Bobbin' and Weavin'

I think I found the Dittrich piece particularly fascinating. Of course, it was also the longest. I liked how he wove the characters in and out of the story. He did it in a way that made sense, but at the same time kept me guessing. Who exactly was this piece about? Henry, the grandfather or Annese? It's really about all three I suppose. He introduces Annese in a way that makes him seem kind of creepy "the laboratory at night, the lights down low...teases apart a crumpled slice of brain" (46). It sounds like the start to a Frankenstein movie or something. I suppose he's also introducing Henry, or at least his brain, the subject of the science of the piece. Again, pretty creepy. But it's certainly different. In fact, the whole piece is very different. He uses excerpts from interviews, a time frame that spans back to the 1800's and lots and lots of brain science that he is able to condense down to be pretty decipherable. In a way, you're almost always meeting new people in this, which I think is interesting because it's kind of like Henry's life. Everybody's a new face, yet he takes it all in stride, kind of like I was able to in this article. I often get confused when a lot of characters are introduced in a short(er) piece, but this seemed like it was easy to follow, even though it shouldn't have been, with all the jumping around. I don't know. Somehow it helped that it circled back continuously. I thought Perutz used a creative way of introducing Hodgkin, with a newspaper headline: "Grandmother wind Nobel Prize" (168). The rest of the piece I thought was kind of just fluff. I don't know, it just didn't resonate that much with me. I'm sure she was a remarkable woman, but (maybe for the first time ever!) I found the science more interesting I think. "Uncle Tungsten" was more interesting from a human perspective. I could picture him tossing around the shiny metal. Sacks's description of his enthusiasm was well done: "'Nothing in the world feels like sintered tungsten'" (215). And I like how he's introduced and simultaneously described - by his nickname. As a short piece, though, it was kind of a weird shift from UT to Scheele. I get that you can extrapolate someone's personality by their choice of heroes. But I would have rather stuck to UT. It was a weird ending.