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Andrew's Brain I

 


I've been reading a short novel by E.L. Doctorow, ANDREW'S BRAIN (2014).

Let me quote for you the opening paragraph: "I can tell you about my friend Andrew, the cognitive scientist, but it isn't pretty. One evening he appeared with an infant in his arms at the door of his ex-wife, Martha. Because Briony, his lovely young wife after Martha, had died."

That paragraph throws us in the middle of things. It works from and, I think, presumes our familiarity with, a number of conventions. Andrew's job sounds like an academic one, and the paragraph primes us for a campus novel, where love triangles, ambitions successful or foiled, human tragedies, all play out amidst faculty, students, administrators with well-defined social roles.    

The speaker may be addressing us, the readers, here.  Or he might be addressing a therapist -- not an unusual expository device in contemporary fiction. 

We also cued up here have a rather ordinary-seeming love triangle.  A middle-aged man who presumably teaches cognitive science has an ex-wife perhaps of his own generation, and the story involves a younger woman, perhaps a former student, who has displaced the "ex" in his life. And a baby. 

What do we think of this as a start?  

For myself, I think that the abruptness with which these conventions are all invoked at once and presented to us puts us rather in the position of Martha, who suddenly finds that Briony's orphaned baby is presented to her.  

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