages (metaphorically, at least) and helped bring us televisions and transistors, plastics and penicillin, computers and the World Wide...
...complete absurdity ensues when the great minds are reincarnated in the bodies of the city's residents. At one point the spirit of Nicola Tesla "screws" itself into the skull of a wino "like a genie into a bottle." The spirits of Karl Marx, Ovid, Aristotle and Albert Einstein, among many many others, also descend on the city. Almost laughable, these passages only serve to add to a growing sense of dissatisfaction with where, if anywhere, the plot is heading...
Ultimately the novel fails because Codrescu's ideas are more banal than fantastic. Conspiracy theory, millennium madness, channeling of spirits: these are dated visions, and the date on the can has expired. Angels hovering above New Orleans, Albert Einstein reincarnated in the body of gigolo and pessimistic condemnations of consumer culture no longer have anything to offer us. Perhaps half a century from now a Hist & Lit concentrator writing a thesis on millennium madness will come across this novel as yet another example of kitsch ushering in the end of the world...
...elevator kiosk first displayed Albert Einstein for three months. George Gershwin followed, keeping with Apple's campaign that features geniuses and iconoclasts of the 20th century. The former eyesore serves as a nice ego-check for those who think that every genius went to Harvard...