One of the real pleasures of Minister Faust’s From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain is his obvious and over-the-top love of language. All of the characters seem to spew tortured extended metaphors any chance they get. The narrator of the book is a psychiatrist who cobbles together strained psycho-babble like:

One of life’s greatest paradoxes is that only when we see ourselves at our most naked, weak, foolish, ugly, disappointing, cowardly, broken, repulsive, selfish, and stupid, can we really appreciate just how special we are. For Wally to fill up the tank of personal reintegration, he was going to have to pull into the filling station of exhaustive self-assessment. And so will you.

The book is about superheroes–specifically a world in which the superheroes have defeated most of their enemies in a the recent Götterdamerung and now don’t have a whole lot to do. The premise is that 6 of the most important superheroes have been forced into a Group Therapy session mandate by the JLA equivalent in order to resolve their differences. There are some similarities to Soon I Will be Invincible but that novel was more of a Thirtysomething meets Marvel approach while Dr. Brain feels more Die Traumdeutung meets Fight Club.

Many twists and revelations of the Luke-I-am-your-Father ensue and there is an anarchic quality to the narrative which feels loose and unstrained. Some of the targets of satire (psychology, superhero conventions) seem too easy, but others (race, gender, capitalism) are surprising and welcome. Of the 6 main characters, two are black and there is a running subplot about how superheroes have become complicit in racist and corporate crimes against minorities.

Also, in order to separate the 6 characters, Faust gives each an accent (Omnipotent man is a redneck, Iron Lass is a Norwegian Goddess, BrotherFly is a mix between a bug and 50 Cent) complete with dialect spelling–but they really don’t talk that differently. They all have the same sense of humor as Faust–sardonic, surreal, hyperbolic.

This is a good book to have in a classroom. It taps into (primarily) boy energy about superheroes but it is also infused with intelligence, satire, and an undercurrent of resistance to racial and sexual hypocrisy. Plus, the use of inspired language and intellectual allusion offer up a model for kids about how to see the world. See an excerpt here.

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