Head lines

     

         
      I'm just back from one of those extraordinary multi-faceted Book Festival sessions, and trying to make sense of my notes and marshal my thoughts enough to give you a taste of it. Titled "Matters of the Mind" it featured a truly remarkable renaissance man, Raymond Tallis, talking about his book The Kingdom of Infinite Space: A Fantastical Journey Around Your Head,  and Harriet Harvey Wood discussing Memory, the anthology on the subject she has edited with A.S. Byatt.
       There was everything from philosophy to neuroscience, poetry to an analysis of kissing, and all handled with immense skill and a great deal of humour. I was particularly interested in references to diary and memoir, and how unreliable they can be. Harriet Harvey Wood quoted William Maxwell : "in writing about the past we lie with every breath we draw", and that reflects the fact that every time we take out a memory and look at it, it becomes subtly changed before being refiled in our mental card index. Even writing a simple, factual journal is an amazing act of construction, editing and shaping - "journals have semi-colons; life doesn't", said Tallis.
       While in a deteriorating brain the muscular memory is the last part to go, mention was made of the modern shrinking of temporal depth, the reliance on knowing where to find a fact rather than commit the fact itself to memory, the comparative lack of learning by heart. In contrast, we have access to a vast network of cognitive inheritance, drawing on what has gone before and evolving, e.g. Beethoven couldn't have written his Diabelli Variations had not Bach written the Goldberg Variations earlier. Much to ponder.
       In all, an entertaining and stimulating dialogue - I hope I've remembered it correctly!

Comments

[Becky]

What a fascinating excerpt from those talks--thank you! As an English teacher, I've had some interesting conversations about "truth" and imagination with my students as they've worked on narratives about significant events in their lives. As a member of a large family, I've had conversations about our various memories of events--did they really leave me behind at the rest area, or just start the car?? --and whose views are "right."
Love the semicolon quotation too!

[Avice]

Much food for thought in your quick summary. Thank you.

[Barbara MacLeod]

Some years ago I read Jane Smiley's book "A Thousand Acres". There was a scene of, I think, a grandmother sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, who was asked to give a answer to a particular question. She silently said to herself "Which version of the truth do you [the questioner] want?" I recall being very struck by that and increasingly bring it to mind as I read historical topics, or watch TV documentaries, news, etc.

[Claire]

Picking up on Becky's comments. I am from a family of four and have often been surprised how differently we remember and feel about the same event.
Thank you for your thought provoking post. I wish I'd been at that event.

[Peter the flautist]

Do you have any references to the "modern shrinking of temporal depth, the reliance on knowing where to find a fact rather than commit the fact itself to memory" ? If so I'd love to read them.

Dark Something (I'm sure I had a second name somewhere ...)