On Part One: I am No One

On page 59 Mark has his first post-accident recognition of another patient’s sadness when he overhears someone sobbing in a room near his. This “feat of intellect” as Karin calls it seemed to be so much more to me at that moment. Every now and then while reading Powers’s novel I stop and have that moment of questioning: is he the echo-maker? Is he simply echoing what his interrupted mind grasps, words or actions that instigate a connection, a memory? It cannot be this simple. Mark recognizing sadness seemed pivotal to me in the unorganized, time-warped narrative. So much of him seems to still be present and what is missing is baffling because it seems to be so little he is not capable off. He shoots the shit with his two buddies and they recognize his progress but he gets overwhelmed. “When they’re near, he can’t hear himself think. Too much happening at once for him to see what’s wrong.” (67). He receives necessary, pseudo-romantic attention from Bonnie and then becomes captivated, infatuated by Barbara. He is able. He can walk and talk. Tracking his progress is confusing because of the parallel narrative of his sister, that at times overshadows his deficits and puts the reader’s focus on Karin. The self—our self, knowing who one is through memory and self-preservation—is not only taken from Mark but to an extent more so from Karin by her brother’s Capgras syndrome. “You think I’m just a symptom?” (92), she asks Daniel. Her sense of self, the idea of the life she has created and thought she knew and could hold on to, is taken away by the accident and Mark’s recovery and misidentification delusions send Karin deeper and deeper into the chase, the struggle. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be talking to your sibling, the closest genetic organism to you, knowing that they do not recognize who you are. I ask a completely unanswerable question: Why does Capgras manifest itself in this way? Why do patients not recognize loved ones especially? The mysterious note only adds to the delusion and shattering of the self. I am No One. To bring back someone else? Is Karin the one who needed bringing back? The obvious answer seems to me to be Mark but it is his challenge to bring back that other.
The pages are filled with cryptic lines about identity, life and death. Mark realizes on page 64 that he doesn’t even know where the dead are. For some reason this line and so many others seemed to make my mind pause and think and then blank. On the next page, he has another realization that seems so wise, so natural for someone who has had their world flipped inside out and upside down from one millisecond to the next. While asking his sister/actress to get him some sort of identification Mark seems to grasp something that at this very moment seems beyond me. They can operate on your brain without you even knowing it. In this thought Mark at once comes to terms with his accident and current situation and surrenders his body to the technology that, without his consent, has kept him alive.
I found myself struggling with the unannounced switch from Karin’s point of view to Mark’s. I definitely enjoyed reading the Mark sections more. Knowing his thoughts, the way they are presented and the way they expose his personality, made me understand the entire narrative better. “Nobody’s quite what they say they are, and he’s just supposed to laugh and play along.”