Lessons in Chemistry

Presentation for the Women’s University Club

January 11, 2023

What I loved about this book

Lessons in Chemistry is new fiction, contemporary literature published in 2022. I’ve read it twice and was thrilled by it both times. It made several lists for good reading in 2022 and is currently high on best sellers lists. I think the reasons why include: The story is vibrant, it moves quickly, it is funny, sad, occasionally outrageous and has a big cast of characters that are a mix of intelligent, ignorant, idiots, criminals, well meaning, clueless, and frightening but all add something essential to the plot. The writing style is bright, breezy, clear contemporary style although the story is a dark mid century modern tale of women with no rights.

We follow Elizabeth Zott in her quest to be accepted in the chemistry lab – and as an equal – despite the fact in the 1950s, when most of this story takes place, there weren’t any female role models in the chemistry lab. I think equality in the workplace speaks to women of all ages, everywhere, because that fight isn’t over yet.

Cooking, which some of you may know is a joy to me, is an important subject in the story. Elizabeth Zott becomes a popular television host of a daily show “Supper at Six” about how to cook a meal that matters and focuses on the chemistry of cooking. She explains with the language of chemistry how foods react to heat and ingredients and why recipes go wrong. Elizabeth is popular because she empowers the audience to believe in themselves and their ability to become anything they would like to be.

Lessons in Chemistry is a love story. Elizabeth Zott finds and loses the love of her life. Calvin Evans is a great guy worthy of her affection and dedication. He is a famous chemist, appears on the cover of magazines and has been nominated for several Nobel prizes.

This story also features a very smart dog named, Six Thirty, who followed Elizabeth home one day. Calvin saw them approaching through the window. Calvin greets them at the front door of their house saying, “Who’s your friend?” Elizabeth says it’s 6:30 and that became his name. He assists Elizabeth in the lab and around the house. He keeps an eye on everything and is an important character in the action.

The Author Bonnie Garmus

The back flap of the book jacket features three sentences about the author, possibly the shortest bio I can remember, but absolutely qualifies her to create this story. The first sentence says Ms. Garmus had a career as a copywriter and creative director in technology, medicine and education. I can guess from my experience as a writer for businesses that she wrote a lot of fairly dry brochures and marketing materials edited by someone in the legal department to become even drier. As technology in the office place increased, she probably worked with slide shows, multimedia sales materials and online content about the lofty goals and products for sale by the organizations she worked for. After years of creating content she became the director because she had managed to outlast the man who had the job. In my humble opinion, she knows how to sit in the conference room for hours with good posture, take notes and offer suggestions about how the goal might be accomplished without too much liability or lawsuits. I read only one article about her and her debut novel before I knew I was giving this presentation. I didn’t want to read any more and be influenced by other opinions. She gave advice to writers that stunned me, to never disagree with the publisher about the book jacket illustration or other things they lack expertise in. That advice is a good example of a corporate survivor! Her publisher will love her if she keeps this attitude. Other authors will hate her for it.

You can tell Ms. Garmus is well versed in the glass ceiling for career women, office politics and how to make coffee that provide amusing and infuriating examples that Elizabeth Zott experiences at the master of chemistry program at UCLA and at the Hastings Research Institute. I am thrilled for her to have a giant success with her first novel that uses her work experience. Since it takes place mostly in the 1950s and early 1960s at a fictional lab, and she’s not a chemist, no one can sue her for slander.

In the second sentence it says she is a rower and an open water swimmer. There’s a lot of rowing in Lessons in Chemistry and it became a metaphor for character to me, as in backbone, morals and values. Calvin is a elite full-scholarship to Cambridge rower who continues his daily practice at 5 AM. He teaches Elizabeth and insists she row with his 8-man boat crew. They are not excited about this. Rowing is hard, painful and takes place when it’s still dark and cold outside. Sissies don’t row. Open water swimming is not mentioned in the book but I think it’s just as challenging as rowing and much more dangerous. Consider sharks for one hazard. Ms. Garmus is one tough woman.

In the third sentence, two amazing daughters are mentioned which means she did all that rearing while working. Now we all know exactly how hard core our author is and her heroine Elizabeth Zott is made of the same metal.

Equal Work for Equal Pay

Equality between the sexes is the base line issue of Lessons in Chemistry. I imagine there are a few of you here today that have heard how confining the 1950s were for women with any thoughts beyond being a good wife and mother. Women in business and academia were secretaries then. Honestly, I don’t think too much had changed by the 1970s and 80s when I was a young woman who wanted to work and be independent, except that women were given lip service about careers. There were then “token” women in Marketing and Human Resources pointed out as examples of how progressive the work place was to have some women in high places, although those positions were never high enough to have the power to change things.

