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Plus

Joseph McElroy,

Tom LeClair (Introduction)

3.97 · Rating details · 145 ratings · 23 reviews

Imp Plus, a brain removed from an individual with a wife and child, begins to develop self-awareness as it orbits the earth in a space capsule.

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Paperback, 216 pages

Published July 16th 1988 by Carroll & Graf Publishers (first published 1976)

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Oct 26, 2013 Brian rated it liked it

Recommended to Brian by: Nathan "N.R." Gaddis

He knew memory, but saw that it was not the same as remember.

There is a magic at work in this fiction - an illumination of being that is almost an impossibility in the telling. Consciousness is a mysticism that works in one direction of time. The blueprints and framework creating the great I are torched as they are made known. It is right and holy and a protection that we don't remember learning the word Mother. Milk. Love. So in penning a work that brings the Reader through that process where ...more

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May 24, 2012 Nathan "N.R." Gaddis added it · review of another edition

Shelves: joseph-mcelroy, 2014-gelesen

Hesiod’s Theogony.
Freud’s myth beyond the pleasure principle.
Genesis chapters one through eleven.
cogito ergo sum --> science.
Schelling’s The Ages of the World.
Philosophy coming to itself in Hegel’s History of Philosophy.
Consciousness from the This to Absolute Spirit ; The Phenomenology of Spirit.
Me Tarzan ; You Jane --> Us. Today. Now. Here.
Kasper Hauser.
Helen Keller, from nosight=nohearing=nolanguage to writing The Story of My Life.
From immersion of Dasein in everydayness to the thinking ...more

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Sep 30, 2013 Jonathan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Joe has given himself an impossible task here. He has attempted to write a text which describes an emerging consciousness, a Being other than Dasien, who has enough of a memory of English words for them to be used in a rational manner. However, there is a fracture between signifier and signified, and an impossibly Other experience of existence being expressed. To give one example – a brain, of course, has no eyes and no nerve endings, so cannot "feel" or "see" in the way we use those words.
Joe has given himself an impossible task here. He has attempted to write a text which describes an emerging consciousness, a Being other than Dasien, who has enough of a memory of English words for them to be used in a rational manner. However, there is a fracture between signifier and signified, and an impossibly Other experience of existence being expressed. To give one example – a brain, of course, has no eyes and no nerve endings, so cannot "feel" or "see" in the way we use those words. However, IMP PLUS is connected to a number of sensory devices (for example one measuring the photosynthesis occurring in the plant beds beneath him) and this input is "experienced" in a way which is similar to the way our brain "experiences" the input it receives from our retina. IMP PLUS calls it "seeing", as that is the only appropriate word he can find, though what it signifies is different. This can make the process of reading, for us Readers, rather confusing.

IMP PLUS also has flashes of memory, which are both beautiful and sad, and which further complicate his Being.

And so it all depends on whether you can enjoy reading in a state of uncertainty, if you can resist the urge to attempt to decipher each sentence so that it makes sense from a human perspective. My advice would just be to let it all flow and see how you feel at the end…personally I enjoyed the whole thing, and found the end rather moving…but you may think differently, of course.

*********************
Joe writes in the same way a 3d Printer creates an object.

They create through additive processes, layering successive pieces of a component, building cross-section upon cross-section until an object is formed. Completion, and by completion in this metaphor I mean "understanding" or the state of "having-read" (synonyms in an ideal world, but often not in reality, of course), is only possible once all the layers have been laid.

If we imagine sitting on the tip of the nozzle of some impossibly huge 3d Printer what would we experience? We would, I think, feel something akin to that which occurs in Joe's novels (and this one in particular). We would leap around in seemingly random steps, we would jar and jerk, we would get sea-sick. To pause the printing after the creation of the first line would not assist in uncovering meaning. The meaning is not to be uncovered, it is to be built. There are sentences, paragraphs in this novel which, were we to refuse to move forward until they were "understood", could fix us in place forever. Joe asks for our trust, we must ride out the process until it is complete. It is not linear, but it is not confused, and it is guided by a complex and strict blueprint.

