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Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber
On June 24, 1993, David Gelernter opened a package that exploded, blowing off most of his right hand and damaging his hearing, eyesight, and chest. Ironically, the perpetrator, the technology-phobic "mad genius" we know as the Unabomber, managed to punish one of the very few people who are deeply skeptical about computers and openly critical of technology. Perhaps the greater irony is that the bomb meant to destroy a man's life remade it, and the wounds meant to break his spirit only strengthened it. Now, in this haunting memoir, Gelernter makes a metaphor of himself, seeing in his own near-death and recovery the same disfigurement and promise for American society as a whole. As he ponders his own spiritual condition and the healing power he found in family, religion, community, and art, he critiques the American soul and its devaluing of these very treasures. Instead of teaching and lauding the virtues of courage, critical thinking, and good judgment, Americans have made a media circus out of crime. We are so busy peeking pruriently into the twisted minds of madmen that we have forgotten the acts of violence are not significant because they tickle our bloodlust, but because they force us to rethink our priorities. In a power analysis of the media's response to his experience, for example, Gelernter points out that the Unabomber was described as a "genius, " as "sick, " as "fascinating, " but never as evil. Gelernter asks the chilling question: What does it mean when a culture no longer believes in evil? What happens to a society that has lost its ability to react morally in a crisis? After all, when a man is blown up by a bomb, we should question, not gawk; learn the deeper lessons, not bask in the lurid details. A gripping and poignant narrative as well as a thought-provoking analysis of our culture and where it's headed, Drawing Life is about the resurrection of an extremely thoughtful human being and the extraordinary power of one man's will to live.
First published September 17, 1997
About the author
David Gelernter
31 books64 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
David Hillel Gelernter (born March 5, 1955) is an artist, writer, and professor of computer science at Yale University. He is a former national fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and senior fellow in Jewish thought at the Shalem Center, and sat on the National Endowment for the Arts. He publishes widely; his work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, LA Times, Weekly Standard, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and elsewhere. His paintings have been exhibited in New Haven and Manhattan.
He is known for contributions to parallel computation and for books on topics including computed worlds ("Mirror Worlds"), and what he sees as the destructive influence of liberal academia on American society, expressed most recently in his book America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered in the Obamacrats).
In 1993 he was sent a mail bomb in the post by Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, which almost killed him and left him with some permanent disabilities: he lost the use of his right hand and his right eye was permanently damaged.
(From Wikipedia)
David Hillel Gelernter (born March 5, 1955) is an artist, writer, and professor of computer science at Yale University. He is a former national fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and senior fellow in Jewish thought at the Shalem Center, and sat on the National Endowment for the Arts. He publishes widely; his work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, LA Times, Weekly Standard, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and elsewhere. His paintings have been exhibited in New Haven and Manhattan.
He is known for contributions to parallel computation and for books on topics including computed worlds ("Mirror Worlds"), and what he sees as the destructive influence of liberal academia on American society, expressed most recently in his book America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered in the Obamacrats).
In 1993 he was sent a mail bomb in the post by Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, which almost killed him and left him with some permanent disabilities: he lost the use of his right hand and his right eye was permanently damaged.
(From Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 16, 2021
This is really two books interwoven together. The first is a well-written and inspiring memoir about suffering severe and sudden trauma and enduring the slow, years-long partial recovery which followed. This material is interspersed rather incongruently with a not especially well organized or well argued screed against what I would call Political Correctness, though Gelernter never uses this term. He rants instead against the rule of intellectuals and about what he sees as the taboo against being “judgmental”, the elevation of “tolerance” as the sole virtue, and many aspects of feminism. Tellingly, he quotes Simone de Beauvoir and other feminists only as cited by F. Carolyn Graglia (nevertheless he himself complains elsewhere in the book about being quoted out of context).
The memoir deals with the author’s experience as the recipient of one of the mail bombs sent by the Unabomber. As recounted in Alston Chase’s Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist, this bomb was sent after several years of inactivity on the part of the bomber, and was one of the first using a more powerful explosive, built with explicitly lethal intent. Gelernter says very little about the bomber, and, though he characterizes him as “evil”, uniformly writes about him in terms of derision and contempt.
