Book: A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness
Author: V.S. Ramachandran
Published: 2004 (Pi Press)
Pages: 112
You read that page count right, dear Reader. 112 of actual
content – PLUS 65 pages of endnotes. The doctor says at one point, “Like a
colleague says, the real story is in the endnotes!” which – dude, NO IT’S NOT.
If it’s not important enough to put on the first page about it, then why the
hell is it there in the first place?
And before you point out the big fat David Foster
Wallace-fanning hypocrite in the blog, guess what. Footnotes start on the same
page so at least you get the starting illusion that they have something to add
to the subject instead of something that’s only worth squirreling away.
This book was so brief and spazzy that I didn’t learn a damn
thing about the human consciousness that I hadn’t already gotten an “A” in for
Psych 101. (Except that ragging on Texas culture is an even weaker grasp at
humor when it’s abruptly inserted into a serious sentence.) It didn’t stay on
topic long enough to discuss any of the experiments that supported its
hypothesis about brain damage and how various points of said damage can show us
how the brain works. He had some interesting ideas that, if you ignored the
endnotes section (I did), were not supported at all, and even if you dipped
into the notes (…fine, I only mostly ignored them) were only offered anecdotal
evidence.
Plus he did that really annoying writing thing where he
went, “And here is where I will tell you about x.” He really didn’t fucking
need that tick, especially in such a small book. JUST SAY IT ALREADY.
I’ll be taking this one back to the library too.
Fortunately, I just got in the hold queue for a Pulitzer-prize winning
nonfiction, because I have not been batting well in this genre lately.
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