Should I Read Imagine By Jonah Lehrer?

In spite of the controversy surrounding Mr. Lehrer's latest publishing faux pos, I will be reviewing his book. Although exploration of blurring genre lines and it's impact on writing and publishing is an important topic, I won't be exploring that here. Nor will I be addressing Lehrer's recent admission to misquoting Bob Dylan. 

Instead I'm reviewing a book so interesting and thought provoking, it will stay with me for a long time. The value of which lies in the dialogue about our current education and it's ability to engender inovation, a skill vital to the future of the world.
  
About The Book: Did you know that the most creative companies have centralized bathrooms? That brainstorming meetings are a terrible idea? That the color blue can help you double your creative output?
From the New York Times best-selling author of How We Decide comes a sparkling and revelatory look at the new science of creativity. Shattering the myth of muses, higher powers, even creative “types,” Jonah Lehrer demonstrates that creativity is not a single gift possessed by the lucky few. It’s a variety of distinct thought processes that we can all learn to use more effectively.

Lehrer reveals the importance of embracing the rut, thinking like a child, daydreaming productively, and adopting an outsider’s perspective (travel helps). He unveils the optimal mix of old and new partners in any creative collaboration, and explains why criticism is essential to the process. Then he zooms out to show how we can make our neighborhoods more vibrant, our companies more productive, and our schools more effective.

You’ll learn about Bob Dylan’s writing habits and the drug addictions of poets. You’ll meet a Manhattan bartender who thinks like a chemist, and an autistic surfer who invented an entirely new surfing move. You’ll see why Elizabethan England experienced a creative explosion, and how Pixar’s office space is designed to spark the next big leap in animation. Collapsing the layers separating the neuron from the finished symphony,Imagine reveals the deep inventiveness of the human mind, and its essential role in our increasingly complex world.

    

First Line: Bob Dylan looked bored.

     

Great Quote: "The most creative ideas, it turns out, don’t occur when we’re alone. Rather, they emerge from our social circles, from collections of acquaintances who inspire novel thoughts. Sometimes the most important people in our lives are the people we barely know" (204).

What Others Are Saying: "It's rare that you read a book where every page has at least one "Aha!" moment, one moment per page that grabs your perspective and gives it a good shake. In other words, while reading this book, I kept experiencing the very phenomenon Jonah is investigating--the sensation of insight. That pleasant brain fever that overtakes you when you suddenly, in a flash, see the world in a new way." -Jad Abumrad is host and creator of the public radio hit Radiolab.

"The best way to think about “Imagine” is as a collection of interesting stories and studies to ponder and research further. Use it as a source of inspiration, but make your own careful choices about whether to believe what it says about the science of creativity."-NY Times

What I Thought: The ideas in Jonah Lehrer's Imagination aren't earth shattering, but they definitely open a dialogue about how our current education and corporate world are failing to inspire innovation. The bottom line, one that writers have known for a long time, is that creativity and original ideas don't occur in a vacuum. To have an original idea requires the ability to make unique connections between existing ideas or thought. Lehrer does an excellent job of outlining how the brain works and how ideas are born. Teaching in order to pass a test, currently used in schools, encourages rote learning and memorization instead of complex thinking. Innovation is stifled. I found Lehrer's presentation to have adequate tension and narrative that I didn't feel like I was reading a professional journal. Regardless of the correlations presented as conclusions or the misquoting of Bob Dylan, as a writer, I'm inspired to read and interact with people and the world more often. 

About The Author: Jonah Lehrer

Website

Twitter

Who: Jonah Lehrer is a Contributing Editor at Wired and a frequent contributor to The New Yorker. He writes the Head Case column for The Wall Street Journal and regularly appears on WNYC’s Radiolab. His writing has also appeared in Nature, The New York Times Magazine, Scientific American and Outside. He’s the author of two previous books, Proust Was A Neuroscientist and How We Decide. He graduated from Columbia University and attended Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

Conclusions: Should you read Imagination? Yes! If you are looking for an inspirational look at our amazing abilities to innovate and create than this is perfect. If you are looking for scientific accuracy and definitive studies than you will come away lacking. Lehrer is a good writer and I believe he will prevail through this current controversy and go on to add more to our literature cannon of the 21st Century.