I found certain parallels between Gelernter and Chase’s account Ted Kaczynski (a name unmentioned in this book). Both expressed dissatisfaction and opposition to the de facto ruling class of Ivy League educated intellectuals, and it’s somewhat ironic that Gelernter ended up as one of the 14 people injured or killed by one of Kaczynski’s bombs, though as an instructor in computer science at Yale, he was certainly in one of the bomber’s preferred target groups. On learning of the bomber’s identity, Gelernter writes, “our culprit is also, it so happens, a former Berkeley professor and, almost too perfect, a Harvard grad!"; both men see the other’s elite academic credentials as marking him one of them, the enemy.
When Gelernter objects to the description of Kaczynski on one magazine cover as a “Mad Genius”, he is as adamant as the bomber himself in insisting that the crimes were not the actions of an insane man: Kaczynski ended up pleading guilty to avoid a trial in which his lawyers were determined against his wishes to use an insanity defense.
Gelernter recounts a visit from a local rabbi whom he had not previously met which occurred while he was still hospitalized after the bombing . The rabbi
As for those “sleazeball reporters”: though the level of harassment Gelernter endures from the press, common to people who find themselves unwillingly caught up in newsworthy events, would be enough to justify his scorn and dislike, if not hatred, for them as a class, the author has a particular grievance which forms one of the few connections between the book’s two main subjects. He resists being described as a “victim”, seeing the term itself as part of the dominant liberal culture that divides society into victims and victimizers. Right after an extended criticism of “victim culture” in the book, Gelernter tells about having an internet connection set up in his home so that he can communicate with his academic colleagues remotely; the first email he sends to Yale ends up on a public bulletin board and reprinted in The Washington Post. What’s noteworthy about the his account of this episode is that it is couched in the precise tone of “victimized” public figures who carelessly conduct private matters without taking adequate measures to assure their privacy and then complain when the statements or behavior are made public.
Gelernter doesn’t want to dwell on Kaczynski’s motives or ideology. He reluctantly reads the Unabomber’s manifesto at the insistence of the FBI, who hope it contains something familiar to Gelernter that will lead to a clue. The author admits that he opposed the publication of the document, though he concedes that it led to the arrest of its writer. Gelernter doesn’t appear to connect the bomber directly to the societal problems he blames on intellectuals, though he does accuse them, with their tolerance and resistance to being judgmental, of having caused an increase in crime in general. For much of the book Gelernter holds up America c. 1940 as a kind of Golden Age, with New York City as its center; he does not mention, if he even knows, that this was the time and place where a somewhat similar series of bombings occurred.
Gelernter writes about himself with a great deal of humor, even when describing some of his grimmest moments. He writes
The memoir deals with the author’s experience as the recipient of one of the mail bombs sent by the Unabomber. As recounted in Alston Chase’s Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist, this bomb was sent after several years of inactivity on the part of the bomber, and was one of the first using a more powerful explosive, built with explicitly lethal intent. Gelernter says very little about the bomber, and, though he characterizes him as “evil”, uniformly writes about him in terms of derision and contempt.
I found certain parallels between Gelernter and Chase’s account Ted Kaczynski (a name unmentioned in this book). Both expressed dissatisfaction and opposition to the de facto ruling class of Ivy League educated intellectuals, and it’s somewhat ironic that Gelernter ended up as one of the 14 people injured or killed by one of Kaczynski’s bombs, though as an instructor in computer science at Yale, he was certainly in one of the bomber’s preferred target groups. On learning of the bomber’s identity, Gelernter writes, “our culprit is also, it so happens, a former Berkeley professor and, almost too perfect, a Harvard grad!"; both men see the other’s elite academic credentials as marking him one of them, the enemy.
When Gelernter objects to the description of Kaczynski on one magazine cover as a “Mad Genius”, he is as adamant as the bomber himself in insisting that the crimes were not the actions of an insane man: Kaczynski ended up pleading guilty to avoid a trial in which his lawyers were determined against his wishes to use an insanity defense.
Gelernter recounts a visit from a local rabbi whom he had not previously met which occurred while he was still hospitalized after the bombing . The rabbi
mentioned casually that, “when they catch this guy I would string him up on the Green.” … He wan’t entirely serious proposing a public hanging, but wasn’t quite kidding either. The comment put him in a different moral world from the sleazeball reporters who plagued me. A man wants to act, not be acted upon.A man wants to act, not be acted upon is very similar to the sentiment Chase attributes to Kaczynski when he decides that, rather than merely refusing to participate in modern society, he would work to actively wreak death and destruction on its perpetrators.
