SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Einstein and Kafka - the genius who developed the theory of relativity and a literary genius whose very name has become a term to describe a world in the grip of its own absurdity. Turns out, they both lived in Prague at the same time and met the same circle of friends for strong tea, the music of Mozart and illuminating talk. Ken Krimstein, the cartoonist, including for The New Yorker and Punch, and biographer, has a new graphic novel that tries to show how the two giants of the 20th century might have been influenced by being in the same orbit of Prague's intellectual life in 1911 and 1912 - "Einstein In Kafkaland: How Albert Fell Down The Rabbit Hole And Came Up With The Universe." Ken Krimstein joins us now from Evanston, Illinois. Thanks so much for being with us.
KEN KRIMSTEIN: Well, thanks a lot for having me this day.
SIMON: How much is history, and how much is your artistic imagination?
KRIMSTEIN: A hundred percent of each, I'm afraid.
SIMON: Excuse me - that doesn't add up, but go ahead, yes.
KRIMSTEIN: Yes. Historically, it hews to the facts. I mean, Einstein was an out-of-work assistant professor struggling to save his family, and he got an offer for a big pay raise to go to Prague in 1911, and Kafka happened to be there, working in the insurance company. When I found out that they had actually been in the same circle and met, I was smitten, and the facts started falling into place. I followed letters. I did everything based on the historical procession of everything that was recorded. Some of the things weren't recorded, you know, and there's questions. And it's into those questions that, as a graphic biographer and a cartoonist, where I can make the meaning.
SIMON: What were they like, these two giants of the century, back in 1911? We know that Einstein was teaching. He was in his late '20s.
KRIMSTEIN: Yeah. He was ambitious. His hair might have been a little neater than it was later on. He dressed pretty well, and he was struggling with two children and his wife. One of the reasons he took the job was actually, they gave him an apartment with electricity and an elevator in it, which I think is kind of ironic. This isn't the Kafka or the Einstein that we're accustomed to knowing. They were like normal people. Kafka's 6 foot 2. He's a vegan. He's a religious lap swimmer every morning in the Vltava River. Among other things, he loves his job at the insurance company, because he's working on workers' compensation insurance. He's trying to help people as the world is industrializing.
SIMON: There's a wonderful sequence in here, when Einstein's son poses a major question to him while playing with a ball on a train.
KRIMSTEIN: Yes. And going back a little bit, when I was a kid, my parents used to drive us back up to the burbs on the Kennedy Expressway, and I'd be in the back of the car, bored. I would sometimes flip a coin. And I wondered why, even though the car's moving - it did move on the Kennedy in those days - when the coin wasn't attached to my hand, why didn't it fly back and hit me in the face? And his son, when they take the train - and as part of the research, I went to Zurich and took the same train that Einstein took from Zurich to Prague, I imagined his son tossing a ball and asking Albert the same question.
SIMON: Why does the ball not come back and hit us?
KRIMSTEIN: The laws of up and down apply in that moving space as if it was its own universe. And out of that notion that my ball going up and down isn't the same, if you're in another train, of your ball going up and down - out of that comes the fact that space and time itself changes from person to person. And when Einstein saw that, that was like, it doesn't make sense. I got to figure that out.
SIMON: Tell us about the night May 24, 1911.
KRIMSTEIN: Einstein arrives in Prague, and the whole town - or at least the intelligentsia, the crowd - are dying to see, who is this character from Switzerland, and what is he talking about? I mean, Einstein has been touring Europe, trying to explain the theory of relativity, and it's a hot ticket, so everybody wants to come - including, of course, Franz Kafka and his pals. And Einstein delivers a talk about how the speed of light is the thing that's absolute in the universe, and I think it was kind of a hit.
SIMON: I guess I'm asking the artist to take over now. What do you think they might have glimpsed in one another?
KRIMSTEIN: They might have looked into each other's eyes, and seen somebody who was hungry to find out what I call the true truth. Even though they were in completely different disciplines, they crossed over. Kafka was trying to find new worlds in literature, in the cosmos that exists between our ears, and Einstein was trying to find new worlds, true worlds, in the cosmos from us to the end of the universe, whatever. And I think they might have glimpsed that in each other.
SIMON: What brought all this genius to Prague?
KRIMSTEIN: Well, Prague is a fascinating city. I was so happy to be able to spend time there. It's between a lot of countries. So the Czech people - they have Germans on one side, Italians, this, that. They're in a crossroads, so it was a very interesting melting pot, and it was a moment in time, just before World War I, where the mystical history of Prague, with Mad King Rudolf and alchemy, was combining with the future. There were people who had salons, and the streets were the same as they were in the medieval days. It's a magical place.
I hate to, in a scientific discussion, talk about magic, but I love scenes. When I did a book on Hannah Arendt, I was attracted to the fact that she was in the Weimar Germany, and she was at the Cedar bar, and I think about, you know, the Beatles and Liverpool in the '50s. What was that like? What happens? How do these scenes generate genius? And a lot of it is in coffee shops.
SIMON: Ken, are we losing the chance to rub off each other and learn from each other in times when each of us are behind their own screen?
KRIMSTEIN: Yes, people rubbing up against other people; Kafka sitting in the corner or coming forward and seeing what Einstein has to say. Who knows what would have happened? We do know, the following July, Einstein's pretty much cracked the code of gravity, as he puts it, and Kafka is on the road to writing what is considered the first major masterpiece of modern literature, "The Judgment," so something happened. So I guess that's a long answer to, yes, go to a coffee shop.
SIMON: Ken Krimstein, and I hope to see you there. His new graphic novel - "Einstein In Kafkaland: How Albert Fell Down the Rabbit Hole And Came Up with the Universe." Thanks so much for being with us.
KRIMSTEIN: Thank you so much for having me.
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