A. S. Byatt, the Novel, and the Brain

A. S. Byatt's essay in the TLS on the modern novel's fascination with the body is stimulating--and too short, alas. I hope she considers writing on the same subject at greater length. Essentially she follows Richard Sennett in saying that our habit of forming our sense of personal identity through our sexuality, and hence our bodies, has led to both alienation and narcissism.

Byatt looks toward current neurological research as an antidote to our obsessions, at least where the novel is concerned:

"A novel is made of language, and arouses both feelings and thoughts in its readers, as it should depict both feelings and thoughts in its people and its microcosm. [French neuroscientist Jean-Pierre] Changeux’s descriptions of the cells of the brain and the way they combine and recombine give me a sense of understanding the excitement, the drive, the pleasure, I get out of making worlds with words. We have had a lot of the body as desire, and listened to many professors of desire. There is something else – the human capacity to think, and to make feelings into thoughts. It is a way out of narcissism."

This linking of our new understanding of how our brains work with how we experience art is very much at the core of Jonah Lehrer's rich and beautifully written new book, Proust Was A Neuroscientist, which I reviewed for the Los Angeles Times back in October. Lehrer sees in the work of several artists--among them Proust, Gertrude Stein, Whitman, Stravinsky--anticipations of the model of the brain that is emerging from laboratories and research centers.

Lehrer and Byatt are both on to something: how writers and other artists can be the medium of an understanding of ourselves that science winds up catching up with; and how science can help bring about a new understanding of ourselves, one that can liberate us from treacherous or demoralizing worldviews, and that can open up new possibilities for artists. I am sure we'll be reading more essays and books like Byatt's and Lehrer's.