And yet, to step out of this metaphor for a moment, there are individual sentences of great beauty. The music of the prose is stunning. While we wait for meaning to emerge, we can just listen:

"Imp Plus found in all the folds whose fibers gripped each lens of those eyes he had held with his own lost eyes a sweet humor of sugar and blood which unfolding flowed over him.
It was a fluid ground laid down upon furrows, fissures, ridges, rolls.
It flowed over Imp Plus’s body now, except that he had no body. Flowed into folds that were his.
"

"That sight as far off now as a spring day when he'd been touched - he couldn't cast away the touch - by another laughter which moved up the grid of his back, and he had turned from the unhooded carburetor of a car that would not go and had seen first acres of sea crest skimmed by three broad-winged shearwaters" ...more

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May 08, 2018 Max Nemtsov rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: edited

Бескомпромиссно, духоподъемно и жизнеутверждающе. Ебаная герметика, алхимия из Барроуза, Бекетта и Джеймза Келмена (хотя Келмен начал позже). В качестве кинематографического эпиграфа очень годится шизофренический советский фильм "Я был спутником Солнца" (там как показано начало эксперимента, мучительно описываемого в романе, так что, возможно, это был приквел).

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Jan 23, 2018 hearusfalling rated it it was amazing

Hard to know where to start with this novel – the usual question of “what’s it about?” doesn’t really seem adequate, almost childish considering this thing. I mean part of the book is about a language beyond language, a journey beyond the frail scope of human existence and into the very fabric of definition and meaning, the foundations of the self – the first real transhumanist novel? maybe.

As Yves Abrioux says in his erudite review (link here) the book is a ‘”posthuman Bildingsroman” which ...more

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Jan 18, 2016 Cody rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mcelroy

Recipe:
Take one part conventional Science Fiction story
Add two parts 'peppy' dialogue, 1 part vague 'techno' lingo
Slowly pour in love interest
Add 3/4 cup of 'saving the world' histrionics
Simmer on low for 45 minutes
Serve on decorative plate, garnished with edible flowers
Set entire plate on fire, beat it with the blunted side of an axe, and throw it out the window
Put head in blender
Enjoy!

Okay, where to begin? What can be said about Plus? I think everyone will get something different out of it. ...more

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Jan 17, 2017 ATJG added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017

Instantly among my favorite novels. I'm going to need some time to cobble together a review for this one. Lovely.

---

19 January 17

A few days have now passed, but, being the dyspeptic reader I am, who can say how many more days, how many more readings will be necessary before I can articulate the things I now can only intuit about this novel?

Initially, the obvious remark must be made about McElroy's stylistic uniqueness. There's nothing analogous. Friend David M. posits aesthetic kinship with ...more

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Jun 22, 2019 Josiah Morgan rated it really liked it

An outrageous accomplishment.

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Feb 10, 2016 Ronald Morton rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2016

Probably the weakest of the three McElroy books that I've read so far (the others at this point being Women and Men and Ancient History) and yet still a massive undertaking and accomplishment on McElroy's part.

Basically the book is a narrative about consciousness emerging, step by slow step - the narrative starts with basic awareness and then adds layer by layer - with additive vocabulary throughout the process - an awareness, and a remembered memory, that grows throughout the book.

I ...more

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May 18, 2016 David M rated it really liked it

A philosophical prose poem somewhat in the manner of the Unnameable, an exploration of the limits of personhood. Of course McElroy is far less grotesque than Beckett. The emotional content of his work can be difficult to register. By turns cold, paranoid, new age-y, and surprisingly traditional in his focus on familial themes. In its super-condensed and obscure fashion, Plus runs the gamut of McElory-isms.

