Marty Gerber
  • Blog
  • About
  • Praise
  • Contact
  • TNB Home

Writing on my mind

Skip the Book, Just Read His Brain

10/4/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Do the same parts of the readers' brain become active when they read specific parts of a book as the ones that fired when the author wrote the passage?
The world of the atom, the world of the cosmos—it’s all so last century. Now it’s the world of the mind—or at least the brain—that dominates science reporting, with its research and discoveries about what actually happens in our heads as we go through the daily whirlwind of thoughts and emotions, interactions and experiences.

These synapses spark as we devour a hot fudge sundae; those cells flash watching a psycho on the screen seize his victim; the blood throbs here thinking of our beloved, thrums there at the ex-beloved who jilted us.

And what happens when we read a book?


What happens when we write one?

The masters of neuroscience have set out to find the answers. And for an eager guinea pig—who knows, he might even write about it one day?—they lucked into Arnon Grunberg, one of Europe’s hottest young novelists.

The idea was to connect him to enough gadgets and gizmos to monitor his every twitch, pulse, and brain wave as he labored over his latest novella—and then do the same to fifty people reading the book.


Will the same parts of the readers’ brains go into gear when they read specific sections as the ones Grunberg mined to write them? And does this mean they’re cycling through the same patterns of understanding and emotion?

That is the question.

And if so, so what?

As for Grunberg himself, there might be reason to question how seriously he’s taken his foray into brain imaging technology. In the past, he’s been accused—by admirers—of viewing the life and work of a writer as something of a lark. After all, this is a man honored twice for writing the best first novel in his native Netherlands—first as himself and then again six years later under a pseudonym.

So how does it feel trying to mix an insider’s and outsider’s view of pounding the keyboard while twenty-eight electrodes are affixed to his skull? Said Grunberg: “It’s like having someone else embedded in my own brain.”

Wow, does that make me shudder and cringe! Writing a book can be crazy-making enough for some of us even when there’s no one else inside there but little old me.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    Marty Gerber is the editor and co-owner of Terra Nova Books. He established the publishing company in partnership with his son, Scott, in 2012 after working as a freelance editor of books and professional journals since the early 1990s. Before that, he was a newspaper writer and editor for many years, both with some of the nation’s leading dailies and as the founder of startups in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, N.M. He also has taught journalism at New York University and the University of Arizona, and has ghostwritten two books and written two others as himself.

    Archives

    April 2016
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    April 2014


    RSS Feed


    Twitter
    Picture
    Facebook
    Picture

    Categories

    All
    Amazon
    Amazon Kindle
    Arnon
    Author
    Ayana Mathis
    Best First Novel
    Best-Seller List
    Best-selling
    Beyond The Will Of God
    Bias
    Blurbs
    Book Review
    Book Title
    Brain
    Catherine McKenzie
    Competition
    Contemporary Fiction
    Creative
    Creative Nonfiction
    Customer
    Dallas Cowboys
    Daniel Mendelsohn
    Data Mining
    David Biddle
    Discovery
    Don't Tell
    EBooks
    Ego
    Elena Ferrante
    Eliza Gabbert
    Essential Good
    Five-star
    Future Of Books
    Gary Shteyngart
    Goddess
    Grunberg
    Hachette
    Heart Of Darkness
    Hubris
    Independent
    Indie Author
    Interview
    Juliet
    Kindle
    Koan
    Kowtow
    Literary Fiction
    Literature Of Reality
    Lyric Essay
    Maggie Shipstead
    Megan Stielstra
    Miranda July
    Mohsin Hamid
    Netherlands
    Neuroscience
    New York Times
    Novelist
    Objectivity
    One-star
    Oyster
    Paris
    Pew
    Phone
    Point Of View
    Praise
    Print
    Print Books
    Profit
    Quantum Physics
    Reading Habits
    Review
    Revision
    Roadmap For Success
    Rose
    Scribd
    Self-published
    Self-publishing
    Shakespeare
    Show
    Siddhartha Deb
    Simon & Schuster
    Sisyphus
    Sweet
    Terra Nova Books
    The First Bad Man
    Time Keeps On Slipping Into The Future
    Title
    Track
    Turgid
    Walmart
    Writers Block
    Writing

Copyright 2014 - Marty Gerber   All Rights Reserved
Terra Nova Books