Neuropath is in many ways, exactly the kind of book that I enjoy writing about : It features some really interesting ideas and it doesn't quite work for reasons that are in themselves interesting.
Interestingly, Neuropath covers a lot of the same ground as Peter Watts' Blindsight, easily my favourite read of 2007. However, since I reviewed Blindsight I have done some thinking about the role of folk psychology in fiction, prompting me to have second thoughts about some of the goings on in that particular work. But having said that, I think Neuropath advanced my thinking on the matter quite a bit beyond the ideas I was throwing about when I wrote about Dexter.
NB : This review was based upon a review copy provided by the publisher
I'm not going to argue your aesthetic conclusions, Jonathan, except to suggest that at a certain point you stopped reading and began analysing. Info-dumps, which are a boiler-plate generic convention in techno-thrillers, either work or fail depending on the interest of the reader. If you come to them with a 'blah-blah-blah' or 'been-there-seen-it' attitude then they are doomed to fail. Not surprisingly, the book fails with them.
We'll have to wait and see what the critical consensus is. Aside for taking issue with the repetition (which I intentionally included because some of my readers said they appreciated it), you're the lone dissenter so far.
What I do want to take issue with is your reading of the philosophy, which I think is, well, hamfisted at best. The position espoused in the book is NOT eliminative materialism. In fact, it takes no metaphysical position at all.
I knew from the outset that this would be the primary philosophical misreading of the book, which is part of the reason why I so emphatically (and yes, repetitively) identify the problem in EPISTEMOLOGICAL terms. Everywhere you turn you find cognitive psychology in this book - something which your review completely, and quite conveniently, overlooks. Because you failed to pick up on this, you seem to have slotted the Argument into a form that you seem to think can be easily diagnosed and dismissed.
The position espoused in the book is skeptical naturalism, the contention that humans are so bad at theoretical cognition (a fact well-established in cognitive psychology), that outside the sciences there is very little we can confidently hang our cognitive hats on, (though we are continually forced to for pragmatic reasons).
The fact is, the sciences are revealing a picture of ourselves that is very troubling. Experience is just not what we think it is, which is to say we are not what we think we are. And this threatens everything we think we know. As I mention in the Afterword, the conflict is between experience and knowledge. Neuropath does not resolve this conflict in any way.
You are right about one thing: I was very ambitious with this work (there are multiple levels of subtext and commentary your review does not even acknowledge, let alone consider) the same as with my fantasies, which is why I think my books seem to succeed or fail so spectacularly with different readers.
Posted by: Scott Bakker | June 09, 2008 at 05:18 PM
Scott --
Thanks for the response. I suspected that it might come ;-)
On your first point, there wasn't a time when I switched modes. I engage with all art analytically regardless of whether I'm reading for review or watching a film to kill off some time. In fact, I'm not certain I know how to turn it off, it's so ingrained in my personality. So I didn't switch modes while reading, I read the book the same way I read everything.
Having said that the implication that I came to the book with a negative opinion could not be further from the truth. I dig the literary form and I dig the subject material (a lot), I just don't think that Neuropath does justice to either of them.
As for the critical consensus... *shrug* if everyone disagrees with me I will not lose any sleep. If the book goes on to make you a millionaire, I will be pleased for you. I make no claims to omniscience or to completeness, I am merely one voice in the great genre conversation.
As for the philosophical position you advance in the book, I think that you have put your finger on the problem; I don't think that the nuances of your position come across clearly in the book. The basics of The Argument are firmly established and revisited a number of times but it's not actually until your afterword that any blue water at all emerges between your view and that of eliminative materialism.
In part I think it's because the difference hinges upon quite a subtle epistemological point between the language of folk psychology being useless and it being literally false. I've certainly known people identify as EM on epistemological grounds rather than ontological/metaphysical ones, but that's really beside the point, though I'd be up for discussing the matter as a distinct side bar (if only because I'd like to be clearer on the details of your position).
I agree that the presence of cognitive psychology in the book is interesting and would probably support a critical piece in its own right. I touch upon the issue when I mention that there's a lot of Mind-speak about Brain-states ("this brain is in love with you") but I don't think that failing to go into any detail on this allowed me to dismiss The Argument. In fact, I'm not aware that I did dismiss it, especially as I buy into it. In fact, I even took it on board enough to suggest that The Argument, if true, may well kill drama.
If you did include sub-texts, I must admit that they passed me by, though in fairness they also seem to have passed by the authors of the other reviews that are currently online, so the issue may not be reviewer perspicacity but author clarity *shrug* I do not claim omniscience any more than they do. As critics all we can ever do is engage as fully as possible with the books we review and it is only time and the opinions of others that determine our worth. In this respect our reputations are as much a hostage to fortune as your own as an author :-)
Thanks again for the response.
Posted by: Jonathan M | June 09, 2008 at 06:14 PM
I just like arguing with you, Jonathan! Perverse, I know.
