Cheerskep: For one who emphasizes (sometimes on and on) the role of the mind
in deciphering meaning from, at least, words, one would have thought that
you would have thought that you would find Lehrer's reference to Stevens'
line about "august imagination" at least somewhat sympathetic to your
perceptions.
Do you mean to deny the 'immateriality" of consciousness?
Geoff C
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Lehrer and Whitman
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 17:14:43 EST
I'm afraid I truly began to object to Jonah Lehrer and to his book "Proust
Was a Neuroscientist" even before I got to a word Lehrer wrote. A mind that
would choose this quote from Wallace Stevens to be the first line of his
book
is
not a mind for me:
"Reality is a product of the most august imagination."
Sounds august itself, that line, doesn't it? It is, like much Stevens's
poetry, a dreary commonplace jumped up by the emperor's generalizations to
seem
like profound wisdom. Not only is it falsely inflated, it is, to most
anyone
who
considers it seriously, false period.
We all have heard the commonplace expressed in homlier terms, like, "What
one
man sees as a glass half empty, another sees as a glass half full." The
pessimist and the optimist, addressing the same "facts", will interpret
them
very
differently. The underlying notion is true enough but utterly trite. Do you
feel the "reality is" that the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish
and
short? I don't. We have different attitudes, energy-levels, "livers" --
thus
producing what Stevens calls our imaginations.
Where Stevens's cliche merits being called flatly false, is, say, when you
step in a hole and break your leg, or get cancer, of your spouse's head is
crushed by a falling rock. That rock is, in most people's vocabulary,
"real";
it is
not the product of anyone's imagination. Beware of anyone who begins a
sentence, "Reality isb&"
From his "Prelude" (Oy!), I judge Lehrer an adroit and mellifluous writer
whose mind is, as Whitman's was, as romantically drippy and formless as
melted
chocolate.
I have never enjoyed people who revel in their inconsistency -- as Whitman
did. Lehrer differs from Whitman: Lehrer does not realize he is
inconsistent.
The one line from his "Prelude" I hope you will remember as you read on in
his book is:
"Our science is incomplete, no map of matter will ever explain the
IMMATERIALITY of our consciousness."
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