jackshoegazer | Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain

Michael Paterniti heard the urban myth of Albert Einstein's brain, that it vanished, stolen by the crazy pathologist who did the autopsy. Later on, after years of retelling the story and embellishing it to make it more interesting, he's talking to his landlord who says, "Oh yeah, I know the pathologist. He's William S. Burrough's neighbor in Kansas." From here, the obsession takes hold and Michael goes chasing after the brain and the pathologist. Michael hunts down and semi-befriends the good doctor, who is living on the East coast, and offers to drive the doctor to California, where the doctor is to meet Einstein's grandaughter. So the young, floundering writer leaves his girlfriend and troubled relationship and hops in a rental car with the octogenarian patholgist, Thomas Harvey, who did in fact take Einstein's brain and kept it for over forty years.

In the style of such books as Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It and The Men Who Stare at Goats, we have a memoirish travelogue of quirky proportions. The two travelers (three if you count Einstein) make their way across America, meeting an aging and deranged but friendly William S. Burroughs, Scientologist carpet cleaners, historians, curators, doctors, and Harvey's strange friends and family. As the story is told, alternating with a narrow but rich history of Einstein, we must decide whether Harvey should be vilified or celebrated. And boy does he talk funny.

It was a good book, a picture-perfect portrayal of America from the driver's seat under even such odd circumstances. MIchael's prose is understated and his musings as uncertain as his situation, but I think that's the point in them - he doesn't give us answers but asks the same questions we might ask. If only we could all have Einstein along with us when we're trying to figure out our quarter-century crisis.

(x-posted to

literal_libris &

booksalon)