Curt Siodmak: Donovan’s Brain
May. 5th, 2018 05:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bibliogrammaThe 1942 novel - another Retro Hugo finalist - Donovan’s Brain, by Curt Siodmak, is a complex exploration of obsession and consequence. The protagonist, Dr. Patrick Cory, is a brilliant medical researcher, deeply fascinated with the idea of understanding brain function. In the tradition of the obsessed “mad” scientist, he works virtually alone out of his basement lab in a remote rural area, with his wife Janice, a nurse, as lab assistant when necessary and the local county doctor and coroner, the aging and alcoholic Dr. Schratt, as a sounding board.
Cory has allowed his research to take over the whole of his life. He barely has any relationship remaining with his wife, whise support - domestic and financial - he takes for granted. He sees Schratt only in terms of his usefulness to his own goals, he has no other human relationships - in fact he seems emotionally dead, interested only in his research.
When Cory is called to the scene of a plane crash - Schratt is incapacitated and the locals know him to be a doctor, albeit a non-practicing one - he finds one of the two survivors is severely injured and near death. Emergency surgery on location does little to improve the man’s condition, and it becomes obvious that the man - whom Cory has identified as millionaire Warren Horace Donovan - will not survive the journey to the nearest hospital. Instead, Cory has Donovan taken to his lab, where, as he is dying, Cory harvests his brain and, using the equipment he has developed through animal experimentation, preserves the brain, alive.
Cory’s obsession to understand what the brain is capable of leads him to discover a means of augmenting the brain’s power to the point where Donovan can communicate with him telepathically, at first through automatic writing, later directly. In fact, Donovan’s vastly increased will eventually overpowers Cory’s autonomy, forcing him to carry out Donovan’s own obsession, allowing nothing to stand in his way.
In their different ways, both men are obsessed with their goals and will stop at nothing, even murder, to achieve them. Siodmak explores the impact of obsession on relationships, first through the empty shell of Cory’s marriage, then through observation of the effects Donovan in life had on his family and close associates.
As the novel is presented as a series of entries in Cory’s journal, there is an element of the unreliable narrator here, but this is offset by that narrator’s devotion to a scientific worldview - he records his events, thoughts, actions, emotions, with a certain level of detachment and self-honesty. And it is through the changes in his entries that we see him slowly regaining his humanity as he experiences what it is to be sacrificed to another’s obsession. It’s a stripped-down narrative, creating a fast-paced story that generates both mystery and suspense - why is Donovan forcing Cory to do these things, and whose will will prevail in the end.
At its core, Donovan’s Brain is a case study of the damage done by closing out one’s humanity to focus on a single goal, be it scientific truth, or the accumulation of wealth, or any of the other obsessions humans are prone to pursuing.
Cory has allowed his research to take over the whole of his life. He barely has any relationship remaining with his wife, whise support - domestic and financial - he takes for granted. He sees Schratt only in terms of his usefulness to his own goals, he has no other human relationships - in fact he seems emotionally dead, interested only in his research.
When Cory is called to the scene of a plane crash - Schratt is incapacitated and the locals know him to be a doctor, albeit a non-practicing one - he finds one of the two survivors is severely injured and near death. Emergency surgery on location does little to improve the man’s condition, and it becomes obvious that the man - whom Cory has identified as millionaire Warren Horace Donovan - will not survive the journey to the nearest hospital. Instead, Cory has Donovan taken to his lab, where, as he is dying, Cory harvests his brain and, using the equipment he has developed through animal experimentation, preserves the brain, alive.
Cory’s obsession to understand what the brain is capable of leads him to discover a means of augmenting the brain’s power to the point where Donovan can communicate with him telepathically, at first through automatic writing, later directly. In fact, Donovan’s vastly increased will eventually overpowers Cory’s autonomy, forcing him to carry out Donovan’s own obsession, allowing nothing to stand in his way.
In their different ways, both men are obsessed with their goals and will stop at nothing, even murder, to achieve them. Siodmak explores the impact of obsession on relationships, first through the empty shell of Cory’s marriage, then through observation of the effects Donovan in life had on his family and close associates.
As the novel is presented as a series of entries in Cory’s journal, there is an element of the unreliable narrator here, but this is offset by that narrator’s devotion to a scientific worldview - he records his events, thoughts, actions, emotions, with a certain level of detachment and self-honesty. And it is through the changes in his entries that we see him slowly regaining his humanity as he experiences what it is to be sacrificed to another’s obsession. It’s a stripped-down narrative, creating a fast-paced story that generates both mystery and suspense - why is Donovan forcing Cory to do these things, and whose will will prevail in the end.
At its core, Donovan’s Brain is a case study of the damage done by closing out one’s humanity to focus on a single goal, be it scientific truth, or the accumulation of wealth, or any of the other obsessions humans are prone to pursuing.