As for those “sleazeball reporters”: though the level of harassment Gelernter endures from the press, common to people who find themselves unwillingly caught up in newsworthy events, would be enough to justify his scorn and dislike, if not hatred, for them as a class, the author has a particular grievance which forms one of the few connections between the book’s two main subjects. He resists being described as a “victim”, seeing the term itself as part of the dominant liberal culture that divides society into victims and victimizers. Right after an extended criticism of “victim culture” in the book, Gelernter tells about having an internet connection set up in his home so that he can communicate with his academic colleagues remotely; the first email he sends to Yale ends up on a public bulletin board and reprinted in The Washington Post. What’s noteworthy about the his account of this episode is that it is couched in the precise tone of “victimized” public figures who carelessly conduct private matters without taking adequate measures to assure their privacy and then complain when the statements or behavior are made public.
Gelernter doesn’t want to dwell on Kaczynski’s motives or ideology. He reluctantly reads the Unabomber’s manifesto at the insistence of the FBI, who hope it contains something familiar to Gelernter that will lead to a clue. The author admits that he opposed the publication of the document, though he concedes that it led to the arrest of its writer. Gelernter doesn’t appear to connect the bomber directly to the societal problems he blames on intellectuals, though he does accuse them, with their tolerance and resistance to being judgmental, of having caused an increase in crime in general. For much of the book Gelernter holds up America c. 1940 as a kind of Golden Age, with New York City as its center; he does not mention, if he even knows, that this was the time and place where a somewhat similar series of bombings occurred.
Gelernter writes about himself with a great deal of humor, even when describing some of his grimmest moments. He writes
But your sense of humor and sense of dignity are basically the same thing. Humor is the basis of dignity, and when it goes you are lost.However, in the many passages against intellectuals and their dictates his prose is totally without humor, even when the examples he cites border on the absurd.
What does it mean for society to be intellectualized? This: David Letterman interviews the actor Kevin Kline on TV. Letterman has a question about one of Kline’s movies in which “you play a Frenchman – a French person,” correcting himself. It is one of those moments when the ground fractures and you see straight to the core of modern America. Letterman is no intellectual, as far as I know, but he is part of the intellectualized elite and talks its language. We nearly all do nowadays.
That the “man” in “Frenchman,” the “his” in “everyone took his seat" excludes females is ridiculous and the intelligentsia knows it. (Or knew it. In today’s schoolroom facts are suppressed on principle.) … So here we have Letterman and Kline, and Kline happens to be a male, actually, and even if you had the nonsensical idea that “Frenchman” only means a french male Kline’s character is nevertheless a Frenchman. But after decades of elite babbling, “man” is radioactive. Letterman uses the suffix and the moment it is out of his mouth, drops it instinctively, as if he had reached for a sandwich and come up with a rattlesnake. This is what it means for society to be intellectualized.
August 12, 2010
3rd time
August 15, 2007
Loved this book by one of the victims of the unabomber. Smart writing and interesting, thought provoking views here.
August 13, 2017
Good book, many levels.
Prose is smooth and clear and at just the right places full of beautiful bits. Not quite E. B. White quality (White is frequently referenced), but in his category and of the type.
Reading Gelernter's sentences after reading some of the standard Masters in Creative Writing program text is a great illustration of one of his themes -- the difference between "low-church" intellectuals and "high-church" intellectuals. I think most of us connected to a shanty Irish tradition are well inclined to the "low-church" type (I assume most connected to Jewish tradition are, also), so this made the book a pleasure to read.
He makes many of the same points about culture here that he makes in his later book, America Lite, which looks to be a bit of a booster shot during the Obama administration. It looks as if he couldn't stand not pointing out how much of what he wrote in 1997 was playing out -- and it was. Reading "Drawing Life", the last 20 years look a bit like a cartoon version of the real person he was describing. The later book, though, is much rougher and less organic. Liked them both, but this one is a classic.