Did any of you notice in Barbara Walter’s obituaries that the year 1971 was mentioned as the year she finally got a good on camera job with NBC where she had been toiling away for ten years, researching and writing, developing stories. Frank McGee was the host and stipulated she was not allowed to ask a question of the interviewee until he had asked three questions. When she moved to ABC to be co-anchor with Harry Reasoner, he thought her being hired was a gimmick. She was quoted as saying, “Harry Reasoner was just awful to me on camera and off.” Barbara Walters solved this male hierarchy by going out and finding people to interview by herself away from the studio where she could manage the process. Her interview style ultimately made her career and paved the way for the next generation such as Diane Sawyer, Connie Chung, Jane Pauley and Katie Couric.

In 1951 Elizabeth Zott is dismayed that she earns the salary of a lab assistant at Hastings, about half of what a chemist would make, even though she is a chemist with a master’s degree. In 1961 she is dismayed as the star of a daily 30-minute show to learn she makes much less than the sports announcer who reads scores for a few minutes every day.

Now that we live in 2023 women make up almost half the work force. Fortune Magazine reported in May that forty-four women are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. That’s about eight % of the biggest companies with a woman in charge. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report in October, the highest paid men with advanced degrees made $4527 per week and the women $3165 or about 30% less. Without using any educational filter, the women’s to men’s earnings ratio was 83.4. However to my astonishment, that varied by race and ethnicity. “White women earned 83.1%, black women 90%, Asian women 71.1% and Hispanic 86.1. I have no idea what causes the disparity among race and ethnicity and it wasn’t mentioned. My take away on the salary gap of today is only that if you start out 20% less than the fellow sitting next to you doing the same job, that’s a significant amount of lost dollars, especially if you take the long view that a career might last 30 years.

Freedom from Sexual Harassment

In the last 20 years a few women have decided they are mad as the dickens and aren’t going to take any more sexual harassment on the job. They are filing law suits against rich and famous men and a few of those men who were egregious about demanding and forcing sex are going to court and jail. In 1950 Elizabeth Zott defends herself against her faculty advisor, Dr. Meyer, raping her in the lab by stabbing him with her very sharp number 2 pencil which caused internal injuries. The security officer who investigated ignored her disheveled clothes and bruised face and told her she must make a statement of remorse for injuring the man. She didn’t. She got thrown out of UCLA, days before receiving her master’s degree in chemistry and beginning her PhD. That was grim. Although it doesn’t sound humorous, there is a very funny scene later where the big boss of the tv station is trying to make her cry and start using a canned soup on her program she believes is toxic. When all his efforts fail, he unzips his trousers to show her he intends the ultimate persuasion. Elizabeth calmly gets her freshly sharpened 14” chef’s knife out of her bag and he collapses at the sight of it with a massive heart attack which ends the discussion and makes way for someone more intelligent to take over his job. I can’t wait to see this scene in the movie! I’m sure there will be a movie even though I haven’t heard anything about it.

It's a Love Story

Elizabeth Zott fell in love with Calvin Evans, a genius chemist, who worked at Hastings Research Institute. She always described it as “they collided.” There was nothing ordinary about the meet cute where she takes beakers from his lab because she doesn’t have enough in her lab and he has funding for anything he wants. Calvin, incorrectly assuming she is a secretary, tells her to send her boss to talk to him. When they finally have the first kiss it “cemented a permanent bond that even chemistry could not explain.” “They were more than friends, more than confidants, more than allies, and more than lovers.” Elizabeth says, “I fell in love with Calvin because he was intelligent and kind, but also because he was the very first man to take me seriously. Imagine if all men took women seriously. Education would change. The workforce would revolutionize. Marriage counselors would go out of business.”

In 1952 she moved into his house which was shocking to their world. Even though she loved him completely, she refused to marry him because she didn’t want to become Mrs. Calvin Evans and no longer be Elizabeth Zott. No one would believe her research was her own if she changed her name.

