Disappearing Spoon Chapter Summary

The Disappearing Spoon is a book of tales of madness, love and the history of the world from the periodic table of the elements. Although all the anecdotes that are present in this book are related to science and the periodic table, his anecdotes prove key roles that the elements played in people’s lives and this world. Thus, evoking greater understandings of elements in a more entertaining way. The Disappearing Spoon is written by an author named Sam Kean who studied physics and english in his college. He wrote several science novels and The Disappearing Spoon is the one that I read among his novels. To be exact, I only read the introduction, chapter one and chapter fourteen; stories of the artistic elements. Among other chapters of this book, chapter fourteen distinctively explains how the table of elements have impacted the lives, works, and inventions of famous

artists, such as Goethe.
Chapter fourteen narrates stories about three great writers. The chapter starts with the story of a great writer named Goethe. Goethe wrote novels that promoted his scientific ideas such as Faust. Goethe’s patroned a scientist named Dobereiner who discovered that the weight of the middle element is half way between its chemical cousins and this helped later scientists to organize elements in the periodic table. There was another writer named Mark Twain who was fascinated by scientific discoveries. Mark Twain put interesting scientific discoveries into his stories. Mark Twain favored the typewriter over the fountain pen, which was also influenced by chemistry, an element called ruthenium. At first, it used gold for it’s nib but because of its deformation caused by friction on paper gold, it was replaced by osmiridium, which was too expensive. Then it was replaced by ruthenium, the best one. Another writer named Robert Lowell who was a genius, but a madman was suffering from a chemical imbalance called ‘pathological enthusiasm’, which meant that his body and brain system ran independent of the sun.
In this chapter, Sam Kean possesses an idea that chemistry affects art.

The overall organization of the anecdotes in this chapter convinces the readers and supports Kean’s idea. The anecdote about Goethe proves Kean’s point by explaining how Goethe’s works were influenced by his interest in chemistry. Scientific ideas that were possessed in Goethe’s works such as the Elective Affinities, “He also laded his novel Elective Affinities with spurious idea that marriages work like chemical reactions” (240), and the Faust, “...contains hoary speculation on alchemy and, worse, a bootless socratic dialogue between “Neptunists” and “Plutonists”.” (241), proves how chemistry impacted Goethe’s works. Sam Kean strengthens this idea by mentioning another writer named Mark Twain whose works were also influenced by chemistry. Mark Twain’s Sold to Satan uses a radioactive element, radium as composition of satan’s body. Thus, giving interesting characteristics to the satan that are characteristics of radium, “Radium’s radioactivity charges the air around it electrically, so Satan glows a luminescent green…”

(249).
Sam Kean communicates his message and idea using many different rhetorical strategies and methods. He definitely uses narration to tell different anecdotes and also defines or explains scientific terms or ideas to better the reader’s understanding of chemistry. For example, Sam Kean describes Neptunists’ belief in his writing, “Neptunists like Goethe thought rocks precipitated from minerals in the ocean…” (241). Sam Kean talks about how taking lithium to aid his chemical imbalance caused Robert Lowell to lose his artistic ability, “There’s always been debate, though, about whether their work suffers after their “cure,” after they’ve lost access to that part of the psyche most of us never glimpse.” (254). The rhetorical devices that Sam Kean uses such as description, definition and cause and effect make it easier for the readers to follow along and absorb more information from his writing.
As a dreaming-to-be-an-artist, I always wondered why such great artists had to experience many tragedies in their lives and come to gloomy ends of their lives. I always wished that they could live their lives longer and happier. Then there would be even greater legacies of those artists, and if I’m lucky enough I would be able to meet some of them in real life. Now learning that both their genius and madness comes from a chemical imbalance, I wonder if it would be better to have a happier life and be a ordinary person or to be a genius with great depressions. I really enjoyed reading this chapter because I learned many interesting information about both art and chemistry in this chapter. Thus, I highly recommend this book to other high school students who are interested in art and chemistry. Almost every student in this world will be surprised reading this book to know these facts about chemistry and how it is connected to everything in this world including art. However, it would be the best idea to read this book, especially this chapter if you are not interested in chemistry nor in art. It would be boring to try to understand scientific ideas or anecdotes in this chapter without being interested in it.