The Metaphysical Touch: A Novel [Hardcover]

Sylvia Brownrigg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1998

A moving and original love story about two lost people who find each other on the Internet.

In 1991 Emily Piper, a graduate student at Berkeley, has nearly finished her dissertation on metaphysics when her life is changed by the great Berkeley-Oakland fire that destroyed over 3,000 homes. Pi loses all of her belongings: her books and writings, all the things that reminded her of herself. Though others throw themselves into the task of rebuilding their lives, Pi can't. Instead, she escapes to the small coastal town of Mendocino.

On the other coast is J.D., a man with an ambition to go: permanently, absolutely. But before making his departure, J.D. decides to write a record of his jokes and neuroses; of his reflections on his wandering father, Joe; and of his urban, unemployed despair-and post it on the Internet.

When J.D. and Pi encounter each other's words on the Net, the sparks start to fly. Is J.D. who he says he is? Pi, as a recovering philosopher, ought to be able to tell reality from imagination, but finds herself in doubt. And though her correspondence with J.D. begins to heat up, she finds a sensual, more material temptation closer by, and her dilemma becomes a perilous instance of the "mind/body problem."

With The Metaphysical Touch, Sylvia Brownrigg has written a fabulously rich novel full of humor, tenderness, and truth.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

As its title suggests, The Metaphysical Touch is a kind of disembodied romance, in which boy meets girl on an entirely abstract basis. Even a decade ago, Sylvia Brownrigg's debut might have taken the form of an epistolary novel. Nowadays, though, such virtual flirtations take place on the Internet, which is exactly where Brownrigg's lovers meet. One of them, Emily "Pi" Piper, is a philosophy grad student who loses everything--including, alas, her dissertation on Kant--to the great Oakland-Berkeley blaze of 1991. The other, a depressive Oblomovian type named JD, is busily uploading an extended suicide note, which even he recognizes as a melodramatic move: "I do know how self-indulgent this is, by the way. Writing and posting all this, treating the world on the Net like it's my therapist."

The very anonymity of online romance tends to bring out the saucier side of many correspondents (not to mention novelists.) But Brownrigg, a former philosophy student herself, is clearly interested in the epistemological kinks of the relationship. What can we know about another person? How cleanly can mind and body be divided? It's no accident that has Pi fastened onto idealism's heaviest hitter:

Pi's dissertation was to have been on Kant's metaphysics--on his stark, wisdom-starred vision of what was knowable in the world and what lay beyond the knowable. As a graduate student you had to read around, be ready to teach anything from the ethics of euthanasia to Pythagoras' transmigration of souls; but Pi's loyalty was to Kant. Her heart was floating out there with the German idealist, in the pure ether of thought, in the deep space of his noumenal realm.

JD is no professional Kantian, yet his solipsistic explorations surely qualify him as an enlightened amateur. The stage is set, then, for a long-distance love match. But despite Brownrigg's many gifts--including a fine eye for detail and an elegant, agile style--her narrative catches fire only intermittently. The main problem is that neither Pi nor JD ever quite makes it out of the noumenal realm. The lovers remain abstractions, without the sort of flesh-and-blood Dasein that would make us want to follow their adventures for almost 400 pages. There are, as always, the consolations of philosophy--but in this case, they're not quite consoling enough. --William Davies

