review of John Darnton's "Mind Catcher"

review of

John Darnton's "Mind Catcher"

by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

2261. "review of John Darnton's "Mind Catcher""

- complete review

- credited to: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

- uploaded to my Critic website August 4, 2024

- http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticDarnton.html

review of

John Darnton's "Mind Catcher"

by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 1-2 2024

The complete review is here:

http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticDarnton.html

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6723951190

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/96926.Mind_Catcher

I was in a rural used bkstore that I wanted to give some support to since they seemed to be struggling. Most of what they had for sale seemed to be 'best-sellers' so I picked 2 by Darnton b/c they seemed to be thrillers about mad scientism in the medical industry, a subject that I 'can't get enuf of' since the plandemic quarantyranny. I shd note that when I 1st declared myself to be a Mad Scientist in 1978 I had in mind being a person who creates something monstrous (or magnificent) that gets out of my control (or takes on a life of its own) - much like that archetypal mad scientist of Mary Shelley's, Dr. Frankenstein, & his 'patchwork guilt' (pun intended). Now, I'd have to qualify what I mean by my own Mad Scientism, wch is more of a free-form psychological experiment inspired by Stanley Milgram's studies of authority, as opposed to the mad scientism of the medical industry & drs w/in it & their imposed experiments on unwitting human guinea pigs.

The 1st bk I read by Darnton was "The Experiment" (see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6523910008 ). I concluded that review w/: "Yes, there was plenty for me to like about this bk.. I just get so tired of these writers who use cookie-cutter English all the time. Still, of the 3 thrillers I've read this was probably my favorite." - &, actually, thinking back on it, "The Experiment" was very good, even excellent - I'm just reluctant to give praise to writers who already have the publishing industry firmly on their side. That shd be ME, ME getting that kind of distribution, making enuf money for me to live the wild & extravagant life where I can afford unheard-of luxuries like toorhpaste & razor-blades. Ahem.

The dedication at the beginning of the bk reads:

"To the memory of my father, Byron Darnton, who died in New Guinea in World War II.

"And to the memory of my mother, Eleanor Choate Darnton, who said she knew of his death the moment it occurred" - p -ii

Given that dedication, a powerful motive is established for the author's writing this bk.

Cleaver, the head dr at a mental institution for severe cases who's interested in establishing clinically that there IS an anima, a MIND that can exist apart from the brain, works at Pinegrove, a hospital w/ insufficient funding for good upkeep.

"The linoleum was pock-marked with cigarette burns, and in one spot the tiles were missing, dark squares with snakelike squiggles of dried glue.

"It never ceased to amaze Cleaver how the state had let Pinegrove slide into ruin. Here it was smack in the middle of New York City, stuck on the southernmost penisnsula of Roosevelt Island in the East River. Tugboats and barges peered down upon it ; yet few people could tell you what the building was. For all that it mattered, he could be working in a lunatic asylum from the Middle Ages." - p 10

Mental Instiutions have always been a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, they enabled & continue to enable people like Dora Marsden, Antonin Artaud, & Yayoi Kusama to survive & probably really did & do provide a nurturing environment. On the other hand, there're so many horror stories about mental hospitals that it seems like the bad outweighs the good. At any rate, my understanding of their history is that many of them went under when chemical straight-jackets enabled the release of patients into the outside world. I made a very non-definitive documentary about one of these called Dixmont ( https://youtu.be/yEWrSNKzg60 ). These huge sprawling complexes of abandoned bldgs on large grounds have always fascinated me. The combined promise of hope for the hopeless & threats for the even more hopeless is a powerful mixture.

"All this meant that Cleaver had a certain necessary latitude in his work. It was part of a long and venerable tradition in neuroanatomy. Paul Broca's work with epileptics at the Bicetre Hospital in Paris in the 1860s. Carl Wernicke's probings of the brain's receptive language center in Germany in the 1870s, Wilder Penfield performing brain surgeries under local anesthetic to draw his map of bodily sensations in the 1940s and '50s. None of them had been constrained in their work." - p 12

""And the TMR?" he asked, looking at the helmet that fit snugly around the old woman's skull. The acronym was short for transcranial magnetic receiver, a device that recorded the electricl impulses of brain activity." - p 14

In other words, inmates are somewhat helpless to protect themselves against the machinations of sadistic drs, of wch there are plenty. Cleaver's research into anima wd be fine if he cd do it w/o being sadistic & irresponsible, wch he can't.

