Us Conductors

Us Conductors by Sean Michaels
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I thought Lev Termin was fascinating. The things he invents seem like science fiction....(where is a terpistone now?). It also seemed incredible that he was responsible for so many different ideas ( motion detectors, metal detectors, wireless bugs). His life was so very interesting too...rich and famous at one point to a prisoner in a gulag the next. A note at the end reminds us it is a fictional account; fiction is necessary, perhaps, to fill in questions that time has erased (why did he suddenly leave America? How involved was he in spying?, etc.) But then Michaels admits to some of the fiction he added, like that Termin knew Kung fu, for example, and I can't help but wonder why he did that. Termin was already remarkable, why add complete fabrication? It throws other facts not found in Wikipedia in doubt (did he improve efficiency at the gulag?, etc.) and short of reading an actual biography, which I'm not inclined to do, I won't know (urgh!). Also, the love story between Termin and Clara seemed more one sided than a truly inspirational love story would be. But, Termin is incredibly fascinating and Michaels writes in sparse, factual prose that lets the first man shine forth.

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In memory everything seems to happen to music. —TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, The Glass Menagerie

It was not that I was careless in my calculations; it was that I was seeking the wrong sum.

You can become a dead man before you know what you are.

At night the barracks filled up with groans, as though the sleeping zeks’ souls were being sucked from their jaws.