From Publishers Weekly

In an appealingly loose and intelligent style, first novelist and short story writer Brownrigg (Ten Women Who Shook the World) charts a very modern romance, with rounded characters tentatively making their way to love and enlightenment via the Internet. In 1992, when the Internet is a novelty, Emily Piper (Pi) is a graduate student in philosophy who retreats to Mendocino, Calif., after an earthquake-related fire destroys her Berkeley apartment, her dissertation-in-progress and her cat. Hoping to get her bearings, she moves into a summer house with Abbie, an acquaintance in the middle of a divorce, and her young daughter. Meanwhile, in Manhattan, computer technician JD Levin is writing his so-called dieryan account of his suicidal depression in the wake of losing his joband posting it on a discussion group, where it soon attracts a flurry of comments. Full of mordant quips and neurotic observations (plus endearing references to his dog), the voice of the diery is so distinctive its almost animate. Eventually, Pi plugs into the Internet and gets so involved in the diery that she starts corresponding with JD. At first Pi is wary and cool, and JD is seemingly asexual, but their correspondence becomes increasingly intimate. But Pi, who has what she calls sapphic undercurrents, has an affair with Abbie, and JD departs the East Coast for L.A. When Pi realizes that she cant locate him on screen, she decides to search for him, but the timing couldnt be worse: the Rodney King verdict has just been announced and the city is in flames. Brownrigg has Nora Ephrons ability to make romance seem a complex affair of both the heart and the head, and she adds a dimension of adroit philosophizing about the purpose of life and the possibilities of love in a world where emotional isolation seems sensible and self-protective. Her grip on her characters psychologies and flair for breezy, seductive narrative will have readers as magnetically addicted to this book as its characters are to their e-mail, and her rich atmospheric detail about Northern California could cause a small tourist boomlet there.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 390 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (January 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374199655
• ISBN-13: 978-0374199654
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,441,345 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sylvia Brownrigg is the author of several acclaimed works of fiction: four novels--Morality Tale, The Delivery Room, Pages for You, and The Metaphysical Touch--and a collection of stories, Ten Women Who Shook the World. Morality Tale was described in the New York Times as "divinely deadpan", and in the San Francisco Chronicle as a "witty parable of marriage." The Delivery Room won the Northern California Book Award for best novel.

Sylvia's works have been included in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times lists of notable fictions and have been translated into several languages, and she has also won a Lambda award for fiction. In addition to writing fiction, Sylvia Brownrigg has been widely published as a reviewer and critic for publications such as the New York Times and the Times Literary Supplement.

Sylvia grew up in California and in England, was educated at Yale and Johns Hopkins Universities, and lived for many years in London. She now lives in Berkeley with her family.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A touching and provocative novel, September 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Metaphysical Touch: A Novel (Hardcover)

I've read the reviews posted, and so need not rehash the plot for you yet again. I just finished this book yesterday, and wanted to weigh in on the side of the proponents of it. It's not a philosophy tract, its a novel! A novel that does cause you to stop and consider some of the philospohical questions raised by the protagonists, but it remains true to its literary purpose. The Hamlet theme is especially adroit, and I agree with the reviewer who singled out the 7 year old Martha as an especially engaging character. If you loved the movie "You've Got Mail," you'll probably NOT like this book. If you do enjoy a well-written book with realistic characters, clever dialogue and some substance between the plot lines, then do get this book. This is one of my ten best of the year, to date.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best books I've ever read!, October 20, 1999

By 

Perry (Champaign, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Metaphysical Touch: A Novel (Hardcover)

My best friend and I, who live in separate states and are in touch mostly by email, read this book at the same time. We marvelled at the intelligence of the writing, and the geniune friendship between J.D. and Pi. Many of the late night questions we ponder were addressed in M. Touch. We both felt compelled to write the author a letter of thanks for such a touching (no pun) book. But we never got around to it. Hopefully, Sylvia Brownrigg will read this review! I can't wait for her next book!!!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Well, yes and no, January 19, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Metaphysical Touch: A Novel (Hardcover)

Another mixed bag. Like most novels not bad enough for me to close within the first 30 pages, there is something to this one. It didn't bore me--exactly--although, well, yes it did in some parts. It also didn't grip me--exactly--although, well, yes there were some surprisingly lyrical passages that did pull me in. Some of the literary and philosophical references were lost on me. I suppose I'm not as erudite as you other readers. On the other hand, you shouldn't have to be erudite to enjoy a novel. Other novels much more jam-packed with important ideas and important and/or obscure references than this one--like Umberto Eco's works, for instance--have indeed gripped me, held me, transported me. The problem here, I think, is more basic. This in fact is not a novel of ideas. It is a novel based on characterization. And I never came to much care about the main characters--okay, maybe about Pi a bit, but never about JD, and once Pi was drawn to him she lost her lustre for me too. Ultimately, the biggest problem was the most important section, the private correspondence between the two, by means of which they connect deeply and Pi falls for JD. This never rang true. It's almost as if Brownrigg wrote, "They connected deeply," instead of writing something to convey this happening. I just didn't see it. Never felt the genuine connection happening organically. And yet. And yet. It wasn't all bad. I did keep reading. There are some nice touches.