This week, Daniel Socolow made The Calls out of the Blue.
As is his custom, he first suggested the person on the other end sit down or pull off the road. He then told each of the 25 to expect to receive $500,000 over five years — no strings attached — courtesy of the $5.5 billion John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
“I’ve never had anyone hang up on me,” said Socolow, since 1997 director of the foundation’s MacArthur fellows program.
The 25, of all ages and fields, are to be revealed Tuesday. The Chicago foundation surely will describe them as exceptionally creative risk-takers of great promise — but the rest of us will use the shorthand “genius.”
The label “genius” gives Socolow agita — it suggests a singularity of intellectual prowess, not the boundary-breaking practiced by his crew. But the 25 — like the 707 since 1981 who have been crowned MacArthur fellows — will wear the label the rest of their days.
Like the previous fellows, the latest were recommended to the MacArthur board by a small army of outsiders, all cloaked in deep secrecy. The anonymity helps to prevent relentless lobbying for candidates — and diffuses the blame for picks of fellows who seem to have peaked early or who seem just plain weird.
Early on, the fellows were predominantly men, but women have attained near parity over the last 10 years. What has not been corrected are the program’s overweighting in academics and the bicoastal imbalance.
Tempo wanted to find out what it meant to be a MacArthur fellow. How might the credential be cashed long after the checks from Chicago stop arriving? What was it like to deal with high expectations? Is it true what they say about “genius” envy?
Looking for diversity in background and discipline, Tempo selected and interviewed a representative from each of the 28 classes in the last 25 years. (Early in the program, there were sometimes two classes in a year, and grants were smaller and determined by a winner’s age.)
Over the next two days, Tempo presents edited transcripts of those interviews: the choreographer with the autistic child; the prodigy in Mayan hieroglyphics; the juggler; the clown; the biologist who needed a new pair of shoes; and many others.
Today: Classes 1981 to 1991.
Friday: 1992-2005, including the radio pioneer, the pilot, the debate teacher and the choreographer.
1981
Leslie Marmon Silko
Occupation: Novelist, poet, essayist
Residence: Tucson
Age: 58
Present project: Novel-in-progress, “Blue Seven”
Amount of award: $176,000
What did you do with the money? “I dropped everything that was standing in the way of my long, long novel. I took a leave of absence without pay from the University of Arizona, where I was an assistant professor. . . . [B]ut I never intended on going back. I lived off the money.”
How did the award affect your life and work? “I had just gotten divorced, and I was struggling to hang onto my beloved old ranch [in Tucson]. It came at the most crucial point: I was just about to lose hope that I would ever be in the position to focus on this long, complex novel, ‘Almanac of the Dead.’ . . . I was afraid I was going to have to give up my ranch. It gave me the financial wherewithal and a kind of moral support to go on in my direction. . . . But I think that was the idea that [program founder] Rod MacArthur had, to choose people who were bound to go on and do what they were obsessed with, regardless.”
It took you 10 years to complete “Almanac of the Dead.” Did you feel an obligation to make it very ambitious because of the award? “No, it already wanted to be the way that it was. That’s why it was so wonderful that the MacArthur came along. When the MacArthur ran out and the novel wasn’t done, I felt pressure, but it wasn’t pressure because I had won the MacArthur. It was pressure because I had finished the MacArthur and I still didn’t have the novel completed.”
Any downside to winning the award? “My ex-husband decided to come back after me to try to get some of my MacArthur fellowship money.”
1981
Dr. Raphael Lee
Occupation: Surgeon, bioengineer, entrepreneur and professor of plastic surgery, dermatology, organismal biology and molecular medicine at the University of Chicago; authority on electrical injury and gynecologic plastic surgery
Residence: Chicago
Age: 56
Present project: Repairing injured cells and undoing effects of physical trauma to the body
Amount of award: $172,000
How did you spend the money? “Money covered medical school loans, etc., which then allowed me to spend the first eight years of my career doing some surgery and basic research and teaching in bioengineering.”
Did winning the award create tensions with or jealousy among colleagues? “Of course it created tensions and protracted efforts on the part of some to limit my career. But that’s just basic biology and goes with recognition in any arena. Being a member of a racial minority had its pluses and minuses as well. I did receive the award before I contributed very much. The publicity is like prerelease marketing. It seemed obvious to me that many assumed the award to be simply the consequence of affirmative action and probably lacking in merit. I don’t get that sense anymore.”
How would you rank the MacArthur among your other honors? “So far, the most important, because it set expectations for me at an early stage.”
