Moments of Crisis

Okay, so the shit's really hit the fan at this point in Neuropath.

Thomas' son Frankie's been taken by Neil and as a nice little "fuck you" Neil killed the dog on his way out (or so I believe, since it's not yet been confirmed). Also, Nora's told Sam that she and Tom fucked a week earlier, and so Tom's relationship with Sam has been thrown up in the air as well. When asked by Atta and Gerard (the other two agents on the Neil case), Tom has described Neil's motive as going through and methodically showing how the brain constructs those concepts that people consider essential to and characteristic of humanity: pleasure, will/responsibility, spirituality, and love (so far, I've yet to find out if Neil gets around to any more).

Just as when any madman is figured out - or, when the one doing the figuring has figured said madman out as much as his capacity allows him to - it causes the figurer to break down. Thomas is no exception, as things begin to very quickly accumulate for him.

Plus, chapter 12 is the first and only one to be presented without a date and time attached. It stands alone in a crowd, a halo of emptiness around it, making it different, yet limited. Thomas' mental breakdown in this chapter reminds me of Harry Truman's in Twin Peaks, after the death of Josie.

Of course, Thomas is the grief stricken parent rather than the grief stricken lover, but for me the comparison stands. These two positions are comparable in my mind because they are both reactions to a deep loss, and in the terms that the book itself sets out, both are related to reproduction and the carrying on of genes, the mourning and grieving that go on in both situations are all about conditioned responses and impulses in the brain.

Still, I wonder if we'll get anything else from Frankie's perspective. He's been taken and Neil apparently put something in his brain that has his fear responses on loop. After this gets cleared up (assuming, of course, that it does) I'll be curious to see if Frankie's perspective on life has changed, or if Bakker reveals what I suspect - that Frankie is in fact Neil's own son.

While thinking about why Nora cheated on him even before their marriage, all I could think of was Jon Arryn's dying words: "The seed is strong." I'm waiting on the twist that all the book's blurbs rave about with great anticipation, and here I was worried that I'd see it coming!