The Backgrounds of Elizabeth Zott and Calvin Evans that Led to Science

Elizabeth had an unusual childhood. Her father was a religious charlatan who preached doomsday–unless you purchased his amulets and special rites. Her mother made the amulets. They did well enough to buy a new Cadillac every year, but they did have to move a lot as Armageddon didn’t ever occur when he predicted. He sparked an early interest in Elizabeth about chemistry. He was a specialist in spontaneous combustion which he used when it appeared his sermon wasn’t being effective. A burst of flame as a sign from god usually converted doubters. He used pistachio nuts for that trick. Her older brother taught her how to read. They spent their days together in the library instead of school as they moved so much. Being a scientist was her goal as a kid. Chemistry was exciting to her from the beginning. She entered the graduate program in chemistry at UCLA by self-study. She never attended undergraduate school.

Calvin also had an unusual childhood. He grew up in a Catholic orphanage in Sioux City, Iowa which if asked about he would never say more than, “It was rough.” You learn more about how rough it was from the archbishop who manages the orphanage and complains steadily about the difficulties of his life, many caused by Calvin Evans. The priest teachers hated his questions. The librarian complained about Calvin complaining there weren’t enough books and the science books were always missing pages. What was on those pages? There was always a priest with a blackeye because Calvin didn’t want his love. Scheming for a continuous stream of new money, the archbishop told a variety of lies to a man who came looking for Calvin, finally convincing him that Calvin was dead but establishing a memorial fund would be the perfect way to remember him annually. The man also funded the special interests of rowing and science but. Calvin reads all the science books brought by the mystery man and embraces the complexity of chemistry “that twisted and turned into sometimes heartless ways. Chemistry showed him how to live with being discarded by his father. Calvin loves evidence-based chemistry for its honesty.

Calvin endured his horrible years at the orphanage by telling himself, “Every day was new…anything could happen.”

The Chemistry Lab as a Setting

I couldn’t recall another book I’ve read that was set in the industry of chemistry. I learned there is a genre called Lablit that defines itself as scientists working in a lab or in the field that is realistic, not science fiction, although there is a subset of that called hybrid, meshing two categories. Lablit includes, novels, films, plays and TV. I was stunned to see authors I knew on the list: Sinclair Lewis (Arrowsmith), Jeanette Winterson (Gut Symmetries), Barbara Kingsolver (Prodigal Summer), Allegra Goodman (Intuition), A.S. Byatt (A Whistling woman) and Isaac Asimov (A Whiff of Death).

I had my memory refreshed with the TV series CSI, Wormwood and The Big Bang theory and films like Contact, Dante’s Peak, Deep Impact and The Martian. In the hybrid category were books by Michael Crichton I had enjoyed that became films like Jurassic Park and the Andromeda Strain. Science is a great setting for a story.

The Hastings Research Institute where Elizabeth and Calvin work is competitive work environment with money and careers at stake. Stealing research for publication seems very common. Their colleagues are jealous and hate them being happy together. They think it’s all unfair. They think Calvin’s success is because he was born brilliant. Elizabeth got him because she was born beautiful and Calvin will do research work for her.

The Most Important Characters

Harriet Sloane lives across the street from Elizabeth and has a good view into her living room. Harriet has a miserable long-term marriage getting worse due to her insufferable husband being newly retired. She inserts herself into Elizabeth’s life when she observes the new baby is creating the usual chaos that accompanies infants and becomes the chief babysitter, confidante and helper. Harriet tells Elizabeth at their first meeting to take a moment for herself every day. “A moment where you are your own priority. Just you. Not your baby, not your work, …not your filthy house, not anything. …reconnect with it at that moment…then recommit.” That tip becomes a powerful part of Elizabeth’s new job teaching chemistry on TV. I doubt Harriet ever told Elizabeth she had read that in a magazine but had never done it herself.

Madeline Zott - With parents as smart as Elizabeth and Calvin, Elizabeth’s honest teaching style, it won’t surprise you that Madeline could read at age three. Madeline reads science magazines and when it was suggested she make mud pies, she drew 3.14159 in the mud with a stick. She had read most of Dickens by age five in 1961 and was then in the first grade. Elizabeth was thirty years old in 1961 and Supper at Six was wildly popular and syndicated nationally. Madeline already knows the world doesn’t appreciate early readers so she pretends illiteracy in school. When Elizabeth explains to her first grader that illegitimate means her parents weren’t married, Madeline says, “I know what it means I just don’t know why it’s a big deal.” Elizabeth puts notes in her lunchbox each day with messages such as, “It’s not your imagination. Most people are awful. Play sports at recess but do not automatically let the boys win.” Madeline carefully removes all the messages before she goes to school and stores them in a shoe box in her closet. She and Elizabeth are bound to each other emotionally, intellectually and learn from each other.

