Here's an ultimate meta-book: a memoir about driving across country with the man whose fame rests on having removed and kept the brain of Albert Einstein. The glow of the glow of the glow!

Thomas Harvey, the physician who performed the autopsy on Einstein, is himself, as sketched here, a somewhat melancholy character, and Paterniti himself is trying to find some meaning for his existence, which he achieves by marrying his long-time love Sara and by writing the memoir itself.

Along the way we get a fragmented thumbnail sketch of Einstein's life and loves, descriptions of Americana from Dodge City to Las Vegas to San Jose, and a meeting with Einstein's granddaughter.

The book is a meditation on fame and the meaning of life in post-Einstein, post-nuclear-bomb America. It sports some lovely poetic prose, poignant ironies, and memorable images.

I hope Michael Paterniti continues his meditations and next gives us a memoir about life in Portland, Maine.

Einstein's brain, removed from his body and bouncing around America! What a terrific symbol of...something! Well, yes and no. Paterniti has a terrific story, chronicling the adventures of Einstein's brain over the last forty-odd years. And he can be genuinely funny when presented with incongruous situations (and when you have Einstein's brain in the back seat, almost all situations are incongruous). The problem is that Einstein's brain doesn't do much, and Paterniti doesn't do much with it, at least not in a literal sense. They're driving, and there's that brain. That's the whole plot. To fill up the book, Paterniti has to give us his grand thoughts about Einstein and science. These are interesting, but they aren't THAT interesting.

The book is worth reading just to find out what's happened to Einstein's brain. But that's a relatively short section. Paterniti's rambling on about science and America will not hold your attention for all 220+ pages. Both me and my boyfriend feel this way.

I don't know where to begin . . . a spectacular journey across America and through the mind and heart of a redoubtable writer with a singular voice and vision, and with two of the most unique characters as mates - Einstein as you have never known him before, hovering like a giant sun over the passengers carrying his brain, and Dr. Harvey, an eccentric, enigmatic real life Frank J. Parnell ("Ever heard of the neutron bomb?"). I heard about this book on The Connection on NPR and immediately went out, bought it, and read it in two nights. It was far better than I even expected. The juxtaposition of Einstein's lack of intimacy and personal relationships with the writer's own need for it, and fear of leaving it behind, permanently, as he drives down America's highways with an octagenerian and a genius's brain in the trunk. The details of Einstein's life that provide a picture of Einstein as person and demigod. The trip itself, including a quintessentially William S. Burroughs moment with Mr. Burroughs himself. Truly engrossing reading. Once in a great while, a book like this comes out and redeems my faith that authentic, fresh storytelling as artform is alive and well. Brain jam through the latest great american road trip. I can't reccommend it enough.