""What I examine is the mind. And I examine the difference between them-the brain and the mind. That's the whole point-the difference. People speak of the mind-body problem, but that misses the boat. Think of the mind-brain problem. Where does one stop and the other begin?" He looked searchingly at them. "What makes consciousness? What makes us conscious?"" - p 24

Darnton's obvious dedication to making his novels well-researched earns my admiration. I'm convinced that he tried to make this as realistically predictive as he cd based on research that was being conducted shortly before he wrote the bk.

""No, those weren't my parents," he replied matter-of-factly. "They're perfectly nice people. But they're not my parents. They're imposters."

"Cleaver stepped forward and addressed the visitors.

""Imposters is the key word," he said. "It occurs over and over in patients with Capgras's syndrome.["]" - p 28

"Capgras syndrome is a rare condition in which someone believes that their loved ones or others they know have been replaced with doubles or imposters. The belief is so real that nothing can correct this illusion.

"Capgras syndrome, or Capgras delusion, is named for the doctor who treated a patient with it nearly 100 years ago. You may also hear it called imposter syndrome. But this condition is different from the more common "imposter syndrome" that you may have heard about." - https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/impostor-syndrome-capgras

Imagine having a condition such as the above named after you:

"Yes, that's a classic case of "tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE syndrome". The symptoms are that a person stands on one leg & repeatedly says 'Jerk me off 2 legs to the board, hot mama!' while juggling live fish underwater. There's no cure for it yet but we're pretty sure that getting rid of all things purporting to be news will work in the right direction."

"Finally, the patient, a Hispanic-looking woman in her thirties, was wheeled in on a gurney. She had been drugged with Valium, but her eyes looked scared as she was transferred to the operating bed under the powerful overhead lights. An intravenous line was started, and she was sedated by an infusion of propofol, or "milk of amnesia," as the residents called it." - p 37

For those of you who're lacking the ability to get every joke, "milk of amnesia" is a play off of "milk of magnesia". B/c this patient was suffering from "t,ac syndrome" she was still wet in places that the orderlies & nurses hadn't noticed. As such, she short-circuited something causing the dr to be electrocuted & a whole plethora of other Rube Goldbergian events. Thank the Holy Ceiling Light for small favors. B/c of this, the next 71pp were smoldering & I had to jump-cut to p 108.

"Saramaggio explained that there were, in effect, two operations-one to extract the metal object, install the computer, and extract the stem cells, and then some weeks later, once the cells had multiplied to many millions in the lab, another one to plant them." - p 108

""Elizabeth Gould and Charles Gross. At Princeton. They discovered neurogenesis."

""What's that?"

""They discovered that the brain continues to make new cells. That opened up a whole new area. Before them, it was believed that the brain simply stopped developing. You got your one hundred billion neurons and that was it; you got older, the cells expired, your brain deteriorated, you turned senile, and you died. Now, we know that new neurons are produced all the time."

"The other resident chimed in.

""This corresponds to work done at Rockefeller University on canaries-believe it or not. A guy named Fernando Nottebohm showed that canaries grow new neurons to learn new songs."" - p 115

I'd actually read about the latter in David Rothenberg's "Why Birds Sing" (see my paltry review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/14734445 ).

"He recalled sitting in a classroom, hearing that there were two types of scientists-the integrators and the inventors. The integrators produced systems; they accumulated data, synthesized things, sifted and winnowed calculations to form a theory. It was like constructing a building-valuable work, in its own way. But the inventors-ah, they were the revolutionaries. They cut through everything with one blow, a leap of deductive thinking. They dynamited the entire building and leveled the landscape and made way for something new." - p 132

Yes, but did they evacuate the bldg before they dynamited it?

