I still mourn the death of E.
L. Doctorow some 16 months ago. I
figured the best medicine was a doss of his wonderful novels. What I most admire about Doctorow is the wide
variety of subjects he tackles. In this
work, the title character, Andrew, is a cognitive scientist teaching at a
university. As far as I know Andrew’s Brain is his fifteenth, and
most likely, his last work. It is also
one of his most engrossing and interesting novels.
From the first page,
I had an unusual sense of bewilderment.
The lack of quote marks and “he saids” got me thinking, searching my
brain to untangle the mystery. As I
tunneled further into the book, I thought he was talking to a therapist, then,
I thought, maybe he chats with himself, and finally, was he talking to his own
brain? Andrew was fond of “thought
experiments” much like Einstein, Galileo, and Newton. This indicates to me Andrew is something of a
genius. Early in the first chapter, he poses
a thought experiment which disturbed his students. Doctorow wrote, “I asked this question: How
can I think about my brain when it’s my brain doing the thinking? So is this brain pretending to be me thinking
about it?” (34). Andrew “then picked up [his] books and walked
out of the room” (35). This stopped me
as though I had run into a brick wall. I
read the passage again and spent the next 30 minutes trapped in a Möbius loop
of understanding. Excellent stretching
and strengthening for my brain muscle!
Another interesting
experiment is about a quarter of the way through the novel. Doctorow wrote, “I was just thinking. Suppose there was a computer network more
powerful than anything we could imagine. // What’s this? // never mind a
network, just one awesome computer, say.
And because it was what it was, suppose it had the power to record and
store the acts and thoughts and feelings of every living person on earth once
around per millisecond of time. I mean,
as if all of existence was data for this computer – as if it was a storehouse
of all the deeds ever done, the thoughts ever though, the feelings ever
felt. And since the human brain contains
memories, this computer would record these as well, and so be going back in
time through the past even as it went forward with the present” (44-45). I am not sure if I should make myself an
aluminum hat or worry about the NSA – or both!
Andrew falls in love
with a young woman, Briony. She takes
him to meet her parents. Andrew
describes the event to whoever is listening.
He writes, “Sounds as if you were having a good time. // Well, I saw how
Briony loved her parents’ routine, laughing and clapping for something she must
have seen a hundred times. Watching her
lifted me into a comparable state of happiness.
As if it had arced brain to brain.
This was a pure, unreflective, unselfconscious emotion. It had taken me by surprise and was almost
too much to bear – happiness. I felt it
as something expressed from my heart and squeezing out my eyes. And I think as we all laughed and applauded
at the end of the soft-shoe number I may have sobbed with joy. And I was made fearless in the in that
feeling, it was not tainted by anxiety” (77).
Maybe this is how
true love can be identified – two brains arcing across each other, flooding
the brain with joy and happiness, while relieving stress and anxiety. Andrew’s
Brain, by E.L. Doctorow is one of the best novels I have read in 2016. Not familiar with Doctorow? No problem.
Of ten of his fifteen novels, only one slid from 5 stars to four. This novel is decidedly 5 stars.
--Chiron, 11/23/16
No comments:
Post a Comment