[DiogenesKynikos]

> That's the real strong vibe I get from Surely You're Joking. He's the kind of person who wants to be seen as someone who gets up to wacky hijinks, to be seen as "cool," and he specifically interprets "cool" in a way that's misogynistic even at a time (when he was dictating the stories that led to Surely You're Joking) when misogyny was starting to become a professional hindrance.

In my experience, everyone who says this is talking about exactly one chapter in Surely You're Joking, but they don't appear to actually have paid close attention to the story. It's a story that Feynman recounts about trying to pick up girls when he was younger. He was advised by an older, "cooler" man to be mean. Feynman tries it and it works, but he feels bad about it and says that he never did it again. People calling Feynman a misogynist for this story seem to have just skipped the end of the chapter.

[jcranmer]

It's been decades since I read Surely You're Joking, and I've completely forgotten about that chapter. It plays no part in my conscious recollection of the book.

The episode that really stuck in my mind was the episode about his competition with the abacus-user, who was better at math, which essentially ends with him giving up trying to explain how he could mental math a cube root faster, because the abacus-user was just someone who couldn't understand a math explanation.

[addled]

I remembered enjoying the book, so having not read it in a long time, I tried sharing Surely You're Joking with my kids at bedtime.

That chapter wasn’t the only thing I ended up skipping or heavily editing.

* Picking a room at Los Alamos with a window facing the women’s housing, but being disappointed that a tree or something blocked his view. (Wasn’t he also married at this point?)

* Starting a new Uni faculty position and hanging out at student dances, dismayed that girls would stop chatting & dancing with him when they learned he was a prof and not a fellow student.

* Hanging out at strip clubs to practice his drawing skills.

* Considering a textbook sales rep’s offer to help him find “trouble” in Vegas.

So maybe that one chapter turns around some at the end, but it’s not the only cringe-worthy moment in the book, and I can see why some people may have an overall negative opinion.

If I were going to do this with my kids now that they are teens, I wouldn’t filter as much and use the more questionable events as points of discussion.