"Cleaver finished his coffee and checked the monitor. Then he went to a supply cabinet, filled a syringe, stepped over to the old woman's bedside, and raised her thin wrist, exposing the upper arm. He jabbed the needle in. He slipped behind the bed and fiddled with a valve, cutting of her oxygen. After a moment, she gave a little heave in bed, twitching slightly and raising her chin. Then her head dropped to her chest, and she remained still of all movement. Cleaver watched her closely. After a short period, he turned again to the valve, opened it, and gradually she came to life again." - p 140

Cleaver is clever & unscrupulous. How uncommon of a combination is that?

""Ray Kurzweil says that computers will exceed human intelligence by 2020. He foresees that man and machine will link up and evolve together. This inevitable once machines replicate themselves. And so the only answer for humankind is to figure out a way to enter into that system of evolution. If we don't, we'll be left behind. Evolution teaches that there is room for only one entity in any particular niche, and the niche we're talking about is the one reserved for the planet's supreme intellect." - p 144

""And will that be the end of us?"

""The end? Far from it. It will be the beginning. It will be the quantum leap that science and religion promise. The moment of deliverance. Our minds will no longer be bound to our bodies. Perhaps if we can truly shake off our physical vessels, we will achieve an immortality of sorts. The mysterium tremendum. Physicists call it escape veolcity. Pentacostalists call it the Rapture."" - p 145

Same old, same old. How many of these people making such predictions about 'leaving the body behind' have unfit bodies? I doubt that very many (or any) people w/ fit bodies are fantasizing about 'leaving it behind'. As for immortality? What if we already have it but just can't recognize its form? I find the overall logic of the above-quoted passages to be suspect. Does "Evolution teach[es] that there is room for only one entity in any particular niche"? Apparently somebody's concluded that but I, personally, haven't. Some humans are just so conceited that they think that something that humans make is superior to everything that's evolving organically - hence AI is touted as 'superior' to nature - but built-in to anything that humans have created are the consciousness limitations of humans. Our whole intelligence isn't spawning AI, only our consciousness is - everything goes far deeper than just consciousness. It's typical human arrogance to consider everything to've been 'left behind' by human evolution. The next time you see a deer explain to it that it's been 'left behind' by us. It's doubtful that the communication will go very well & that's a good sign of how very limited human communication abilities are.

The central dramatic element of the plot here is that a boy named Tyler gets a severe brain injury & is very near to death. His father is devastated. Drs convince him that an experimental surgery may save his life. Darnton's story-telling is thorough, he approaches the subject from many angles. One of them is reminiscences about Tyler's loveable self.

"["]The counter guy joked that Tyler owed him a lot of money, so one day he came in with a suitcase with a whole bunch of fake money in it. He put it on the counter and flipped it open dramatically. The whole place just cracked up. We'd walk down our block and people would wave to him.["]" - p 162

Ethics, & the lack thereof, are an important issue.

""You'll need something else," Quincy observed, detached now, almost philosophical.

""What?"

""Someone to put inside it. And . . . how can I put this? Someone who might not be missed if things go wrong. Someone expendable."

"Cleaver permitted himself a false hearty laugh. "No problem there," he said. "I've got a whole ward full of candidates."

""And are they ready to sacrifice themselves for the great god Science? Have you asked them that?"

""They've all signed waivers, if that's what you mean."

""Hmmm. Informed consent, was it? From nutcases."" - pp 167-168

It doesn't take a deep look to see that 'informed consent' is rarely that. I went to a Pittsburgh hospital in the 1990s to get a blood test for hepatitis. Instead of doing that, they subjected me to whatever tests they wanted to. After repeated visits w/ no hep test, I was told that I had to get a physical examination & I had to sign some papers authorizing it. I read the papers, they authorized SURGERY. I wasn't there for surgery, I refused to sign. The nurse in charge got very belligerent & told me that if I didn't sign the papers I wdn't be able to get any further services from the hospital. It was as crooked & unethical as you get. I never went back, the hospital went out of business soon thereafter. How many people did they perform unnecessary operations on in the meantime?!

