July 2012 Archives

At the Sunday Morning Book Club of the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Houston, we finished our discussion of INCOGNITO by David Eagleman. I waxed and waned on this book quite a bit - probably more so on this book than any I have read recently. I found some chapters very enlightening and other chapters kind of "thin" possibly written mainly to entertain and achieve a bestseller status (which it did). But the final chapter did not disappoint and was the best part of the book.

I learned some minor details about things such as seizures of those with temporal lobe epilepsy which induce victims of this disease (or condition) to hear voices from an external presence such as God and often to be hyper-religious. It has been speculated by some neuro-scientists that Muhammad had such seizures as well as Joan of Arc.

I also learned not such minor details such as in David Eagleman's opinion, the Human Genome Project was a failure. He said that we HAD to complete it but that doesn't mean it achieved the expectations that many hoped for. Basically the Human Genome Project convinced many scientists (perhaps not all?) that the complexity of our DNA is to such a degree that finding solutions for diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and kidney disease has been moved out to a much further horizon in time.

And continuing on the subject of complexity, combined with the subject of reductionism which basically is a method of scientific inquiry where scientists spend lots of time in labs examining molecules, Eagleman indicated he thought we needed to totally re-think this method of inquiry - that it was doomed to failure - can't remember if he used these exact words but this was my conclusion based on what I read of his opinions. He was definitely pessimistic about successfully understanding human life if we didn't radically pursue other paths of investigation. Made a few of us in our discussion think of the often used term "paradigm shift".

He sums up this point near the end of the book by writing the following:

A meaningful theory of human biology cannot be reduced to chemistry and physics, but instead must be understood in its own vocabulary of evolution, competition, reward, desire, reputation, avarice, friendship, trust, hunger, and so on - in the same way that traffic flow will be understood not in the vocabulary of screws and spark plugs, but instead in terms of speed limits, rush hours, road rage, and people wanting to get home to their families as soon as possible when their workday is over.

Looking forward to our discussion next Sunday, July 15th when we will begin a new book titled THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY by Will Durant. More information about our group can be found at www.houstonbookclubs.org/SundayMorning/

Twenty five of us from Houston Montrose Great Books crowded into the conference room on the first floor of the Houston Freed Montrose Library last Thursday, July 5th to discuss SENSE OF AN ENDING by Julian Barnes. Almost too many but can't deny there was lots of energy in the room. One had to be aggressive to get their points heard except when at the end of the discussion, we go around the room in a very civilized fashion and ask for input and final words from each attendee (it's okay to pass) in a "one at a time" mode.

David lead the group and I can't remember the question he started with. I DO remember that nearly everyone expressed great appreciation for the quality of writing. I also remember that though many thought the quality of writing was quite good, they thought the story didn't measure up. Most felt there was too much ambiguity causing frustration on the part of the reader who was enticed to solve several mysteries presented by the story but not given enough information to come to any solutions. Major themes included aging, memories, time, and corroboration by others of your own life and behaviour. The protagonist, Tony, passes from adolescence to old age (or late middle age) at 60.

The writing is so spectacular, in my opinion, it didn't bother me that the story had so many frustrating ambiguities. My summary at a high level would probably be "life is complicated". The protagonist is a fairly good "universal man" and is depicted in all his faults and his good traits. But one key element is having a poor memory about what really happened in his earlier years regarding a favorite friend named Adrian and a girlfriend named Victoria.

One particularly astute review from the web on goodreads.com had a great conclusion, in my opinion: "..past events are easier to understand from the historical perspective, the fact that one can see an event in its entirety, more objectively, and from various angles with the passage of time, which allows for a more accurate account of that event. In other words, it's hard to maintain a clear perspective on something while in the thick of things."

It just so happens that I am reading INCOGNITO by David Eagleman at this time also for another group. And one of the premises of INCOGNITO is that our consciousness (human consciousness) is notoriously unreliable. Because SENSE OF ENDING is a very recent book (won the Booker Prize for 2012), and because I have been reading about recent discoveries in neuroscience in so many prominent places such as the NYTimes, The Economist and The New Yorker, I'm wondering if the author of SENSE OF AN ENDING didn't have in mind when he wrote the book some of these recent studies about the poor reliability (and in fact just plain incorrect) memories that most of us apparently have according to the experts.

And I'll close this review with some quotes from the book which I found intriguing or humorous or insightful:

• "..I would be hit by a sense of what I can only call pre-guilt: the expectation that she was going to say or do something that would make me feel properly guilty."
• "..look ahead, and then imagine yourself looking back from that future point. Learning the new emotions that time brings."
• "We end up belonging to the same category, that of the non-young."
• "Do you know something I dread? Being an old person in a hospital and having nurses I've never met calling me Tony. ...Of course by the time this happens, over familarity from he nursing staff may be way down my list of anxieties; but even so."
• "It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others."
• "..nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions.."
• "Sometimes I think that the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be."
• "Some Englishman once said that marriage is a long dull meal with the pudding served first."

Looking forward to our next meeting on Thursday, August 2nd at 6pm at Houston Freed Montrose Library when we will be discussing THE CONFIDENCE MAN by Herman Melville. More details about upcoming discussions for our group can be found at www.houstonbookclubs.org/Montrose