26
Popular Culture Review
Calvary, only to crucify physics. As he admonished in 1946, “the unleashed
power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking.” That’s
why we have yet to learn, to see, “to make relativity relevant to us” (Jeffrey
Crelinsten), despite its obvious relevance to everything. We won’t do it unless
we’re dying of pure cant and consumerism. As the symbol of actual Faustian (or
Frankensteinian) quests for total knowledge, Einstein has no peers, no rivals,
and no equals. Yet unlike the myths he reenacts without even trying, Einstein
wasn’t out to conquer the world. Speaking of dates long forgot, Einstein
prepared a speech to mark the seventh anniversary of the founding of Israel. In
it, he urged the creation of a Palestinian homeland, and an end to territorial
conflict in the Middle East. A task still unfinished in 2009, but one that Einstein
might have managed to pull off, had not age and ill health prevented him from
accepting a pro forma offer of the Presidency of Israel, in 1952. At that time he
excused himself, saying “I know a little something about nature. I know nothing
about people.” He was being modest. Death precluded his going on the air; it
would have been his debut on national TV, but the Grim Reaper had other ideas,
and claimed Einstein in his sleep on April 18. Contemplating the event,
scheduled for April 27, 1955, he joked “So I shall have a chance of becoming
world famous!” Like death, Nielsen “kindly stopped for him.” But media went
on, and today, it’s even further beyond control than atomic fission. Though they
only cause brain death—as we can easily show. No wonder we have turned him
into a carnival of kitsch, as though admitting our numbness, paralysis, inability
to cope. The ubiquity of Einstein is matched only by the infinity of uses (and
abuses) to which his name and face are liable, like choosing between Coke and
Pepsi On the Beach—the ultimate “no-brainer,” as the jingles themselves
proclaim, gulping down that Freudian froth. And so it goes, Bubbles. Nobody
ever went broke underestimating taste for the tasteless. And if H.L. Mencken
could only see us, he’d laugh at such folly, all the way to his desk at the
Baltimore Sun.
Given all the stuff sold in Einstein’s (brand) name, the devil isn’t waiting to
make the most of what most of us do the least: think. Kitsch (T-shirts, coffee
mugs, yo-yos, lapel buttons) is based on the formula Einstein = mass culture x
the speed of life squared. It’s no gimmick, but a fundamental law of human
nature, which even Einstein knew from his travels, is destined to outlast time.
We’ve trivialized the sublime. Now let’s desublimate the trivial. If (as Andy
Warhol foretold) in the fab future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes, then
either Einstein has outlasted himself, or else his form of time-travel makes time
obsolete. Either way, H.G. Wells doesn’t have to make a round-trip in order to
verify the clock paradox, or to relive our mythistory. Such inexhaustible
richness suggests an unlimited future, which may be our best (if not only) hope
for having one. What more do you need? And what else do you expect? Only
that “As Time Goes By” (1942, sung by Dooley Wilson, in measured lyrical
cadences that define collective memory) he will remain with us, as familiar as a
broken heart and as much a part of our lives as the eternal verities he disclosed.