Of course, from your perspective, it has to be the book's fault - a 'miswriting.' Whereas from mine, it has to be your fault - a 'misreading.'
Teaching has taught me to be very critical of my own reading. There's been too many times I've had students ask me to reread essays that I thought horrible the first time through, only to be stunned upon a second look. We're simply too susceptible to too many cognitive foibles to really ever completely trust our conclusions - especially when it comes to something as occult as interpretation! It's not a matter of losing sleep, only of acknowledging that all us of misread things all the time.
Are you suggesting you don't misread things, or that you just don't care?
The differences between skeptical naturalism and eliminative materialism are pretty stark - nothing subtle or nuanced about it. And as you say, I repeat the position several times in several different ways. This is why I'm inclined to think you clearly misread the book. It strikes me as an obvious 'man with a hammer' example. You saw nails.
My *guess* was that you were familiar with eliminative materialism beforehand (were you not?) so that's what you assumed was THERE. Since ignorance is invisible, you assumed that was all there was. Since you're not inclined to question your interpretations, you shrugged and moved on.
This, by the way, is the primary reason why it usually takes several years for some books to establish a critical reputation, while others simply fade into obscurity, despite being critical darlings out of the gate. It's only as the alternate interpretations pile up that the interpretative promiscuity of a text - the depth and the richness of the subtexts - become obvious.
As for the book becoming a bestseller - fat chance of that! A tragic ending. A hero who really doesn't do anything. And lots of philosophical conversations.
The math doesn't add up!
Still, I think this is the best book I've written so far, so of course I'm going to take exception to your claim that it's poorly written. But I really think you would be better served as a critic if you approached everything you read realizing that misreading is inevitable, that the vagaries of things like digestion, not to mention your innumerable cognitive shortcomings, will sometimes ruin your ability to appreciate.
We humans are externalizing, rationalizing machines: it's almost always the book, the other guy, the circumstances, that's at fault.
Look at Amazon: how many times do you see anybody say anything like, "this book was so great it defeated my attempt to read it!" Sounds like a joke, I know. And yet I think all of us have had the experience in school of hating a book, then coming to love it in the course of writing an essay on it. For me it was Hawthorne.
You have to do this. Otherwise it's just a matter of preferring peas to potatoes.
Posted by: Scott Bakker | June 09, 2008 at 08:32 PM
Weeeeell, it's complex.
In order for there to be a misreading, there has to be a correct way of understanding a book, the "death of the author" thing is a reaction against this as if you do think that the author has superior insight into his own works then the critic becomes a literary detective, going back over the details of authors lives in order to work out what might have influenced what.
I don't think my job as a critic is to tell people what you had in your head when you wrote the book. So to the extent that failing to do that is misreading a book, no, I don't care about misreading a book. It's not my job to go through your trash and talk to your ex-girlfriends ;-)
However, I once read a review of the film The Host in which the reviewer criticised the film for showing the monster in the first five minutes because it was breaking with genre conventions. But this was clearly an intensional gesture by the director who showed us the monster and then went on to concentrate on the fallout from the monster attacks, which was the real meat of the film.. So I definitely think that that review misread what he was watching.
So my answer to your question is that it depends. I don't think a misreading comes down to an interpretation of a book being false, I think that the criteria are more aesthetic than that. This is why Northrop Frye refers to criticism as an artform in and of itself.
As for your second question : No, I wasn't aware of eliminative materialism. I knew that a) some people deny the existence of the self, b) some people reject folk psychology as a means of interacting with other people and c) some people want to chuck out the language of the mind in favour of the language of the brain. But I did not tie any of these positions together in any meaningful way and I certainly didn't have the label 'eliminative materialism' until I went looking for it.
I referred to your position as a variant of eliminative materialism as both positions reject the use of mind-language.
I think the difference between rejecting that language because the mind doesn't exist and rejecting that language because facts about the mind are unknowable is quite a subtle one. Maybe not in a philosophy paper, but in a novel.
I may be mis-characterising your position here. I'm unsure. But then that's kind of my point :-)
I do accept that my perception is flawed. This is why I make no claims to my vision being the only "true" one. It is an opinion, a vision of the book and in time it will be part of the great conversation of genre that elevates some books and dashes others.
But this sword cuts both ways.
My perceptions may be flawed but then so might yours. Maybe the book does not convey the subtleties of your philosophical position as well as you think it does.
As for the book's success, you never know. They made a film out of They Shoot Horses Don't They? and that's arguably more bleak and inactive than Neuropath. They dance, stuff happens, he puts her out of her misery : The End.
Posted by: Jonathan M | June 10, 2008 at 12:31 AM
I'm just talking about interpretative possibilities. Some missed. Others ugly.
But it is a fact, I think, that realizing you're probably missing more than you're catching makes you a better reader.