Walter Pine is Elizabeth’s manager at the tv station. After she made a huge impression on him confronting him about his daughter eating her daughter’s lunch at kindergarten he hired her to save his 4:30 afternoon programming slot. He knew the camera would love her and her confidence. She doesn’t agree with him about anything to do with the show. She refused the tight dress and insisted on wearing her white lab coat. She refused to read the cue cards and gave away to the studio audience all the knickknacks that decorated the Supper at Six set. Elizabeth won’t smile or act sexy. She is a serious scientist. On the first day with a live audience he hopes he's having a stroke or heart attack and will soon be dead when she ad libs, “Cooking is chemistry. And chemistry is life. Your ability to change everything–including yourself–starts here.” She explains each dish in scientific terms. Acetic acid CH3 COOH everyone soon learns is vinegar. One example of show: “It’s steak night, which means we’ll be exploring the chemical composition of meat, specifically focusing on the difference between bound water and free water because…meat is about seventy-two % water…Why is water important? Because it’s the most common molecule in our bodies: sixty % of our composition. While our bodies can go without food for up to three weeks, without water, we’re dead in three days. Four days max.”

Elizabeth closes the first show with more unscripted dialogue, “Children, set the table. Your mother needs a moment to herself.” In the manager department, Walter is the best Elizabeth ever had. He’s a little spineless and neurotic but intelligent and polite. They become friends.

Six Thirty is a big stray dog who follows Elizabeth home shortly after Calvin suggests they get a dog so there will be three in their family. Family is very important to Calvin. They sense the dog’s intelligence and ability to learn. Elizabeth reads to him every day, fiction and non-fiction and works on increasing his vocabulary. She doesn’t know that in his previous job he was a bomb sniffing dog who flunked out of the marines because he always went the opposite way of where the bombs were hidden as he didn’t like the smell of explosives or the idea of being blown up. He communicates well and holds himself responsible for the safety of Elizabeth, Calvin and Madeline. He chooses the name Madeline from Proust’s book. He wears goggles and assists Elizabeth in experiments. He escorts Madeline home from school every day. They watch Supper at Six together every afternoon with Harriet. Sensing trouble in the studio audience Six Thirty cleverly inserts himself into the Supper at Six production and becomes a popular addition to the show. I love an author who convinces her editor to understand how important the dog is to the action in the story. Some dog lovers will tell you dogs know everything and are only limited by their ability to communicate. Six thirty does his best to open the book to the correct page or put the lost object in a lap. He reads people quickly and indicates the good ones and the bad ones. As smart as she is, Elizabeth needs Six Thirty to help her in so many ways.

The Obstacles–the Villains

Most stories have an obstacle, a challenge, or a villain. In Lessons in Chemistry there are a few but I’ll mention the worst three villains. Elizabeth’s faculty advisor at UCLA, Dr. Meyers, and her manager at Hasting Research Institute, Dr. Donati, are equally criminal in treating her as a third-class citizen, stealing her research to publish as their own, telling all sorts of lies about her and sexual harassment and assault. The archbishop of the orphanage where Calvin grows up has a cruel impact on Calvin’s life, keeping him many years too long because he makes money on him. He is an accomplished liar, solicits money through deceit and ignores the behavior of the priests who are awful teachers and abusers of the boys.

In Closing

 Now you know the cast of characters, the challenges and the context for the story. Elizabeth’s determination to succeed by hard work without compromising her values is impressive and there are so many days when it seems impossible.

You could never guess the ending of the story and I’m not telling you either. You’ll have to read and ride the rollercoaster of Elizabeth Zott’s career in chemistry, motherhood and finally making friends, which she had always found impossible. I’m so glad to be acquainted with Elizabeth Zott. She’s my friend now. She’s going to inspire many women to become their dreams.

Thank You

It has been a pleasure talking to you today about all these things I care about. When I asked, “Does anyone think Elizabeth Zott’s experiences in the workplace were unrealistic?” The audience spontaneously shook their heads no in unison. When I asked, “What do you think about the way she handled her bad bosses?” They all nodded affirmatively! The answer to “When do you think the workplace became more fair to women?” was mixed between not yet, recently and it’s a little better. The finale was the Trustee of Book Clubs, Irene Peters, walked around the audience with a handheld microphone and gave it to anyone who wanted to say something. It was moving and memorable to hear most say the year they graduated from college with what degree and their personal experience afterwards. I had tears in my eyes after hearing, “I graduated in 1961 with a degree in math and physics. I was hired by NASA to work on trajectories…”