This book was SO annoying.

He presents pages and pages of other people's research into scattered aspects of how brains work through four pretend people whose lives he's made up to illustrate his points. Harold and Erica are the main ones, but we also spend a ton of time having to hang out with Harold's parents. "This is the happiest story you've ever read!" the book claims, for some reason. In reality, the events of Harold's and Erica's lives range from stressful and frustrating to downright tragic. How the heck does Brooks claim any of this counts as happy at all, much less the HAPPIEST STORY EVER?

Maybe Brooks has never read any fiction books, because wow. This "story" such as it is -- in no way qualifies as "happy."

As you can see, I am overly concerned with Harold and Erica. What does it matter if their lives were happy, given that the point of this book was just to convey to me facts about neuroscience research?
It matters because Harold and Erica were horrible distractions.

I'm not against conveying scientific findings by means of story. Deborah Tannen basically does that through 100% of her books, and it works for me. It's a lubricating vehicle, the spoonful of sugar to help the otherwise dry science and statistics go down. My problem with Harold and Erica is that they did not lubricate anything, and instead threw up barriers to accessing what would have otherwise been interesting science.

Stories and anecdotes work to convey abstract, complicated ideas by encapsulating them in situations we all can instinctively understand, and by catching and holding your interest easier than a detailed page of statistical analysis could. Harold and Erica failed at being effective lubrication first because they were boring. Their "story" did not hold my interest any better than if Brooks had simply presented his information in organized chapters and argued transparently for his conclusions. In fact, it actively disengaged my interest by annoying the hell out of me.

I picked up this book because I wanted to learn about sociology and the brain -- not because I just really wanted to read about two flat caricatures falling in temporary love and living implausible, unsatisfying lives. If I wanted that, I could have read one of those classics, like Mrs. Dalloway, and gotten way more street cred -- the ones that make you existentially uncomfortable and seem like they're about nothing while actually being a deep examination of the human condition.

Second, the disjointed treatment of Harold and Erica's stories dragged The Social Animal down by constantly distracting from the point of the book. Harold and Erica are paper-mache intellectual models, not real characters from a novel, so of course they aren't treated like novel characters, nor should they be. Brooks didn't need to spend every moment of every day with them, so in my opinion the time jumps he did were fine and necessary. What wasn't fine was the way some massive, life-altering conflict between them would be introduced... and never resolved.

Harold desperately wants kids, and Erica screams at him when he brings it up. Why? We don't know. The book never mentions this conflict again. Harold and Erica go through a horrible period where they resent each other for years and barely speak, living together as strangers in the same house. Erica cheats on Harold, then regrets it and thinks about how she needs to "repair her marriage." Next chapter, years have gone by and they're all good again.

At this point, I've had to emotionally invest in Harold and Erica a little just to get through the book without ripping out all my hair -- and I'm PREOCCUPIED by this. They hated each other last chapter! What happened? I can't just let that go -- no explanation, not even a throwaway line to handwave it. Did Brooks not need to do any chapters on the neuroscience of resolving conflict or anything? Same with the kids/no kids fight. I can't concentrate on the statistics Brooks is flinging at me when I'm wondering WTH is up with Erica's aversion to children, why they never hashed this out, and how Harold doesn't spend the rest of his life resenting Erica!

Even though straw men like Harold and Erica don't deserve the detail and focus a novel would lavish on them, these kind of holes are too careless, too choppy, when they're glaring enough to actually distract from the information Brooks is trying to convey. They leave me confused. The book claims to show "how success is achieved," but I've read the whole thing and still have no idea how success is achieved. Is it achieved by faffing about until you meet a hot girl and then marry her and then spend the rest of your life as her mildly dissatisfied but passive kept husband? Is it achieved by striving so constantly and working so feverishly every day that all enriching relationships fall by the wayside, including your marriage? Because those are the only two options I see presented here.

In addition, I believe Harold and Erica made the book worse by acting as crutches. The infinite variation of having their whole lives as a canvas, from the cradle to the grave, allowed Brooks to unleash a monologue on any topic of interest even vaguely related to the science of the unconscious mind. In chapter after chapter, he jumped from topic to topic, giving brief insights about each, but not following any overarching theme for the whole book except "the unconscious mind." He makes some point that the influence of the unconscious mind is underestimated in today's rationalist society, but that's as close as I can come to "the Big Point" to take away from The Social Animal.

The information I learned is fragmented and scattered. If someone said, "So tell me some cool insights you learned from that book!" I would be at a loss. When the topic of babies' development comes up in conversation in the future, I will remember some tidbits about how they cry in sympathy with recordings of other babies crying, and not with a recording of their own cries! But I wouldn't be able to summarize anything for you. It's all disorganized, isolated facts, because disorganized, isolated facts were nearly all the book offered.

Finally, I think the device of Harold and Erica weakened the book by forcing/allowing Brooks to not really delve into any detail with or have to really prove his research. Using Deborah Tannen as a counterexample again - her use of anecdotes to support her theories comes off as weighty and valid because they are the stories of REAL people that she knows and has surveyed. Their single experience, while possibly not the best evidence, is at least EVIDENCE to support or detract from Tannen's findings.

Harold and Erica are not evidence. They are straw men, and their story affirms none of Brooks' conclusions or arguments. Their story allows you to understand his views better, perhaps, but it is HUGE and time-consuming. It is literally the whole book. Using all that page space and effort on a mere illustrative parable means that Brooks has very little room to go into specifics on the actual research he cites, or expand on how such-and-such a study actually supports his opinion that systematic societal ills are only treatable through cultural initiatives, or whatever.

This is supposed to be a book providing insights on neuroscience and sociology, not Animal Farm.