E.L. Doctorow likes to do things the hard way, said Manuel Roig-Franzia in The Washington Post. While he’s working, the 83-year-old author of Ragtime and Billy Bathgate even welcomes the kinds of distractions that give other writers fits. “The important thing is to not be too comfortable,” he says. “Noise in the street? That’s good. The computer goes down? All these things are good. It has to be a little bit of a struggle.” With his latest novel, he’s also ditched the comforts of straightforward storytelling. Andrew’s Brain unfolds as a time-warping conversation between a troubled neuroscientist and a frequently confused interrogator. “I do think this book, more than most, judges its readers,” Doctorow says. “If someone is looking for ordinary formulaic fiction, this is not it.”
Andrew’s Brain’s themes are challenging too, said David Wolf in The Observer (U.K.). Ever since he studied philosophy as a Kenyon College undergraduate, Doctorow has been fascinated with questions about cognition that materialists like Andrew can’t answer. Neuroscientists, Doctorow says, still can’t explain “how the brain becomes the mind”—how it generates a sense of individual consciousness. He, for one, hopes that the riddle is never solved and that scientists never manage to replicate human consciousness in a computer. “If that ever happens,” he says, “it’s the end of the mythic world that we’ve lived in since the Bronze Age, with all the stories we’ve told ourselves about what human life is. That could be as much of a disaster as an asteroid hitting the planet.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
Post Office's Capture software to be reviewed over 'glitches'Speed Read Solicitor representing accused postmasters says flaws in the IT system follow 'very similar pattern' to Horizon
-
How would we know if World War Three had started?Today's Big Question Conflicts in Ukraine, Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific mean the 'spark' that could ignite all-out war 'already exists'
-
Death Cafe: where people talk mortality over tea and cakeWhy everyone's talking about The meet-ups are intended to offer a judgement-free and respectful space to discuss the end of life
-
Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
-
Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
-
The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
-
Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
-
Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
-
Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
-
You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
-
Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”