For a novel that takes place largely in cyberspace, there's something reassuringly old-fashioned about Sylvia Brownrigg's novel The Metaphysical Touch.
It's the tale of two people: Emily Piper, known as Pi, a University of California at Berkeley graduate student in philosophy who has lost all her worldly possessions in the 1991 Oakland Hills fire, and JD, a New York City computer techie who has been downsized out of both his job and his self-confidence.
See also: Return of the Living BBS- - - - - -
Through an odd turn of events they find each other online and cultivate an intense relationship. In this respect, The Metaphysical Touch owes more to the epistolary novels of the last century than to the cyberculture of millennial America.
The fire, by devouring everything Pi finds comfort in, forces her into an existential crisis of crippling proportions. Deprived of the physical trappings of her pointy-headed philosopher's existence -- books, more books, and her nearly finished graduate thesis on Kant -- Pi goes looking for something more real, not even sure anymore whether "real" exists.
Running away from Berkeley, she moves to the small Northern California coastal town of Mendocino. Here, she takes up residence with her best friend's aunt, who is facing an existential crisis of her own.
Cloistered in this tiny tourist town, Pi eventually discovers the Internet, which is just coming into popular existence. Pi stumbles across a BBS where JD, suicidal over his own plight, has posted his "diery" -- the journal of his self-destructive thoughts and observations, something of a slow-motion suicide note.
Brownrigg captures the excitement and trepidation of discovering that there's an entire, gigantic world living inside that box on your desk. Pi is at first afraid she'll become a big geek. After all, didn't she come to Mendocino to touch the real, not port off into another form of abstraction?
But soon enough she's hooked, like everyone else on this discussion group where JD has become a minor celebrity. They all use the alias of some famous artistic suicide, and Pi begins compulsively logging in as "Sylvia Plath."
JD, typing as "Hamlet," eventually contacts "Sylvia," and the two begin a virtual relationship that slowly draws them both out of their self-constructed shells, albeit in different ways.
What's so effective and, indeed, charming, about Brownrigg's novel is that JD and Pi don't do anything predictably. Richly developed, both central characters continually surprise and sometimes exasperate the reader with their humanity. Though a sexual tension is obvious from the first correspondence, there's no "Hey, baby, wanna go private?" action here. They're both much too, well, intellectual for that.
Instead, our two brainiacs engage in the kind of cerebral tango that's superficially about big ideas and knowledge but, for those who know how to read the cues, a lot more sexy than any one-handed typing. Love, it seems, can conquer even Kant.
"What I wanted to explore was the way it feels to be in an online relationship," said Brownrigg. "The idea of two people falling in love with each other's written voice, it's really romantic. I actually wanted to write this novel for many years but I didn't want to write some stuffy Victorian romance.
"Then, when email happened, it hit me that it was the perfect device for a modern epistolary novel. Email and the Internet has allowed the richness of written words back into people's lives in a way that I can only find exciting."
The paradox of the book, explained Brownrigg, is that a correspondence between two people who've never met is what finally brings them back into the real world.
Brownrigg, an expatriate American who lives in London, shares Pi's ambivalence about the virtual realm. "I do have mixed feelings about how much time it should take out," she said.
"Since I live in England I have a whole virtual America in my life. I probably spend an hour or more a day writing emails, but sometimes I'm not always sure that's a good thing."
