“Open Questions in Uncertain Times”: Laura Sewell Matter and Anne Goldman on Stargazing in the Atomic Age (Part 1)

I recently had an inspiring conversation with the brilliant essayist Anne Goldman about her new book, Stargazing in the Atomic Age, which was published by Georgia Review Books this month.

Here’s an excerpt from the first part of our conversation (which can be read in its entirety on the GR2 website, here) which suggests why these essays make such vital reading right now:

LSM: If catastrophe has an antidote you find it in “translating unspoken grief into forward motion.” And you give us exemplars who inspire us to keep thinking and creating.

AG: …Yes—even in grief, the most profound grief, people find their way forward. We don’t really have that much of a choice, do we? We either grind to a halt or stumble on. In my own life, I am very far from being a Pollyanna. My mind practically skips ahead toward catastrophe, so perhaps writing this book was one way of righting myself. But I also think we’re all subjected to stories of tragedy and despair—not least in every news outlet we find ourselves reading. What I wanted to do in this book is to push against the feelings we all struggle with, some of us, sometimes, on a daily basis, and never more so than in this last so difficult year.

In essays about composers, artists, mathematicians, writers, and scientists, Goldman weaves together diverse biographical threads to show the breadth of Jewish American achievement in the twentieth century. But more broadly, her book is about creativity and its redemptive powers, which we need more than ever at this hour of the twenty-first century. Buy Stargazing in the Atomic Age directly from the University of Georgia Press, or your favorite book retailer.