Was there any downside to winning? “There is a certain pressure that comes with accepting the recognition. However, in the long run, I think the pressure is good. I think it serves everyone well.”
1982
Francesca Rochberg
Occupation: Assyriologist and history professor at University of California, Riverside
Residence: Ranch in foothills of San Bernardino Mountains
Age: 54
Present project: Working on a book about the relationship of science and religion in the ancient Near East. Starting sabbatical at Oxford University.
Amount of award: $164,000
You were at the University of Chicago and working on the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary when you won the award. Had you heard of it before? “Only vaguely. I never dreamed that anything like that would fall in my lap. I was just focused on my work. It was not something one applied for. It was really the bolt from the blue. And it was wonderful.”
How did you spend the money? “Since I was so young [30] and didn’t have a teaching job yet, it basically provided a salary for me. I pursued my own work for five years. What it really did was to open the doors at the end of the five-year term. By then, I was at the University of Notre Dame, and they essentially asked me what department I wanted to be in. That is one of the effects of the MacArthur Fellowship. You go through your career wearing this mantle of distinction, and people sit up and take notice.”
How did it affect you? “It created a bit of inner tension for me because I doubted that I deserved it. Being so young and being in the company of so many incredibly distinguished people, I felt that I hadn’t done enough yet. … You question whether you can do what is now expected of you. I walked around with those tensions. I still do. Every time I would produce something, I would think, ‘Is this good enough for a MacArthur Fellow?’ “
1983
John Sayles
Occupation: Independent film-maker, writer
Residence: Stanfordville, N.Y.
Age: 55
Present project: Getting prepared to direct “Honeydripper,” from his screenplay; film to star Danny Glover
Amount of award: $172,000
What did you do with the money? “At the time I was about to make ‘Brother From Another Planet’ on my own nickel. That was a script that we made for $300,000. The [Mac-Arthur] money meant that, when I finished the movie, I was able to start editing right away. I didn’t have to go off and write more screenplays to raise the money to do it.”
What interesting thing happened to you because of the award? “I have met a few other now-ex-geniuses. We met one while we were traveling to Madagascar. I forget the woman’s name, but she had just gotten one, and we had read about it in the paper on the way over. We were going up into the rain forest, and we literally met her on a rope bridge. It was like Stanley and Livingstone. ‘I know you, you just won a MacArthur.'”
What was the reaction in your field to your award? “It’s not that well known a thing in the film community. … Mostly, I make a living as a screenwriter, and I am mostly working for big studios. … Nobody knows in the film world that I wrote novels. Maybe three people did when I started working for films, and they tried not to hold it against me.”
Besides the money, what else did you enjoy about the award? “The nice thing is you don’t have to show up for any meetings. They have these trips [for MacArthur fellows] … but I’ve always been busy with a movie when they’ve happened.”
1983
Karen Uhlenbeck
Occupation: Professor of mathematics, University of Texas at Austin
Residence: Austin
Age: 64
Present project: Studying geometry of differential equations and the interaction with physics
Amount of award: $204,000
You were at the University of Chicago when you won. What did you do with the money? “I was able to take semesters off learning physics. . . . I confess that the more I learned about physics, the less I understood. Quantum field theory is very hard. A lot of the work I’ve done recently has been connected with physics. I’m certainly not sorry I did it. I found it a difficult quest.”
What impact did the award have on your life and work? “I felt that I owed something. In the last 12 years or so, I have been involved with programs to encourage women mathematicians. . . . I think the MacArthur pushed me to go further in my work and in my service to the women’s community.”
Does the MacArthur pale in comparison to the National Medal of Science you received in 2000? “No. People by and large do not like to be called geniuses. Mathematicians love to be called geniuses. . . . I can tell you that the National Medal of Science is a very political thing.”
What was your experience with the MacArthur Foundation? “After I had been a MacArthur fellow for a few years, I discovered that there were very few women scientists [who had received the award]. I called this to their attention, and they began to remedy it. . . . That was when Adele Simmons was [president]. She had spent a lot of time talking to MacArthur fellows and had been a college president. She got my point right away.”
1984
David Stuart
Occupation: Expert in Mayan hieroglyphics; professor of Mesoamerican art and writing at the University of Texas at Austin
Residence: Austin
Age: 41
Present project: Documenting sculpture and inscriptions from Mayan ruins in Copan, Honduras, and San Bartolo, Guatemala
Amount of award: $128,000
You had made many expeditions to Mayan ruins and had several research papers published by the time you were in high school. What was it like to receive the award at 18, still the youngest age for a new fellow? “For an 18-year-old kid right out of high school, it was kind of a mind-boggling experience. I remember feeling very stressed out because of all the press coverage. … There was literally a line of reporters outside my door at the museum where I was interning that summer.”