Update: Why Letting Go Is Difficult...

      When you climb the incline on a rickety wood coaster there is a moment right before the drop that you think, "What the hell was I thinking?".  At the moment your first real labor pain grabs your abdomen for a split second you think, "What have I done?." and if your the father watching that first moment when a life begins you shake your head and think, "Now what do I do?"  

     These are ego moments. A pause in the experience where we question our ability to get to the next step. Getting beyond this moment requires a "letting go", an acceptance that deep down you have everything you need to carry you through.

    On the coaster we raise our hands and scream with delight, in labor we push with all our might and marvel at our bodies ability to do what it needs to,  as a parent we stare into the eyes of our newborn and trust that we will know what is best. The difficulty is real, we want to know what happens next, we want to know what to expect, we want to know if we made the right choice. 

     We like to think of our lives as arrivals and departures, but in reality those are of little consequence it's the journey in between when all the magic happens, the creativity begins.

    Deepak Chopra has three statements that encompass the "letting go" required to truly discover the soul--the true you:

                     I understand things in a new way.
                     I greet each day with fresh energy.
                     My life feels more whole. 
                                     (See Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul by Deepak Chopra)


                                                            
      If I can't connect with one of these statements I know I'm not tuned in. This month I have been working on achieving this tuned in state. It's been challenging (I suck at meditation) but ultimately rewarding.

How do the statements above make you feel?
How do you "let go"?
  
    

What Star Wars and Seseme Street Can Teach Us About Story Structure

   The other day I was looking at an article on Cracked.com entitled "17 Images That Will Ruin Your Childhood". I'll warn you, if you love nostalgia this will definitely crush some memories. 

So, it got me thinking about what I have been learning about story structure and plot. What made our childhood images so powerful was the effort that writers, artists and directors took to "suspend disbelief".  

Wait...isn't that what we are trying to do in our writing? 

Catherine Brady in her book Story Logic and the Craft of Fiction states," to think like an artist is to understand that story structure depends not on baldly advancing a literal conflict but on constructing a plot that articulates the exact parameters at the stories heart."  

Wow! That is a mouthful but think about it. What stories have you read that leave you changed and hungry for more? Why?

When I read a story, I don't want the author to come out and tell me what to think, just like a child I want to discover it myself.  It's how many of us are wired. Would the parables in the New Testament have as much impact if the true message was blatantly laid out?

Think about Faulkner and Munroe, their ability to use literal action to build the tension of the bigger story is epic! There are, of course many more that use this artistic scaffolding, invisible to the reader. It is only at the climax of the story do the questions that the tension aroused make sense. It's magic, a sleight of the hand.

What magic have you read lately?

On Your Mark, Get Set, Go!

     There is a sophisticated difference between sprinters and long distance runners. Their minds and bodies work differently together. While distance runners have a timed release of their energy, sprinters are able to bring all their energy into play in one great explosion on the track. Is one more valuable than the other? Of course not, when they finish successfully they are equally admired and rewarded. As writers, we also have different ways of getting our minds out onto the page.

     At the beginning, we start at the very same point. We get an idea and the sparks light up our brain, audio characters speak to us, visuals flood our mind and we are forced to spill it out onto the page. This is where we split into the pantsers and the plotters, the quick speed spiller or the slow thoughtful plodder. There are probably several degrees in between. Does it matter? Probably not. I believe however, we can learn a lot from one another and that is why blogging is such a valuable tool for us as writers.

     The valuable information, support and creative problem solving is incredible. What an exceptional resource we have as a writing community. For me, as I write alone in my office or in a cafe, I never feel alone. I feel that I have a group of cheerleaders urging me on and helping me to the finish!

Have you found that blogging has contributed to your success as a writer?