First part of the interview, by Kelly Weinersmith about my new book, for the American Society of Parasitologists newsletter.

 

Dr. John Janovy Jr.

Interview by Kelly Weinersmith

“Yes, I am completely convinced that the allure of parasitology is closely related to our ability to envision ourselves infected. No one can prove what happens to a person's mind as a result of imagined parasitic worms, although it’s easy to predict what happens when that same mind is infected with certain ideas."

- John Janovy Jr,

Dr. John Janovy Jr is a former ASP President, co-author of textbook from which many of us first learned about parasites (Foundations of Parasitology available for free download on the American Society of Parasitologists web site - https://www.amsocparasit.org/), an incredible parasitologist, and a prolific author of both fiction and non-fiction. John’s new book is Life Lessons from a Parasite: What Tapeworms, Flukes, Lice, and Roundworms Can Teach Us About Humanity’s Most Difficult Problems. John applies the lessons he has learned through decades spent studying the natural world to problems like immigration, the differences between kinds and individuals, problem-solving, what happens when people get “infected” with parasitic ideas, and much more.

Life Lessons with Parasites is both fun and insightful. It includes some delightful lines that made me chuckle out loud, such as this one: “The first rule of fine dining is to never invite a parasitologist to dinner.” I had the opportunity to interview John about Life Lessons from a Parasite, and his career as an author:

KW: What motivated you to write Life Lessons from a Parasite? Was there a particular event that motivated you to write this book, or has the idea been percolating for awhile?

JJ: This book probably started with a lunch conversation maybe four years ago. with a couple of retired biologist colleagues, about our careers. That's when I started reflecting on what I'd learned from parasites, in addition to what I'd learned about them. But from watching students develop as scientists over the past fifty years, it has always been obvious that they were acquiring a repertoire of transferrable skills and ideas that they would not have had if they'd never started doing research on parasites. It's also seemed like parasites were far more effective as teachers than were free-living forms, because parasite lives can be so complex. So, I just decided to make that experience the focus of my next big non-fiction project.

KW: When you and I see a parasite, we see something complex and beautiful. This is, of course, not how much of the general population see parasites. But rather than writing something easy like Life Lessons from Cuddly Panda Bears or Life Lessons from Snuggly Puppies, you took on parasites. What was your strategy for making parasites more relatable and likable for a general audience in Life Lessons from Parasites?

JJ: I tried to personalize the parasitology experience in an educational way, using examples of people who were focused on a problem, or a kind of puzzle, that intrigued them to the point of making them devote time, resources, and a significant part of their lives to the solution. I assumed readers would be hooked by the mystery and someone‘s attempt to solve it, so would get past the fact that I was writing about parasites. The first few chapters are really about humans studying nature and what happens when those humans decide to study nature, even though, or maybe especially because, that part of nature is uncooperative and resistant to discovery. In other words, I tried to tell stories of humans who were fascinated by these mysterious organisms. This book is really about curiosity as a driving force in human behavior and parasites are the vehicle.

KW: Which of the books that you’ve written was hardest to write, and why?

JJ: My chapters of Foundations of Parasitology were by far the most difficult writing assignment of my whole career. Each of those five editions that I contributed to involved two years of almost full-time work, and a student research/editorial assistant (usually recruited from my BIOS 101 classes). I screened maybe 20,000 abstracts for each edition, read maybe 5,000 papers, and extracted information from about a thousand of those papers, information that would end up sometimes as a single sentence. The textbook user was the driving force in these revisions, a very different audience than reads other kinds of literature. It was always a focus on what some 19~ or 20-year old college student needed to learn, rather than what I personally wanted to write or what some airport shopper wanted to read. But the end products were always very satisfying!

KW: I tried my hand at fiction once, and failed miserably. Writing fiction is a very different skill than writing non-fiction! How does the process of writing fiction and non-fiction differ for you? 

JJ: I’m not really sure it differs all that much for me, although I’m obviously not a best-selling fiction writer! In my fiction pieces, I start with the ending, then start tracing what has to happen to bring this thing to closure. I’m not a good story-teller and have always been far more interested in animals than in people, so that’s a problem with my fiction. All the fiction I’ve written has more to do with events and ideas than with interpersonal relationships, and the characters are caught up in situations and dragged along rather than battling one another or pursuing romance. The only one of my fiction pieces that has what you might call a narrative arc is Tuskers, a project that my agent tried very hard to sell, going through 22 rejections, before turning it back to me to do whatever I wanted with it. Our ESPN daughter demanded that it be self-published, so I did it. It’s about the OU vs. Nebraska football game in 2090 and the Nebraska mascot is a resurrected live woolly mammoth.