What did you do with the money? “I was about to enter college, at Princeton. … My dad didn’t want to touch any of that money for the immediate expenses of college. It was invested. In the long term it allowed me, once I was married and had kids, to buy a house in Boston, where my first academic job was [at Harvard].
Did your celebrity affect the way people treated you? “No one at college knew who I was, thank God. … When I got to Harvard, where I worked for 11 years, I think it did help with the visibility of our program there and with other people in the university, the deans. They were the ones who kind of paid attention to this stuff. It wasn’t so much my colleagues but the higher-ups at universities who would look at the MacArthur and see it as significant.”
Any unusual experiences because of the award? “A student of mine was a MacArthur recipient last year. She called me and asked if I had nominated her, which I hadn’t. It’s funny how it comes around and touches people whom you know.”
1984
Bill Irwin
Occupation: Actor, clown
Residence: Nyack, N.Y.
Age: 56
Present project: Developing a theater piece for the Philadelphia Theatre Company and preparing for a national tour of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
Amount of award: $180,000
What did you do with the money? “It took me a while to acclimate. At first, I tried to finance everything out of these monthly checks. I tried to produce an off-Broadway theater piece and cast people and buy all the drinks and everything. I realized in short order, `Oh, it isn’t quite that much money. I can’t live on it and do all these things out of my own pocket.’… There’s a piece called `Largely New York,’ of which I am very proud, that owes its life to the MacArthur fellowship.”
How has it influenced your work and relations with others? “In some ways, I think it has put people off. Some people have felt, `He is some sort of auteur artist; I won’t call him about this job or that job.’ It insulated me, for better or worse, from the day-to-day, pounding-the-pavement kind of work an actor has to undertake, and it allowed me to be my own creative producer for the period of the fellowship. Then after the fellowship, it was a real readjustment.”
Is the award as important in the theater as, say, a Tony or a good review in The New York Times? “Those honors plus $2 will get you on the subway. The MacArthur fellowship will help you ride the subway. It really is a tangible resource that goes right into people’s work.”
Any downside to the award? “As every fellow will tell you, there are a lot of tedious jokes. `I heard you’re a genius now.’ Or, `Say something smart.’ It’s not unlike being a professional clown, when people find out that’s what you do and they say, `Oh, yeah? Well make me laugh.'”
1985
Jane Richardson
Occupation: Professor and co-head, with husband David, of a biochemistry lab at Duke University
Residence: Durham, N.C.
Age: 65
Present project: Studying three-dimensional structures of proteins and RNA, emphasizing their architecture and folding patterns
Amount of award: $220,000
How did you spend the money? “The major thing was buying a cabin, up at 7,000 feet on the east side of the Sierras, near Mammoth Lakes [in California]. This is our summer home, and I guess we’ll retire here. . . . Getting away, uninterrupted, getting some perspective is really, really valuable.”
How does the reward rank with your other honors? “Absolutely No. 1, by a big margin. What is special about the MacArthur is that it rewards doing something unusual, thinking out of the box. . . . Being elected to the National Academy of Sciences got me tenure at Duke, but I got into the academy because of the MacArthur. . . . [The MacArthur is] a big honor, but it’s also kind of a responsibility. You feel you ought to go on in trying to be creative.”
How did the award affect your life and work? “It definitely gave me a lot more respectability and power. . . . Our chairman says, `You should run a bigger lab and get more grants.’ And you say, `No, I don’t think I want to do that.’ [Laughs] And you can get away with it.”
Were problems caused by your husband not getting the award too? “To some extent. Before this, I was the invisible one. Afterward, he didn’t become invisible but less visible than he should have been. Our work is completely tied up together. . . . I wish there were some way we could have won it together. It hasn’t caused tension between us. I just think it’s not terribly fair.”
1986
James Randi
Occupation: Retired magician, investigator of paranormal phenomena
Residence: Ft. Lauderdale
Age: 78
Present project: An outspoken critic of those who falsely claim supernatural powers, Randi is president of the James Randi Educational Foundation, which offers a $1 million prize to anyone who can provide evidence of the paranormal, occult or supernatural. So far, no winners.
Amount of award: $272,000
Was there any downside to winning? “No, not at all. They called me [to say I had won] just as I was heading out to my dentist. I knew about the MacArthur prize, but I had no idea I’d be a winner. And when I got to my dentist’s, I said, `Well, you can give me the bill now. I think I can pay it.’
