Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
At the start of the novel, Ben accepts a crescendo of applause after his
much-anticipated lecture at the Masaryk University of Brno, where he
was invited by the Mendel Society to celebrate the life and work of his
great-great-great-uncle, Gregor. Ben is then greeted by the society's sec-
retary, a “large and quivering mountain of concerned flesh,” who says,
“Gee, Ben, that's wonderful. So brave, so brave.” At this, Ben thinks to
himself, “Brave. That was the word of the moment. But I'd told Jean
[his ladylove] often enough. In order to be brave, you've got to have a
choice.”
9
Of course, choice about his dwarfism was what he never had.
Rather, like the rest of us, he had only that “tyranny of chance” when
just one of the countless spermatozoa from his father's erupting orgasm
found (or was subtly and successfully attracted to) and penetrated his
mother's ovum and, shedding its tail, managed to impregnate and fertil-
ize—those magic moments of entrance, penetrance, implantation, and
conception thanks to which a specific child, Ben, is conceived, borne by
his mother, and later born into the world. After Ben suffers a typical
round of teasing from his classmates (“Mendel, Mendel, Mendel's
dwarf”) the headmaster of his elementary school remarks that “it's a
problem you have to live with,” Ben objects silently to himself that
achondroplasia is not like premature baldness, a birthmark, or a stutter,
“it is me. There is no other.”
10
At another point, after he declares his love for Dinah—the first girl he
ever kissed (or rather, “
she
kissed
me
!”)—and helps her get through a
genetics class—she dismisses him with a “thanks everso” and a final “it
can't be.” His response is harsh: “I'll say it for you: you can't love me
because I'm hideous and deformed, a freak of nature, and people would
stare. ...You can say this: 'I would love you if you weren't a shrunken
monster.' ”
11
Indeed, after a highly successful career in human genetics, Ben had
been invited to be the Mendel Society's honored speaker at the Brno con-
ference not because of his kinship with Mendel but rather because he
had identified the achondroplasia gene—the very gene whose flawed
working (or whose correct working with an incorrectly “spelled” gene)
resulted in the dwarf, Ben. When Ben's results were first made public,
the media took a shine to him, and a major newspaper reported on the
discovery with the headline: “Dwarf Biologist Discovers Himself.” His
sister telephoned him to tell him about it, reading the text of the report
