Well, I hope it's not reductive to say I loved this book. Unashamedly, I did. After I started reading it, it taunted me from across the room as I tried to get other work done. Perhaps it was because this felt more like a child's picture book than a graphic nonfiction novel. Yeah, there was some dark and heavy shit in there, but it still felt like story time when I opened it up. Here is a good example of why a book needs to be a book. Whereas I could see some sort of animated film being made out of this, as was done with Persepolis, I don't think Radioactive could really work in digital form. It's a book that needs to be held and flipped through. Let me try to break down why.
Each page is a story: Perhaps reflective of its subject matter, the book is cellular in structure. Text is never carried over to the next page mid sentence, or even mid paragraph. A thought is begun and finished within each page, making the book a series of mini-artworks, more like a series of prints compiled into a book. Like a line break in a poem, or white space in a lyric essay, turning the page in this book seems to be as much a part of the experience of reading as absorbing the words and images. It helps, of course, that the color scheme switches with almost every page turn, the mood shifting from an ethereal blue to chaotic red and oranges, or from black and white to color making each page something that happens to us.
The artist's process: Knowing the details of how cyanotype printing is done made me feel more connected to the work. The process is multi-layered, three dimensional. It seems as though such a tactile process deserves a tactile result. And I love her explanation on page 199 of why she chose cyanotype, how it "gives an impression of an internal light, a sense of glowing that I felt captured what Marie Curie called radium's 'spontaneous luminosity.'" And, of course, knowing how cyanotype ingredients became a treatment for radioactive contamination--fascinating. I wonder what it was like for Redniss to discover that fact as she was working on the book.
Art that goes beyond the page: I'm not much of a visual art person, in the sense that I'm pretty ignorant about it. But I've learned a little about the importance of the artist "thinking beyond the page." I know this sort of contradicts what I said before about each page being self-contained, but I also think that the artwork spreads out beyond the paper. We never see the edge of the drawings, no borders, no outlines. The colors go to the very edges (close the book and look at the spectrum between the covers), and it gives the effect of being in the picture rather than looking at it. Good examples are on pages 96-101, when Pierre dies. We get a grand-scope view of horse, carriage and city; then it zooms in to the person on horseback (I'm not sure who this is supposed to be though--wasn't Pierre walking since she refers to his limping?); then it zooms out again and we see two dark figures carrying away Pierre's glowing body. These three scenes give a play-by-play, and there's something very intimate about the way it's done despite the fact we never actually see Pierre being run over.
I think the structure of the writing in the book is reflected in the tactility of the book. Redniss weaves story lines, moves around in time, and braids voices--in a sense, the storyline is also cellular, composed of various beads which are strung along the thread of the Curie lineage. It's by no means a comprehensive biography, although I was surprised by how much I didn't know about the Curies. Peter Trachtenberg loosely defines a lyric essay as a piece of writing that follows a thought process rather than a linear narrative, and I think this is somewhat along the lines of what Redniss is doing. Yes, there's obvious linearity, starting with Pierre and Marie, how they come together (nuclear fusion, could we say? Or nuclear fission?), but we are allowed the digressions to Three-Mile Island and the mutant roses, to Utah and the radium spa, to Nevada test sites, and to Stephen Howe's projection for the need for nuclear power "for electricity to support lunar outposts" (183). All of these other stories are the fallout, the repercussions of the joining of Marie and Pierre that are still rippling out and out. I'm not sure if "thought process" is the way to describe what she's following here, but the writing is as much thematic as it is narrative.
The format and structure of the book also allows Redniss to get away with incorporating large chunks of quoted material. This might bug me in a more conventional book, but it allowed for a layering of voices that complimented the style rather than detracted from it. It makes Redniss more of a compiler or a collagist rather than a writer (although I guess it could be argued that writing nonfiction is really just a way of compiling other material).
The only complaint I have is that sometimes I wish she'd slowed down and dwelled on the science a little more. For the most part it's very metered, straightforward, and clear, but I'm still confused about some things. For example, on page 42 where Rontgen discovers X-rays, Redniss writes: "During his experiments he noticed that objects in his lab had begun to glow," and then she jumps to how X-rays were then used, but I'm still not entirely sure as to what it was that was glowing or how he knew how to capture it on paper. She doesn't have to give me a dissertation on high-voltage currents, just a little bit more. Same goes for when Marie gets kidney lesions and her death by "aplastic pernicious anemia." Just a little bit more.
Thanks for introducing me to Redniss's work, Paige! I might consider using this if they ever let me teach creative writing...
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