What did you do with the money? “For one thing, I was preparing to do a book about Nostradamus, and I had more or less resigned myself to having to do the research right here in the USA, but I immediately took up living in Provence, in France, where Nostradamus hung out at one time.
“And not only that, I was able to actually spend some money investigating some of the faith healers.
“The majority of the money went to pay for lawsuits, however, because as soon as you’ve got money, people start to sue you. [A paranormalist] sued me for millions and he’s never won any case [against me], but it cost me about $150,000, $160,000 just for the lawyers’ fees, because it went on forever and lawyers know how to charge.”
Who do you think should get a MacArthur award in the future? “One of [the people] is a very eccentric magician-type out in Oregon who is a jewel of a person. He’s the most honest man I know [and] has originated a lot of remarkable sensory illusions that he runs around the world lecturing on, and he never makes any money.
“He just doesn’t know how to charge for his lectures.
And what’s his name? “Oh, I’m sorry I can’t tell you. I’m not supposed to reveal the people that I [recommend for the award]. I’m sworn to secrecy.”
1987
Eric Lander
Occupation: Geneticist
Residence: Cambridge, Mass.
Age: 49
Present project: A leader of the Human Genome Project, Lander now serves as director of the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, a research collaboration that brings together hundreds of scientists seeking to apply the new knowledge of genetics to medical challenges such as cancer and diabetes.
Year of award: 1987
Amount of award: $205,000
What’s the most interesting thing to happen to you because of the award? “I have such a checkered past — my PhD is in pure mathematics, I went and taught managerial economics at the Harvard Business School and then got interested in molecular biology and genetics and began moonlighting in research laboratories.
“So you can imagine that I was really quite concerned at that point in my career that, you know, people would think I was somewhat out of my mind, or in any case wouldn’t take me terribly seriously.
“And for me, what the MacArthur did more than anything is it made people take me seriously.
“It gave me confidence, too, because in addition to other people looking at what I was doing and saying, `Is he out of his mind?’ I occasionally wondered that myself.”
What’s it like to be known as the winner of a “genius grant”? “Well, you’ve got to understand: I was on the faculty of Harvard and MIT, and now I’m on the staff of both. Geniuses are a dime a dozen around here. It’s not a label that anybody in my community takes seriously.”
How did you spend your MacArthur money? “Oh, golly. Well, I’ll tell you what I did initially with it. I put it in the bank. At the time I was worrying, would I ever really get a job in biology? And so, simply putting it in the bank and knowing it was there was really very good.
“I think over time I probably eventually spent it on [my] kids and vacations and things like that, but its purpose was to be there as a cushion for the potential that it all wasn’t going to work out.”
1988
Andre Dubus
Occupation: Writer
Dubus, who died in 1999, was the author of 11 books of fiction and essays and the winner of many of literature’s most prestigious prizes, including a Guggenheim grant and a PEN/Malamud Award. His 1996 short-story collection, “Dancing After Hours,” was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Amount of award: $310,000
How did he spend the MacArthur money? A respected but little-known writer at the time he won, Dubus was in severe financial straits as a result of a 1986 roadside accident in which he lost one leg and the use of the other.
The situation was so dire that in 1987 fellow writers, including John Updike, Stephen King and John Irving, had given a series of readings to help raise money for his medical bills.
When Dubus won the MacArthur, he told the Associated Press that he felt “gratitude so extreme I haven’t recovered from it yet” and would invest the money and use it to “pay the people who take care of me until I die.”
How was his career different for having won a MacArthur? The MacArthur money “largely allayed the money woes that [had] dogged him most of his life,” according to a 1988 article in The New York Times Magazine.
He went on to win the PEN/Malamud Award and a $30,000 Rea Award and to write a book that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
How much of a role the MacArthur played in such successes is unclear. Some observers have pointed to the accident, not the award, as the beginning of a new stage in his career, in which the profoundly affected author — he underwent a dozen operations and used a wheelchair for the rest of his life — achieved wider popularity and greater insight.
But the MacArthur was there for him before most of the other awards, at a time when he needed all the help he could get.
1989
Patricia Wright
Occupation: Primatologist, conservationist
Residence: Sound Beach, N.Y.
Age: 62
Present project: A top lemur expert who in 1986 discovered a new species, the golden bamboo lemur, in Madagascar, Wright directs a conservation organization and teaches at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she is an anthropology professor.
Amount of award: $275,000
What’s the most interesting thing to happen to you because of the award? “Do you mean like my littler brother saying, `You’re a genius? What?’ [He] was quite entertained by that.”
What did you say? “Yeah, don’t you believe that? Of course it’s true.”