This is now the fifth of his novels I've read. I would rank them in the following order, ...more

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Jul 17, 2015 Маx Nestelieiev rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: english

++++++++++++++++++++++++++
review in the form of letter to Joe
++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dear Joe! Greetings from Ukraine!
I hope your day is going well.
I have just finished your Plus (new ebook edition by Dzanc + I`ve just read your Plus Light you sent me + some articles about it) and I must say the truth - it is an amazing work of art, I think it is more some kind of sci-religious prose poetry than just ordinary prose.

Some Thoughts I Had While Reading
(probably you can just skip this part of my ...more

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Sep 26, 2017 Маx Nestelieiev rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: english

second reading in translation+app. 10 articles on Plus (+excerpt from Chevalaillier+Tabbi+Brooke-Rose books)+several interviews+tons of e-mails to author himself: cyborg-cyberpunk-sci-fi-post-human novel about experiment, especially linguistic one+Paul Weiss conception on cells and Noam Chomsky`s famous sentence+more Beckett than Joyce+crazy syntax+neologisms+tragedy without tragedy+brain bairn in cosmic pastoral+story on the unexpected growth=masterpiece ...more

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Feb 20, 2017 Connor rated it it was amazing

Probably the best 'science fiction' novel there is. A familiar plot explored in unfamiliar ways; the main questions being 'what is language without the human body' or more abstractly 'what are signifiers without the signs'.

two quotes I enjoyed from articles about this book:

" Plus amplifies semantic uncertainty and disarticulates language into its phonetic and syntactical elements, all the way down to noise, in order to magnify the process by which the relation between mind and communication is ...more

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Oct 28, 2009 Leif rated it did not like it

No. Perhaps you will glean more from Plus than I did if you are less tied to certain conventions of the novel, perhaps you will glean more from Plus if you are less tied (even) to departures from those conventions! Perhaps you will glean more from Plus if you are merely looking for uninteresting symbols placed at calculated distances apart, spaced semi-regularly over an interval of some two hundred pages. Perhaps then, and only then, will Plus reveal its majesty, its true brilliance.

Not for me!

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Aug 15, 2012 Jon Evans rated it really liked it

This book is a very tough read, but if you enjoy sci-fi then pick it up and give it a try.It's about a brain that has been removed from a body and is orbiting the earth.

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Jun 18, 2017 Brent Woo rated it liked it

Shelves: in-the-brain

Travel light.

I've never read anything like this. If this was made into a movie, it'd be the world's most boring movie. But as a book, it's compelling and strange. On the surface it's about a brain in some sort of spacecraft, orbiting Earth. And the book is the brain thinking to itself. It's Flowers for Algernon in a sci-fi setting, but like what if Charlie was... um, just a brain.

You know how there's some authors who are good at hinting what the story is, or giving teasers where you outline the ...more

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Dec 01, 2018 Sam rated it really liked it

"All came together loosely arranged by a force. It was there & touched Imp Plus who could feel it but not reach it"

"Plus" is one of the strangest books I've read, and certainly the only thing resembling science fiction – or maybe, more appropriately, fiction about science. In some basic sense, "Plus" is about a disembodied brain (IMP Plus) of a one time engineer– who had been suffering from fatal radiation poisoning–inserted into an IMP device (Interplanetary Monitoring Platform, a real NASA "All came together loosely arranged by a force. It was there & touched Imp Plus who could feel it but not reach it"

