Joseph Epstein’s article, Writing on the Brain, has me pegged!
I was recently asked what it takes to become a writer. Three things, I answered: first, one must cultivate incompetence at almost every other form of profitable work. This must be accompanied, second, by a haughty contempt for all the forms of work that one has established one cannot do. To these two must be joined, third, the nuttiness to believe that other people can be made to care about your opinions and views and be charmed by the way you state them. Incompetence, contempt, lunacy?once you have these in place, you are set to go.
The article is a review of a book on brain function, The Midnight Disease, by Alice W. Flaherty. Epstein spends a lot of time discussing the science of brain function, which is what interested me, while discussing writing and its relationship to thought processes. He congratulates Flaherty for the unassuming nature of her conclusions, but disagrees with many of them:
I should like Dr. Flaherty to know that my two motives in writing this essay have been, first, to collect a decent fee, and, second, to try to knock down her book as an assemblage of profoundly muddled notions that I, given my calling, find mildly but genuinely offensive.
Incompetance, contempt, lunacy….”
Great! I sent this to best sellin’ author Joe Galloway. It about sums it up…and I’m sure he’ll agree.
Comment by Wallace — April 13, 2004 @ 9:54 am
Does he also have a diseased mind, or just a Texas one?!
Comment by Bunker — April 13, 2004 @ 10:40 am
If you like reading about brain fucntion, try ‘Phantoms in the Brain’ by Dr. V. Ramachandran. Spooky and fascinating.
Comment by Blueshift — April 14, 2004 @ 12:56 am
I would like to get the email address of Dr. V. Ramachandran in order to ask a question concerning his new book PHANTOM IN THE BRAIN.
Comment by Kovida — May 13, 2004 @ 11:37 pm