And he was convinced? “Yeah, right.
“I think it was my mother who was most totally entranced with the idea. My mother’s always worried about the fact that I’d gone into this sort of strange profession of looking at one of the world’s only nocturnal monkeys and working so far way in Madagascar, and she was always worried that perhaps I wouldn’t really be able to survive doing this kind of job, and I was a single mother.”
How did you spend the MacArthur money? “I ordered The New York Times delivered to the door. And I bought an automatic coffeemaker. And then after that, I did a few other little things for myself and my family: My daughter got a horse, which she always wanted, and you know, it’s tough having a mother who studies monkeys. She had to be dragged around to all the rainforests, in the Amazon and also in Madagascar, and so it was really nice being able to do something for her.
“So we did these little things, right at the beginning, which were, you know, almost frivolous — but deeply important to me.
“And pretty much the rest of the money went into working on [conservation] projects in Madagascar. And the joy of the MacArthur is you can put that money exactly where it needs to go, when you need it.”
1990
Michael Moschen
Occupation: Juggler
Residence: Cornwall, Conn.
Age: 51
Present project: Moschen is developing skills, activities and objects he hopes will express his fascination with mathematics and communicate it to others.
Amount of award: $230,000
Was there any downside to winning? “Oh, yeah, sure. Let’s not pretend here. It’s a great thing to be associated with, so I’m not trying to mix up the bad with the good. I’m just saying, `Life changes, and it was a change that was kind of intensive.’
“I’ve put more pressure on myself in certain ways, like are you going to live up to this little feather in your cap or not? But I think in the last few years, I’ve sort of come to terms with it and said, `Look, I just love to do what I do, and if [the MacArthur] helps, then that’s great.'”
What did you do with your MacArthur money? “Basically, I believed that I had the right to have a family. Because [at] that point, I had put everything into the PBS show [`In Motion With Michael Moschen’] that I had done — it was in the can, but it hadn’t been shown yet — and I was dead broke.
How is your career different for having won a MacArthur? “You’d talk to my manager, and he’d say, `Yeah, businesswise it’s helped as far as the possibility of getting work with corporate clients.
“But honestly, I’ve always taken it as being a very personal thing, that I have to figure out how to interpret.
“Soon after I got it, I stopped reading anything about myself, reviews or anything else, not because of it, but because I had some experiences afterwards — the live performance and what [reviewers] wrote — that were so strange, and so different from what I experienced, that I said, `I don’t need this.’
“And that’s, I think, part of the downside that you talked about before: Especially if you’re a public performer, sometimes people want to go at you.
“And that’s fine. The good part is that sometimes other people will come to the show because they’ll think, `Well, he’s supposed to know what he’s doing.'”
1991
Harlan Lane
Occupation: Psychology professor at Northeastern University in Boston
Residence: Boston
Age: 70
Present project: Recently wrote the book “A Deaf Artist in Early America: The Worlds of John Brewster Jr.” (Beacon Press, 2004), a biography of a deaf and mute American folk artist
Amount of award: $325,000
How did you spend the MacArthur money? “I absorbed the money into my general income, but also created a private foundation to share some of that award with the deaf community. I sponsored deaf children from Africa to go to school in the U.S., and I shared some money with organizations for the deaf.”
What’s it like to be known as the winner of a “genius grant”? “It’s nice to be introduced as a genius. But I certainly have no such illusions about myself. It’s also awkward because you feel you are being promoted for something that you’re not. In some ways I felt guilty. I’m quite aware that there are people whose gifts and contributions are more significant than my own.”
How is your career different for having won a MacArthur? “It gave me the ability to travel. My university gave me release time and lightened my teaching load. That gives me the ability to focus more, do more research and write books more readily. I launched an effort to start the first schools for the deaf in Burundi, Africa. I also traveled to Kenya. I traveled to Japan. I don’t think I could have written my latest book without the support of my university, and that support is due in part to winning the MacArthur.”
– – –
Age no longer part of the equation
MacArthur fellows used to receive their five-year grants for amounts pegged to their ages — the grayer the hair, the greener the award.
In theory, the cash was to replace salaries should fellows take off from their jobs, and salaries usually rose with age. But few fellows actually left their posts.
Since 2000, the awards have been a uniform $500,000 over five years, no matter the recipient’s age.
Daniel Socolow, the MacArthur fellows program director, says, “It was clear that the cost of exercising creativity was not age-dependent. When you needed to buy space as an artist or scientific computer equipment or go into new areas where no funding was available, if you were young or old, these were the same costs.”
— Charles Storch