All ages might not read it, but I think all could (assuming as a parent you are all right with younger kids reading about acts of violence, crime, etc. -- nothing is overly graphic, but it is real). Will be trying to see where to fit this one in on our home school syllabus.
Prose is smooth and clear and at just the right places full of beautiful bits. Not quite E. B. White quality (White is frequently referenced), but in his category and of the type.
Reading Gelernter's sentences after reading some of the standard Masters in Creative Writing program text is a great illustration of one of his themes -- the difference between "low-church" intellectuals and "high-church" intellectuals. I think most of us connected to a shanty Irish tradition are well inclined to the "low-church" type (I assume most connected to Jewish tradition are, also), so this made the book a pleasure to read.
He makes many of the same points about culture here that he makes in his later book, America Lite, which looks to be a bit of a booster shot during the Obama administration. It looks as if he couldn't stand not pointing out how much of what he wrote in 1997 was playing out -- and it was. Reading "Drawing Life", the last 20 years look a bit like a cartoon version of the real person he was describing. The later book, though, is much rougher and less organic. Liked them both, but this one is a classic.
All ages might not read it, but I think all could (assuming as a parent you are all right with younger kids reading about acts of violence, crime, etc. -- nothing is overly graphic, but it is real). Will be trying to see where to fit this one in on our home school syllabus.
March 18, 2022
David Gelernter's "Drawing Life" is both a memoir of survival and recovery, and a jeremiad directed at contemporary American culture. On June 24, 1993, Gelernter entered his Yale office, and opened a mail bomb which severely damaged his hands, chest, eye and ear. Another victim of the Unabomber.
In the ensuing year, Gelernter drew on his spiritual reserves to help cope with the physical adversity visited upon his body by "hutman." Gelernter's subsequent reflections about the social forces at play in America are descriptive and poignant, particularly when juxtaposed with the America known by his parents.
Gelernter's observations, while sobering, speak to the possibility for renewal. In light of the events that have transpired since the publication of this book, Gelernter may have been overly optimistic.
In the ensuing year, Gelernter drew on his spiritual reserves to help cope with the physical adversity visited upon his body by "hutman." Gelernter's subsequent reflections about the social forces at play in America are descriptive and poignant, particularly when juxtaposed with the America known by his parents.
Gelernter's observations, while sobering, speak to the possibility for renewal. In light of the events that have transpired since the publication of this book, Gelernter may have been overly optimistic.
July 9, 2021
Short, interesting and thought-provoking. I appreciated the author's reflections about victimhood and the culture of victimization. However, his discussions around feminism and 'the intellectualized elite' were off-putting to me, and seemed somewhat irrelevant. The whole book could have been tied together a little more nicely. E.B. White was mentioned more than the Unabomber was.
August 11, 2019
I was not impressed with this book. His writing style is strange and choppy and hard to follow where he is going. I was interested in hearing about the story of the bombing and the capture of the Unabomber and very little was said about most of that. Disappointing.
October 29, 2014
There are several reasons for this book's being on my 'key books' shelf.
Gelernter survived a pipe bomb sent to him by the Unabomber. He was a writer and painter, and learned to paint left-handed before acquiring a prosthetic thumb, which also enabled him to write again. So on one facet, the book is about coping and human dignity.
Gelernter taught computer science. One thing this book brings home is, the discrimination by some of the 'literary world' against 'non-literary' educated persons. He had to lose part of his hand and face to realize he didn't give a snork if people assumed he could not create art or written works simply because he taught computer science.
There is a chapter on intellecutalization of society.
This is a wide-ranging book, essentially a social commentary. I learned from it, and I suspect others will.
Gelernter survived a pipe bomb sent to him by the Unabomber. He was a writer and painter, and learned to paint left-handed before acquiring a prosthetic thumb, which also enabled him to write again. So on one facet, the book is about coping and human dignity.
Gelernter taught computer science. One thing this book brings home is, the discrimination by some of the 'literary world' against 'non-literary' educated persons. He had to lose part of his hand and face to realize he didn't give a snork if people assumed he could not create art or written works simply because he taught computer science.
There is a chapter on intellecutalization of society.
This is a wide-ranging book, essentially a social commentary. I learned from it, and I suspect others will.
Shelved as 'reading-but-on-pause'
August 24, 2012maybe i finished it…
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews