Oh Pure and Radiant Heart by Lydia Millet

ISBN: 9780156031035

About the book:
Oppenheimers first full day at the motel was devoted to television. He
located the remote on the bedside table, where it sat beside the enigmatic
telephone with its sheet of intricate numeric instructions, and eventually
by pressing the button marked power discovered its function. -from OH
PURE AND RADIANT HEART
In Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, the three dead geniuses who invented the
atomic bomb-Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and Enrico Fermi-
mysteriously appear in Sante Fe, New Mexico, in 2003, nearly sixty years
after they watched historys first mushroom cloud rise over the New
Mexico desert in 1945. One by one, they are discovered by a shy
librarian, who takes them in and devotes herself to them.
Faced with the evidence of their nuclear legacy, the scientists embark on a global disarmament
campaign that takes them from Hiroshima to Nevada to the United Nations. Along the way, they
acquire a billionaire pothead benefactor and a growing convoy of RVs carrying groupies,
drifters, activists, former Deadheads, New Age freeloaders, and religious fanatics.
In this heroically mischievous, sweeping tour de force, Lydia Millet brings us an apocalyptic
fable that marries the personal to the political, confronts the longing for immortality with the
desire for redemption, and evokes both the beauty and the tragedy of the nuclear sublime.
About the author:
LYDIA MILLET is the author of several previous novels, including Everyones Pretty and My
Happy Life, which won the 2003 PEN Center USA Award for Fiction. She lives in the desert
outside Tucson, Arizona.
Discussion Questions:
1. One of Lydia Millets particular strengths as a storyteller is her ear for dialogue. There are
conversations throughout Oh Pure and Radiant Heart in which the word choices and speech
patterns of all the characters involved feel razor sharp, genuine, and up-to-the-minute. Pick out a
few of these, explaining what about them strikes you as especially true.

2. Who is Eugene? What literary, thematic, symbolic, and even religious purposes does he serve
in this saga?

3. Faith and science, fiction and fact, life and death, war and peace, mass movements and
individual longings, history and heartbreak, military might and biblical apocalypse, image/spin
and truth/reality, miracles and media, the atomic bomb and the last remaining superpower:
discuss Millets book as a novel of ideas, a literary work meant to challenge or even alter ones
thinking or assumptions.

4. Where do Fermi and Oppenheimer go after the group visits the Peace Museum in Hiroshima
where does each man escape to? And why do they return? What brings each of them back?

5. Throughout the book, we encounter Anns keen and graceful musings her inner thoughts,
freewheeling reflections, impressionistic associations. Reread several of these, discussing what
each told you about this novels richly defined heroine. Who else in the novel thus reveals his or
her meditations to us, and why?

6. What do we learn about Anns mother and father? When did they die, and how? What were
they like as parents, and as people? Describe how and why the scientistsespecially
Oppenheimermight be seen as father figures for Ann.

7. This book often reads like an indictment of contemporary American societywitness its
treatment of our cars (SUVs), our cults (Grateful Deadheads), our cities (the squalor of
downtown Washington, D.C.), and our crass consumerism (Szilards equally unhealthy and
incessant appetite). Identify a few of the novels points made in this regard that particularly
resonate with you.

8. When exactly does Ben start believing in the physicists? When does he start believing that
they are who they say they are (and not, for instance, deranged con artists)? Or does he never
believe as much?

9. As a narrative, Oh Pure and Radiant Heart alternates between a tale of both personal and
philosophical quests and an informed critique of nuclear weaponry. Talk about how these two
accounts echo each other over the course of the book, how they converse with and fortify one
another. Which facts or details in these pages surprise or even shock you, as a reader? Also, is
this book ultimately more of a postmodern historical novel, in your opinion, or a postmodern
history lessonmore of a fable, or an inquiry? When answering this, revisit the final,
summarizing, passage of the novel (the last four paragraphs).

10. Talking to Oppenheimer and Ann while walking along a beach, the always-in-hyperdrive
Szilard says, I had initially assumed this country was civilized . . . But in fact it has only a thin
veneer of civilization. It is a country of ignorant cultists. They are grossly illiterate. Most of them
cannot pinpoint New York or Los Angeles on a map. They still believe Iraq bombed the World
Trade Center. Why? Because they believe anything the powerful tell them . . . Their lack of
education makes them easy pickings. These people are savages, manipulated by demagogues.
Do you agree? Why or why not? If you do agree, hasnt American society always been this way?
And if you dont agree, point out the faults in Szilards logic.

11. At one point, Szilard is reading a biography of Elvis Presley. With whom does the scientist
identify in this biography, and why? Also, why do you think Szilard is the only one of the three
scientists who does not have trouble adjusting to the new lifeto the patterns, dimensions,
habits, and realities of the early twenty-first century?

12. How would you characterize the link between the meek, mild-mannered (and perhaps
moderately insane) Enrico Fermi and his beloved whooping cranes? Did he summon them? Did
he foretell their arrival? Did he know they would come to the rescue? Explain. How does Ben
seem to understand this link?

13. Discuss the portrayal in these pages of Bradley, his wife, and the rest of the Evangelicals and
Born-Agains. Did you find these renderings on-target or off the mark? Accurate? Distorted?
Comic? Frightening? Familiar? Stereotypical? Explain your views with citations from the book.

14. Near the end of the novel, as we learn of Ann and Bens post-climactic life following their
time with the physicists, we read, It was hard to remember sometimes that history had ended.
Expand on this feeling, this age of anxiety mind-set. Do you detect a note of irony here, or
perhaps even sarcasm? Why or why not?

15. Finally, how do you account for the title of this book? Also, go back and explore/explain the
equally lyrical names of the novels four main sections.

PRAISE FOR THIS NOVEL

For all its zaniness, this book is a serious indictment.
Sheri Holman, The Washington Post

Its a wonder the novel itself doesnt explode, but Millets confident writing holds the center.
Susannah Meadows, The New York Times

Millet gives a whimsical conceit real depth . . . A superb, memorable novel.
Publishers Weekly

Lively, provocative fiction, graced by good writing and a refreshingly offbeat worldview.
Kirkus Reviews