One of the reasons why I love reading groups is that I often have my head turned around on books. Nothing like raking a book with multiple perspectives to reveal the interpretative possibilities.
Some of these possibilities are encoded by the writer. Others are emergent, they simply arise from accidental intersections of word and context - fridge-magnet style. All I'm saying is that Neuropath is much deeper than the book you read.
Because you didn't see those depths, and because you, like everyone else, are your own master yardstick, of course it's going to seem as though I came up short. But really, all I have to say is, keep an eye out for animal references, and suddenly a whole semantic sub-economy will spring to light. It will seem painfully obvious, after the fact. Suddenly, "What's he prattling on about?" becomes "How did I miss that?" Or how about references to the home, to politics, and what the hell is up with all the pockets? I could go on and on.
But you have a thesis to defend, and interpretative underdetermination and confirmation bias being what they are, you will undoubtedly convince yourself of your conclusion.
And above that, the fact remains the book just didn't click for you.
Posted by: Scott Bakker | June 10, 2008 at 11:33 AM
Scott --
This reminds me of the stories about Derrida, who supported the call for the death of the author right up until it became widely known just how much of a Nazi Heidegger actually was, at which point Derrida started to try and claim that yes, the author is dead but his books can't possibly be interpreted as being affected by Nazi thought.
The sword of self-justification cuts both ways. I've never claimed that any of my reviews were definitive or objectively true. I have always worked under the assumption that my voice is but one part of a wider conversation within the critical fraternity.
However, as it is a sword that cuts both ways, you also have to recognise that your vision of the book is but one voice in that exact same conversation. You may have intended to write a book that was rich in sub-text and where your ideas about the mind came across clearly but I don't see that in the text that I read.
We are both projecting interpretations onto the text. Both interpretations are subjective and incomplete because that's the only way humans CAN think about books.
It's not my job as a critic to write about the book you intended and clearly think you did write. I can only comment upon the text that was kindly placed before me and I did that by engaging as much as I could with the book.
Of course other interpretations are possible, but my reaction to the book is not made invalid by the existence of these other interpretations. No more than your opinion of the book is invalidated by mine.
Posted by: Jonathan M | June 10, 2008 at 12:27 PM
As I said...
Posted by: Scott Bakker | June 10, 2008 at 01:27 PM
Always a pleasure Scott :-)
Posted by: Jonathan M | June 10, 2008 at 01:34 PM
I think the problem is the reveiw sets out to prove its initial premise (the book failed at certain things), presenting the criteria the book was judged by as evidence (rather than just one means of judgement).
This kind of forces the hand of the review reader, as the reader might not want to judge a book by those very same criteria. It sort of shys away from presenting those criteria as just one method of measurement and presents them more as the only way.
Posted by: Callan S. | June 19, 2008 at 08:05 AM
Hi Callan,
A review is a presentation of a considered opinion. My review does that. I know a lot of people go for the whole "if you like this kind of thing then it's the book for you" but I don't. I don't give marks out of 10 either.
A review is only ever part of a wider critical consensus and if people don't find my review useful they are more than welcome to keep googling and check out the next one. There's no such thing as an authoritative or objective review.
Posted by: Jonathan M | June 19, 2008 at 09:06 AM
I'm not sure it does present it as a considered opinion, compared to the usual foibles of communication. For example, I could say 2 + 2 = 4 and you wouldn't consider it my opinion. It's probably a bad habit in our culture, but readers often confuse something stated affirmatively for not being opinion but instead fact. They might think that just like 2 + 2 = 3 fails at math, a book can fail at being a thriller, like it's just an equation to forfil and the author screwed up in making the thriller equation add up. This, rather than thinking it's just your opinion it screwed up. Also if their told that at the start, they possibly don't read the rest of the review having already understood 'all that's needed'.
I know, I know, that culture is not your fault. But it's not the authors fault either - and pitching opinion very affirmatively can see the author suffering the flaws of that reading culture. Clearly some people can see your just stating opinion - me, for example. But...ah, it's just something to consider.
Posted by: Callan S. | August 04, 2008 at 11:04 AM
As a critic, I have to be mindful of the aesthetics of writing; how to tell a story, quality of writing, depth of characterisation and, in SF, quality of argument. Because we live in a universe devoid of meta-narratives, there is no basis for aesthetic judgments other than the culture I inhabit. So I use that yardstick along with some of my own ideas.
It would be impossible to evaluate anything if you didn't work with the assumption that, in aesthetic terms, 2+2=4. This is why a lot of academic critics don't evaluate books anymore, they just talk about interpretations of what books mean.
I think that books can fail at being thrillers. If I didn't I wouldn't be able to evaluate thrillers.
I can't think of a way of writing a review that does no posit the existence of objective, or quasi-objective standards.
Posted by: Jonathan M | August 04, 2008 at 11:15 AM