∎ Download Andrew Brain A Novel EL Doctorow 9781400068814 Books

Andrew Brain A Novel EL Doctorow 9781400068814 Books

Download As PDF : Andrew Brain A Novel EL Doctorow 9781400068814 Books

Andrew Brain A Novel EL Doctorow 9781400068814 Books

Not the best thing he ever wrote that Ive read. It suffered a bit from creepy old man writer syndrome where old men authors who miss the good old days where they could pick up young attractive girls write unilkely relationships between older males and younger women. On another note, pardon the pun "Andrew's Brain" was cerebral.


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Andrew Brain A Novel EL Doctorow 9781400068814 Books Reviews

Andrew, the narrator of ANDREW'S BRAIN, was a party in a terrible tragedy. "It is true," he tells his interlocutor, who may or may not be a therapist. "I accidently killed my baby girl that I had with Martha In good faith, I fed her the medicine I believed had been prescribed by our pediatrician. The druggist sent over the wrong medicine... and I dutifully fed the medicine into her tiny mouth with an eyedropper. All night I did this every two hours, until the child stopped crying and was dead."

Andrew's reaction to this awful tragedy generates the substance of this entertaining and sometimes beautiful novel. Near its beginning, he says "Deep down, at the bottom of my soul, if such exists, I am finally unmoved but what I've done. A faint tinge of regret for dead babies, for dead wives, for the fires I've inadvertently started, and all such disasters can make me run in my dreams to someplace where I can't do any harm, but in this waking life I am numb to my guilt."

But Andrew, in fact, was probably driven around the bend by the death of his baby daughter. And maybe all, or just parts of the tales he tells about his life after the tragedy--a second and perfect wife and little family, her unusual parents, his second tragic loss on 9/11, and his connection to the Bush White House--are imagined and his method of exploring and coping with his first tragedy.

Near the novel's end, Andrew, who is either institutionalized or a victim of extraordinary rendition, learns from his interlocutor that Willa, his daughter from his second marriage is twelve. This suggests that elements of his therapeutic stories are true. But which elements are real and which are inventions? The playful Doctorow doesn't exactly say.

At times, Andrew, a cognitive scientist, sounds like a mouthpiece for Doctorow, especially as he describes the dynamic between Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. "Chaingang and Rumbum were self-appointed world strategists. They had ranks of ideologues and think-tank warriors behind them. The president was only that... and at moments he had to feel outnumbered and outclassed. For every instance that he went along with their bidding, however persuasive and in accord with his own instincts, there had to be some resentment there, don't you think?"

Andrew also enjoys Mark Twain, whose work he shares with his second wife. Here, Andrew's Twain is primarily an old man oppressed by his life. "I see his frail grasp... his after-dinner guard let down and his upwardly mobile decency become vulnerable to his self-creation. And the woman he loved, gone, and a child he loved, gone, and he looks in the mirror and hates the pretense of his white hair and mustache and suit. He despairs of the likelihood that the world is his illusion, that he is but a vagrant mind in a futile drift through eternity." In this novel's final paragraph, Doctorow references Twain's plight and shows it has become a knife twisting in poor Andrews's brain.

Highly recommended.
For someone like myself who loved the great Doctorow novels of the 70's and 80's, this was a major
disappointment. Hate to say it, but it was barely worth reading. Never thought I'd say that about
E.L. Doctorow. Stick with Ragtime, World's Fair, Billy Bathgate, Loon Lake, Book of Daniel or
The March.
I’ve read most of his works but this is a stunningly new Doctorow. It’s not that I didn’t like his novel, it’s just that I, like a lot of you, was confused. But of course that was the author’s intent.

In the beginning, it appears that Andrew is having a conversation with a therapist, friend or psychologist. We go from first person, to third, the other character referring to “my friend, Andrew,” then speaking directly to him. Andrew, in turn speaks in the first person, then in third person speaking of himself. We learn about his two marriages, his professional life as a cognitive scientist who has gone from academia to teaching in a high school. Later, we’re told he is brought to the White House as an advisor to the president, his old college roommate. Here, he refers to himself and is referred to as “Android” by the president, a remarkable parody of George W along with his faithful cohorts, Chaingang and Rumbum.

Towards the end of the book, we realize that Andrew is in prison. We know this through references to “walls,” “the exercise yard,” and the fact that “no lawyer has been appointed,” “being held without trial,” etc., etc. Perhaps his confidant is a government prosecutor or perhaps, Andrew is stir crazy and is talking to himself!

After all the ills befallen Andrew, including the loss of his wife, Briony, a gymnast and health activist, as she jogs through the streets of New York while the buildings come down on 9-11, he is now being accused of threatening the life of the president (the college roommate) because of an insane display of standing on his hands in the middle of the Oval Office, a sudden and intuitive tribute to Briony. He has just revealed to Rumbum and Chaingang that they were “prime examples of human insufficiency.” And that he had been playing the “holy fool” to the president’s “Pretender.” They do not feel kindly towards him.

The book nears its end discussing another loss – that of Willa, his daughter with Briony, who is about to be adopted by his first wife who has cared for Willa over the last twelve years and now demands that the child never knows her real parents, alive or dead. He is being asked to sign the papers to that effect.

What happens to Andrew and where he goes now, is anyone’s guess. And his brain, I think, may have already taken off.
In some ways I think this is he best of E.L Doctorow. It is more concentrated and less historically sweeping than some of his work which I found both challenging and satisfying. Doctorow's departure last year is a great loss to us all.
Not the best thing he ever wrote that Ive read. It suffered a bit from creepy old man writer syndrome where old men authors who miss the good old days where they could pick up young attractive girls write unilkely relationships between older males and younger women. On another note, pardon the pun "Andrew's Brain" was cerebral.