"Plus" is one of the strangest books I've read, and certainly the only thing resembling science fiction – or maybe, more appropriately, fiction about science. In some basic sense, "Plus" is about a disembodied brain (IMP Plus) of a one time engineer– who had been suffering from fatal radiation poisoning–inserted into an IMP device (Interplanetary Monitoring Platform, a real NASA initiative), orbiting Earth. Its fundamental mission is to report on glucose levels and chlorella development back to "Ground" via the "Concentration Loop". While at first things go fairly smoothly, with IMP Plus dutifully reporting the desired readings back to Ground, the true thrill of this novel is in witnessing the development of Imp Plus' own consciousness and his mission; recalling vague glimmers of memories from his former life (his lover, daughter, a vacation in Mexico) and the impossibility of reliving those now; his development of meaningful vocabulary, with a growing sense of tangible relations between elements; and fundamentally, an assertion of his own will over dictatorial and ultimately unseen forces. This is a book about loneliness, solipsism, narcissism, memory, the possibilities/limits of perception being, becoming, and ultimately personality. In a sense, "Plus" is just as much a realist fiction as thought experiment: McElroy dutifully and faithfully renders what it *would* (or could) be like were a disembodied brain to orbit earth and forced to "see" out of things that weren't eyes ("optic stalks"); as it was forced to reckon with glimmers of a past life which it will never again capture.

McElroy's prose here is deliberate, poetic, and insistent, as it must be – the closest he's come to "Unnameable" era Beckett. As IMP Plus accumulates words to describe his experience, McElroy cycles and recycles them to great impact. Words like "lattice", "crimson", "fold", and specific glimpses of memory like a "blind news vendor" or a woman on a beach muttering "Vanity" and "travel light" are obsessively turned over and over, reconfigured and re-contextualized creating a dizzying and transcendent relationship to the narrative and to IMP Plus' budding consciousness.

There are obvious frustrations and conceptual problems that arise from this premise, and the experience of reading it can be at times incredibly plodding, until McElroy swoops in with passages of such masterful beauty, facility, and poetic insight that it propels one to keep going, and insists that the reader care, culminating in an incredibly moving work. There is a tangible and marked progression here, which the reader activates and bears witness to by reading.

While I certainly enjoyed Plus far less than the two other McElroy's I've read (Women and Men and Lookout Cartridge), I found it illustrative of many of the same themes, from a radically different vantage. With "Plus", McElroy seems to be tackling the same problems of "Lookout Cartridge" from the reverse – while LC's Cartwright has seen too much which in turn reveals a sense of his consciousness and also a global network constantly unfurling (same could be said for Jim Mayn in W&M), Imp Plus cannot see at all, at least not in our traditional sense, and yet might have just as much to say about the question of perception, memory, and consciousness within the world, by precisely floating outside it. ...more

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Nov 22, 2019 Aditya Mallya rated it liked it

Few authors must have set themselves as ambitious a task as Joseph McElroy does in Plus. He decides to write from the point of view of a being whose consciousness is just emerging. The manner in which he captures the sensory overload of raw consciousness is extraordinary - he also charts an entirely plausible journey for this character from sensation to sentience. With how convincingly it captures a hybrid human-artifical intelligence and what the perspective of this intelligence might look ...more

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Apr 18, 2019 Pavel Gaiduk rated it it was amazing

Colourless green ideas sleep furiously

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Nov 07, 2017 Christopher Robinson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-and-kept, favorite-books, very-favorite-novels

Incredible. Plus is my favorite of the McElroy novels I’ve read to date (my third, preceded by A Smuggler’s Bible and Lookout Cartridge). Brief but dense, lyrically technical prose that sounds absolutely gorgeous when read aloud. Very absorbing at the start, wonderfully baffling by midway, and incredibly moving by the end. I can’t recommend Plus highly enough. Also, go into it knowing as few details
about the plot as possible. Let yourself be truly surprised by Plus. It’s an unforgettable ...more

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Feb 04, 2016 Betty rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: e-reader, engels, gelezen-in-2016

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Sep 07, 2010 Lyle rated it it was amazing

A tough read, but painfully faithful to what it must be like to be a disembodied brain orbiting the earth.

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About Joseph McElroy

Joseph McElroy

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Joseph McElroy is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist.

McElroy grew up in Brooklyn Heights, NY, a neighborhood that features prominently in much of his fiction. He received his B.A. from Williams College in 1951 and his M.A. from Columbia University in 1952. He served in the Coast Guard from 1952–4, and then returned to Columbia to complete his Ph.D. in 1961. As an English ...more