Sam's review
Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer (Goodreads author!)
A quick and fascinating read, but also a bit fad-ish. As he pushes his interesting and innovative line of reasoning, Lehrer's examples seem to lose some of their argumentative force as the book progreses.
Take for instance the way he goes about using his subjects as parallels for recent neuroscientific discoveries: as his argument continues into the second half of the book, his points grow more and more analogical and abstract.
For example, the chapters on Whitman and Proust are concise and matter-of-fact (as much as possible) whereas he becomes much more poetic when addressing the artistic philosophy behind Cezanne's paintings. Likewise, the final chapters which examine Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf seem to embrace a more fanciful and coincidental connection to neuroscience than what Lehrer spoke of in regards to Whitman, Escoffier or Proust.
All in all, I strongly recommend the book despite its somewhat let-down of an ending. It opens up a very interesting discussio...more
Take for instance the way he goes about using his subjects as parallels for recent neuroscientific discoveries: as his argument continues into the second half of the book, his points grow more and more analogical and abstract.
For example, the chapters on Whitman and Proust are concise and matter-of-fact (as much as possible) whereas he becomes much more poetic when addressing the artistic philosophy behind Cezanne's paintings. Likewise, the final chapters which examine Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf seem to embrace a more fanciful and coincidental connection to neuroscience than what Lehrer spoke of in regards to Whitman, Escoffier or Proust.
All in all, I strongly recommend the book despite its somewhat let-down of an ending. It opens up a very interesting discussio...more