One of the protagonists is a dr named Kate Willett. She's been having doubts.

"Yes, a premature baby barely twenty-four weeks old could be saved by all that fancy incubation equipment, but would he live a healthy life? Yes, an old man on the threshold of death could be kept alive on a ventilator, but was that living? Maybe things had been in some ways better in the not-so-distant days when the cycles of life played out like the natural rhythms of the seasons and we bowed down in our communal helplessness before the Grim Reaper." - pp 175-176

As one of my rubber stamps reads: "I want to BE ALIVE not KEPT ALIVE!"

"She stood up, straightened her skirt, and made the bed, and as she placed the coverlet over the pillow she noticed that the double mattress had developed a life-sized indentation on the left side where she habitually slept. She made a mental note to try to switch to the right." - p 177

Ha ha! I wonder how many readers respond w/ recognition to this? I have an indentation on the left side of the mattress that I sleep on. The right side is covered w/ bks so I'm not likely to be switching soon. Maybe if I get involved w/ a squirter she can take the left side & we'll make it a swimming pool.

"it was best to confront the talk head-on and explain just what had been done and how well the patient was doing so far. All of it, of course, off the record-until such time as the New England Journal of Medicine would carry Saramaggio's own account." - p 185

In my own idiosyncratic medical readings of the past few yrs, I keep encountering mention of the New England Journal of Medicine (& other medical journals) again & again. I have a high opinion of that journal, primarily b/c of Marcia Angell, M.D.'s "The Truth About the Drug Companies - How They Deceive Us and What to do About It" (you can see the beginning of my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3719233146 or read the whole thing in my bk "THE SCIENCE (volume 1)"). Angell was the chief editor of the New England Journal of Medicine for 20 yrs & impressed me as a person of stunning intelligence & integrity.

"Not for two nights since he had put Mann into the machineand discovered that somehow Mann's brain had connected with the computer, actually entered into the memory of the damned thing and pillaged it to come up with some some snatches of Polish, had Cleaver been able to sleep well." - p 216

Imagine if Mann had downloaded the Big Book of Jokes instead! He cd've had Cleaver in stitches - instead of the other way around.

"Wasn't that obscene? And yet scarcely a year later, he'd become a stickler for unflinching truth when he began nibbling at the edges of literature and admired writers like Philip Roth and Frederick Exley who had the courage to turn their own lives inside out and strip them bare for art." - p 276

I've never read work by either of those authors but now I'm interested. Of course, when creative people use their own lives for subject matter there's always the danger that their significant others won't be toompleased to be included in the exposé.

""In Latin America, you know, there is this saying that at the precise moment of death, the body loses twenty-one grams-that, they say, is what life weighs. I myself do not believe this saying to be literally true, but as a myth I find it psychologically compelling and surprisingly revealing. For something is given up at death. The question is, What? The ancients had a word for it-psyche. Today we call it the soul. Some call it the anima."" - pp 332-333

There you have it! Those of you who say you'd 'die to lose weight' are just being foolish, you wdn't lose enuf.

The Acknowledgments are on pp 435-436. It' an impressive list of relevant drs & researchers. Darnton's background as a reporter for The New York Times seems to come into play here b/c he obviously has a serious ability to make connections & to get them to keep him informed.

Following that are some pages of ads for other bks. This is useful for seeing what company Darnton's type of fiction keeps: a serial killer story (if only it were about CEREAL killers!), a murder mystery, another serial killer story, AND another murder mystery. There you have it!

I find Darnton's bio interesting. He worked as a reporter, editor, & foreign correspondent in New York, Nigeria, Kenya, Spain, Poland, & the UK. Imagine fiction organized in bkstores by background of writer: bks written by former spies wd all be together, there'd be quite alot of those. But what about the bks written by fingernail technicians? There's a market waiting to be tapped.

All in all, I liked this. The writing style is still too generic, he's no Georges Perec, but I thoroughly enjoyed the plot & the author's attn to detail. Read at least one of my bks FIRST (buying it, of course) before reading anything by this author - just to make sure yr reading is well-rounded. Thank you, & Good Night.

tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

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