Every since I was an intern at Bucky's office in Carbondale in 1970, I have been reading everything I could find by him or about him. I have always been a bit dissatisfied with the biographies, even with Sieden's, and I have toyed with the idea of writing a book about him when I retire.
The attached file is an abstract of ideas and sources for that book. I share it seeking reactions, corrections, and maybe new sources of information and insight.
The atraction and intrigue in Bucky's life for me lie in three areas:
1. the intellectual history, the evolution of his ideas from initial concepts across decades of elaboration and refinement
2. the core concept of God and the religious inspiration in and from his work
3. his emotional life, and the pain and struggle behind the long personal commitment, and how he and Anne and his family coped with these challenges.
These are not public concerns, and a book that explored them would be personal, perhaps should even be private.
Bucky started out as a personal and ehtical inspriation to me. Some of his poems are the best description of God in universe that I've found. When I read some of the essays in Zung's book and Gerber's Wholeness, I realized again that the ideas still engage me deeply.
There are several critical incidents that were deeply emotional watersheds in Bucky's life; some became motifs in his writing, and others remain hidden. The biggest mystery is Anne's life, her diary, her half of the relationship.
Can anyone point me to a more personal exploration of how Bucky's ideas affected a life, or the personal side of how he, his family, or his colleagures coped with the evolution of his ideas?
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| BuckyBook_LCoen.doc | 634 KB |
I appreciate it. (Sorry it took me so long to notice your reply)
I agree about hagiography. I was originally hooked on Fuler's ideas after college by Kenner's early biography, but have felt that serious criticism (in literary or philosophical sense) has been rare through the years.
Your short bio was new to me. The periodical cites are useful. Your posts and pages are always intelligent, humane and balanced, grounded in other disciplines that amplify the ideas; I value them highly.
I very much want to spend several days at Stanford reading in the archive. I'd also love to talk to you someday. I am a year or two away from retirement from IBM and beginning a second career as a high school physics teacher, so we'd have a lot to talk about.
If you see this, here are two questions perhaps you could answer;
Do you think Ed would mind if I contacted him? He lives nearby (I live in DC suburbs), but I have never talked to him
Do they have the Fuller family diaries at Stanford? Do they have Anne's?
Again, thanks.
Leigh H. Coen
lcoen@cox.net
This could be an interesting book, especially if you were to get access to more of the stuff at Stanford. Applewhite was always trying to steer us away from "hagiography" ("Bucky the saint") and focus us on the ways in which Fuller's thinking anticipated scientific discoveries e.g. buckyballs or the importance of five-fold symmetry more generally.
And speaking of Applewhite, prominently flagged as a CIA guy (per Cosmic Fishing, back cover of Syn2 etc.), you might want to investigate Fuller's connections to the intelligence community over the years, starting with Forbes Magazine perhaps.
In my radio interview out of Chicago, you'll hear me identify him as a cold warrior, but with a positive spin:
http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2005/02/adventures-in-radio-land-part-2.html
(real audio segments at bottom).
The Stanford Archive might not have enough to answer your questions in this case though.
In any case, there's lots to explore.
You've no doubt seen my short bio of the guy (Ed liked it):
http://www.grunch.net/synergetics/bio.html
Kirby