The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder

I have always been fascinated by the human brain and the power it holds to make or break a human being. And of course this leads me to read many books about troubled individuals and their psyche. I can't help it, I'm attracted to them like a moth to the light! Well one such recent read involved the (fictional) story of an individual who locked himself up on his 21st birthday and proceeded to catalog the contents of his memory up until that point. Said operation lasted 30 years. Now the whole narrative takes the shape of a flashback as Max is already dead and his best friend Adam is recounting the events that have led us here and why Max made these decisions.

I could say that for any introspective individual, the story is relatable even if I don't know anyone who would go as far as spending more than half their lives on such an endeavor. Myself, I have often felt as though if only I could block away the world and just be able to write down my thoughts and my experiences and if I managed to dissect them, then the world would make more sense and everything would be much clearer. I would understand myself better, where I went wrong, what I did right, the paths I should have taken and maybe if I could or should turn around and start over. But this isn't about me, it's about Max. At 21, he had everything going for him. A great family fortune, a good education, a nice girlfriend he could have married, he was cultured, he had traveled the world and had experienced many things, he had friends, he was generally well-liked. So why throw it all away? One theme that comes up often throughout the book is death. This is something that had always haunted Max and that he never really knew how to deal with. The death of his parents, the death of people he knew, even the death of strangers. He would always obsess over what would be left behind after a person dies. So maybe his catalog was his way of leaving behind his mark for posterity. Maybe the recent death of his father was just too much to deal with and this was all an excuse to hide away from the world.

In any case, whatever his real reasons may have been, the real question of interest here is "was he happy?". Were his efforts a waste? Was his life a waste? Physically speaking, he died at 51 due to "a short illness". However, can we really say that he was still alive during those 30 years that he spent cut off from the world? Was he really different from someone who might have been run down by a car in a tragic accident at 21? In a sense, this book has made me realize that life and death can be a lot more fluid concepts than I initially thought. What makes death, well "death"? Why is it so feared by so many people around the world? Is it the finality of it all? I think it's essentially that. The fact that we always put off a lot of things for various reasons. But once you're dead there are no more do-overs. You will never be able to ask those questions to your grandfather or build that app that was going to change the world. So maybe this was Max's way of leaving his mark on the world. A library filled with the most intricate details of every year of his life to be dissected for generations to come.