Books: E.L. Doctorow's novel Andrew's Brain explores a brain scientist's mind

In my New York Journal of Books review I describe E.L. Doctorow's new novel as “an enjoyable page turner” that is “both bittersweet and disturbing.” Additional remarks that appeared in a different and now defunct publication begin with the next paragraph.

Books: E.L. Doctorow's novel Andrew's Brain explores a brain scientist's mind

Last Tuesday, April 14, 2014, New York publisher Random House published Andrew’s Brain, the new novel by multiple award winning writer E.L.Doctorow whose writing and publishing career spans half a century. In my New York Journal of Books review I note that Andrew’s Brain has more in common with Doctorow’s short stories than with his novels.

Doctorow’s novels usually feature a large cast of characters with narratives reflecting multiple perspectives. Andrew’s Brain is more like a monologue in which the title character narrates his life story to a therapist. Andrew is a neuroscientist whose life work is studying how the brain creates the mind. In the novel he explores his own mind with his therapist.

The publication of the book is timely. Last spring President Obama announced the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, a federally funded project to begin in fiscal year 2014 to map the activity of every neuron in the human brain.

But readers hoping to learn something about neuroscience will be disappointed; the novel shows little evidence that Doctorow has devoted the kind of extensive background research to brain science as he did to the historical settings of his previous novels. Nonetheless Andrew’s Brain succeeds as a work of fiction which I describe in my NYJB review as “an enjoyable page turner” that is “both bittersweet and disturbing.” For a fuller discussion of the book read my NYJB review.

Book review | Leaving the Sea: Stories by Ben Marcus

In my NYJB review of Leaving the Sea by Ben Marcus I recommend the book "to serious readers who will want to reread its stories gaining new insights with each reading.” Additional remarks that appeared in a different and now defunct publication begin with the next paragraph.

Books: novelist Ben Marcus returns to the short story in Leaving the Sea

Future literary scholars may look back to the second decade of the Twenty-first Century as a silver age of the short story. The golden age would be the late Nineteenth through the middle of the Twentieth Century.

After that a writer's book of short stories became more often than not a journeyman’s apprenticeship on her way to becoming a novelist. Until recently writers like John Updike, who continued to publish in several genres over the decades, have been the exception.

Now more fiction writers alternate between the novel and the short story. Junot Diaz, for example, followed his debut novel with a second collection of short stories instead of with another novel. After four decades of novel writing Amos Oz returned to the short story in his last two fiction books. And last year the Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to Alice Munro who only writes short stories.

And now novelist Ben Marcus returns to the short story inLeaving the Sea, a book of short stories published today by New York publisher Knopf. Some of its 15 stories predate his most recent novel The Flame Alphabet and several share its dystopian theme. For a fuller discussion of Leaving the Seasee my New York Journal of Books review in which I recommend it to serious readers.