How I Became a Tree by Sumana Roy (review)

for fiction” (221). The material Keiser gathers here is interesting, but the arguments about hypochondria lose focus. One of the most ambitious moments of Nervous Fictions comes in the introduction when Keiser sees his nervous fictions as foundational in Cartesian dualism. His argument is subtle and, to my mind, deserves more attention in the book: Keiser contends that Descartes massages the difference between the pineal gland—an identifiable organ—and the mind through analogy. The pineal gland is the theater for the soul, but shares with the mind the quality of singularity. They are like each other, and through this quick-footed move, Descartes opens up the possibility of the mind itself as an internal theater—a metaphor that captures the imagination of countless writers and thinkers following him. With the publication of Nervous Fiction, Kesier joins and advances an important conversation of established scholars navigating what science could and could not do and also what it meant and how it meant. Nervous Fictions promises to chart new intellectual territory in how we understand the relationship between literature and science in the period—it is at once a relation of influence as well as mutual constitution.