Seldom does a book grab hold of me and keep me in my reading chair for hours. This book grabbed me and held me tight. Published in 2004, Alan Lightman's Einstein’s Dreams is a fictional collection of stories dreamed by Albert Einstein in 1905, when he worked in a patent office in Switzerland. As the young genius is creating his theory of relativity, a new conception of time, he imagines many possible worlds. In one, time is circular, so that people are fated to repeat triumphs and failures over and over. In another, there is a place where time stands still, visited by lovers and parents clinging to their children. In a third, everyone lives for only one 24-hour day. The book inspired me to write my own "dream", not a full chapter but a short vignette of time as a series of speed bumps, each one sending my car almost imperceptibly off-course, until I arrive not at my intended destination, but at an entirely unexpected place in a completely different time. Einstein's dreams will stimulate your own dreams, I'm sure.
It does sound interesting!
Posted by: Kalyn Denny | April 13, 2022 at 07:28 AM