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Sylvia
Nasar '70 Says A Beautiful Mind Opened Hers to Human Possibilities
By Patricia
Corrigan
Reprinted with the permission of The Post-Dispatch, St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
Copyright 2002
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| Sylvia Nasar '70 |
Sylvia Nasar '70 said she wrote A
Beautiful Mind because it was a great
story -- the most amazing story she ever encountered as a reporter.
Her depiction of John Forbes Nash Jr., a brilliant mathematician diagnosed
with paranoid schizophrenia at age 30, led to the making of the movie
of the same name. Mental health experts say the combination of the
two has contributed
to an unprecedented national dialogue about the disorder.
This "unintended consequence" is gratifying, Nasar says, and
she enjoys telling people about her experiences researching and writing the
book. Nasar did just that recently at a St. Louis event sponsored by the
Mental Health Association of Greater St. Louis. After Nasar's talk
and a showing of the film, Danny Wedding, director of the Missouri
Institute of Mental Health, led a discussion.
"The book and the movie both are remarkable for underscoring the dignity
of people with mental illness, the importance of medication and the role
of support from the family and the community," said Wedding. "And
now Sylvia Nasar is coming here -- what a great coup for the Mental
Health Association." The author's visit was scheduled in conjunction
with Mental Health Awareness Week.
Reached at her home in Tarrytown, N.Y., Nasar was more than willing
to talk about the lecture.
"I will tell the story of John Nash, how I came to write the book, what
it meant to me and decisions I made along the way, " Nasar said.
She also intends to talk about her relationship with Nash over the
past few years.
"He has changed so much. He has come out of his shell and enjoys himself
now -- it's amazing, and also very moving," she said. "I
have always been an optimistic person, but John's story has opened
my mind to the depth of human possibilities. "
Nash, a brash eccentric from Bluefield, W.Va., invented a theory of
human condition and cooperation that transformed modern economics. The theory,
which Nash developed around 1950, at age 21, has been applied to everything
from military strategy to international trade negotiations to antitrust cases.
Considered by his peers to be the most remarkable mathematician
of the second half of the last century, Nash later used his "beautiful
mind" to learn to manage the schizophrenia that plagued him for about
30 years.
Nasar was working as a reporter for The New York Times when she heard a rumor that a man who had suffered from schizophrenia
was on the short list
for a Nobel Memorial Prize in economic sciences. The story struck her
as "a
Greek tragedy, Shakespearean play and fairy tale rolled into one."
Nasar's profile of Nash -- written months before she met him -- was
published in 1994 after he received the Nobel award. She then took a leave
of absence to write A Beautiful Mind (Touchstone, $16, 1998), her first book.
Nasar dedicated the book to Alicia Nash, John Nash 's wife.
"I'm very proud of the book," said Nasar. "It puts a human
face on an illness that many people find scary and depressing, and
it is an inspiring and hopeful story, as opposed to one more headline
about the
tragedy of schizophrenia. "
Nasar said that Nash did not cooperate with her as she
was writing the book. He would talk informally with her, and he didn't
prevent anyone else from talking with her, Nasar said.
"Then, after the book came out, he decided to be friends with me," she
said.
The title came from a comment made to Nasar when she
was working on the article for the Times. "A mathematician I interviewed was describing
Nash at the age of 19," Nasar recalled. "He said Nash was obnoxious,
a brat, immature -- but what redeemed him was his keen, logical, beautiful
mind. In my proposal, I used 'A Beautiful Mind' as the title
for one of three parts of the book. My agent suggested it be the title
of the book."
A Beautiful Mind won the 1998 National Book Critics' Circle
Award for biography and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The book
inspired a
PBS television documentary as well as the Oscar-winning feature film
directed by Ron Howard and starring Russell Crowe as Nash and Jennifer
Connelly as
his wife.
The movie is quite different from Nasar's book, which runs 390 pages
and includes hundreds of footnotes. The movie leaves out a lot of Nasar's
detailed material on Nash's background, his wife's background
and his illness. The movie also leaves out Nash's sexual ambivalence,
his relationship with the mother of his first son and the eventual diagnosis
of schizophrenia in his second son. The book talks about the voices that
plagued Nash. By necessity, the movie shows people "speaking" to
him.
Still, Nasar is a big fan of the movie. She said she read many versions
of the screenplay, written by Akiva Goldsman, and visited the set often during
shooting.
"I was amazed at how brilliantly it captures the essence of the story," she
said. "The movie puts the audience in Nash's shoes, allows them
to see the world through his eyes, and then lets the rug be pulled
out from under them, just as it was for him. "
Nasar, 55, was born in Bavaria to a German mother and
Uzbek father. Her family moved to the United States in 1951 and lived
in New York and Washington.
In 1960, the family moved to Ankara, Turkey. Nasar returned to the
United States in 1965 to attend Antioch College, where she studied literature.
In
1976, she earned a master's degree in economics at New York University
and then spent four years conducting research with Nobel laureate Wassily
Leontief at the Institute for Economic Analysis.
Nasar has worked at Fortune, U.S. News & World Report and The
New York Times, where she covered economics. On leave from her
position as visiting
scholar at Princeton University, Nasar is teaching at the Columbia
University School of Journalism. She and her husband, an economist, have
three children.
Nasar's next book is about 20th-century economic
thinkers.
"The book is more a history of ideas than it is biography," said Nasar, "but
it is built around eight seminal thinkers -- eight more beautiful minds."
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