Is this a Quantum Book?: On Melissa McCarthy
Anthony Howell reviews Melissa McCarthy's Photo, Phyto, Proto, Nitro
Photo, Phyto, Proto, Nitro by Melissa McCarthy
Sagging Meniscus Press, 2023 / 144 PP / $21.95
ISBN 978-1-952386-65-7
Review by Anthony Howell
Certain philosophies appeal to the spirit–Plato’s, for instance–while others serve as the handmaids of science–with Aristotle’s getting the ball rolling. We appreciate Plato for his elegance, his aesthetic, the spherical perfection of his idealized mental geometry, and the same is true of String Theory, in which the point-like particles of physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and interact with each other. On distance scales larger than the string scale, a string acts like a particle, with its mass, charge, and other properties determined by the vibrational state of the string. Different vibrational states alter the properties of the particle.
Trouble is that the full theory does not have a satisfactory definition in all circumstances. Another issue is that the theory is thought to describe a vast landscape of possible universes; an issue which has made Gordian knots of all efforts to develop theories of particle physics based on string theory. These drawbacks have led many physicists to criticize this approach, and to question the value of continued research on string theory unification. Nevertheless, from a Platonic point of view, there is a bewitching beauty evidenced by this theory, a heavenly musicality. Although it is not known to what extent string theory describes the real world or how much freedom the theory allows in the choice of its details, one of the many vibrational states of the string corresponds to the graviton; a quantum mechanical particle that carries the gravitational force. Thus, string theory is a theory of quantum gravity.
Mention the word “quantum”, and my poetic mouth starts to water. I’m no scientist, but I love the notion that when quantum systems interact, the result can be the creation of quantum entanglement: their properties becoming so intertwined that a description of the whole solely in terms of the individual parts is no longer possible. Erwin Schrödinger called entanglement “...the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics, the one that enforces its entire departure from classical lines of thought… Another possibility opened by entanglement is testing for “hidden variables”, hypothetical properties more fundamental than the quantities addressed in quantum theory itself.
Melissa McCarthy’s fascinating book is replete with hidden variables. Bird shit is entangled with explosives, corpses may be confused with flowers, the camera might be a coffin–or at the least a memento mori. But I greet these variables with joy. I revel in any poetic interpretation of science. I like the quantum notion that things light years apart may nevertheless interact and have an effect on each other. After all, what is rhyme but a species of quantum experience? What has gravity to do with depravity? What has an archer to do with departure? And these entanglements are language-specific. In other languages they don’t apply, while other entanglements obtain. So for me, Photo, Phyto, Proto, Nitro is a prose poem.
Here I read about Ephraim “Andy” Anderson, who pioneered the microphotography needed to take pictures of phages bursting out of bacteria. I don’t have a clue what a phage is, only that it is so small that it should be too small to be photographed. Next, I’m encouraged to think about the time-lag in photography, in the latency of the chemical reaction to the light falling on the paper. “What’s so crucial about this lag? Not everything needs to be immediately visible to the naked eye.”
Not everything needs to be immediately comprehensible in the finest of poems, and reading this book is a cumulative experience. We delve down through layers of meaning, as Leonard Woolley delved down through layers of prehistory at Ur in Southern Mesopotamia. Gradually meaning accrues to whatever the hell Melissa McCarthy is talking about. You can’t put it in a nutshell. Don’t attempt a precis or synopsis. We learn about the guanine explicit to the structure of a shark’s eye, of the dark shadows nosing their way towards swimmers as a boat carrying the atomic bomb towards Japan gets torpedoed, and “everything connects”. Did some pre-Socratic philosopher express this first, or Leonardo de Vinci or Gotthold Lessing? McCarthy’s rabbit-holing prompts the enchanted reader to engage in similar sleuthing. This is a book that has an effect on one’s thought. I’ll finish with just one quote from the back cover:
“From Aeschylus to Jaws, via histories of photography, tattoos, chemicals and some of the most horrific moments of the twentieth century, Photo, Phyto, Proto, Nitro reads like the reed mats dug up from a Sumerian city: an assemblage of lightly woven textured texts, ‘crumbling as we try to consider them’. The book is suffused with the pleasure of looking and finding and showing and sharing. McCarthy has a way of recalibrating perception, finding the depth in a surface and surfaces in the depths, helping you to see for just a fleeting moment that perhaps yes a camera is also a coffin, and a shark is also a camera. The result is forensic, joyful, surprising and rich.” (Tom Jeffreys, author of The White Birch: a Russian Reflection)
