Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

Late in high school, Feynman takes a job working at his aunt’s hotel, which involves long hours and low pay. Feynman tries to concoct gadgets and methods to make his work life more efficient. There are times when he fails, such as when he cuts his finger while demonstrating his improved way of slicing green beans or develops a switchboard system “too complicated” for anyone to understand (36). Feynman picks up, with the help of co-workers, insights into dealing with other people that he might never have had on his own.

Feynman goes to college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology but focuses his memoir more on his fraternity life than his coursework. Because he is Jewish, Feynman’s community options are limited by the prevalent antisemitism of the era. He notes, “I didn’t believe anything about that stuff [Jewish identity], and was certainly not in any way religious,” giving voice to his frustration about fitting in socially (37). He later adds nuance to the point, saying, “I was not very good socially” (38).

After settling on membership in the Jewish fraternity that least emphasized Jewish identity, Feynman describes a symbiosis among the fraternity brothers. The more outgoing members “worked very hard to get us intellectual characters to socialize and be more relaxed, and vice versa. It was a good balancing act” (38). The outgoing members try to give Feynman dating advice while he tries to beef up their understanding of theoretical physics. This is especially important to Feynman because, he says, he “didn’t want the guys in the fraternity to find out that I was a sissy” (40), which is not a statement about sexual orientation but about fulfilling stereotypical gender norms.

Feynman plays a prank on a fraternity brother by removing and hiding a door leading to his room. Nobody can solve the mystery of who took the door or where the door went. When the fraternity president asks the members directly who took the door, Feynman confesses, but nobody believes him, which leads him to discover that “people often think I’m a faker, but I’m usually honest” (48).

Feynman recalls listening to an Italian-language radio station while growing up. He loves the sound of the language, though he does not fully understand it. What most fascinates him is the emotion he can hear expressed in Italian. He experiments with communicating with Italian speakers in Brooklyn by making up a language that sounds like Italian but is fake. He finds amusing success in communication in this way. Home from college one day, he has to take his sister to her Girl Scouts father-daughter banquet. When the fathers get up to entertain the girls, Feynman recites a poem in fake Italian, emphasizing “all the emotions that I heard on the radio” (51). It is a success with the children but more surprising is that two adults asked him if he was speaking Italian or Latin.

Focusing on his time at MIT, Feynman claims, “I was only interested in science; I was no good at anything else” (52). He describes how in a philosophy class he tries to bend the assigned essay to things that he has interest and comfort in discussing. He tries the same thing with a literature essay. One of his fraternity brothers tells him that he at least needs to mention the assigned book. To Feynman’s amazement, he “escapes” with a B+ (54). In another philosophy course, he literally cannot understand the professor. His fellow students explain that they have been assigned an essay on the “stream of consciousness.” Feynman decides to watch how the stream of consciousness ends when one falls asleep. The professor quotes the resulting paper in front of the class. Feynman continues to make hypotheses, observations, and analyses of his sleep and dreaming even after the class is over. When he shares his conclusions with a friend who knows something about psychoanalysis, Feynman is ironically shocked to learn that his friend thinks his analysis is unsophisticated, “too perfect – too cut and dried” (60).

After graduating from MIT, Feynman accepts a job as Chief Research Chemist in a friend’s family business, Metalplast. The job involves finding ways of metal plating plastic, and it appeals to Feynman’s passion for experiments. “By trying everything and keeping track of everything,” Feynman explains, “I found ways of plating a wider range of plastics” (64). Working for a business, however, turns out not to be the kind of pure science that Feynman enjoys. He is interrupted by marketing and sales concerns. Eventually, the company develops a metal-plated plastic pen that looks good but loses its metal coating when used. Faced with this problem, the company engages in “fake research” that fails to rectify the situation. As a result, the company goes out of business. Several years later, Feynman is surprised to learn that a scientist from Europe had assumed that the Metalplast Corporation was very advanced in their research. The reason for that misunderstanding is that Metalplast had done a good job of marketing and advertising, rather than a good job at science.