“Fletcher’s book on Comus, The Transcendental Masque (1971), seems to me now neglected, but I think it will survive as a radiant disclosure by a visionary critic fully comparable to Kenneth Burke and Northrop Frye.”
—Harold Bloom, Possessed by Memory
@JaycelAdkins Well done. I noticed in the stack on the right, the very top book, the Codex. I seen it for sale (always out of my league.) What are the contents like?
Friends star Lisa Kudrow gets philosophical with Bill Maher and says she no longer believes consciousness lives in your head at all.
Kudrow, who studied biology, says consciousness “exists in a field.”
Maher was visibly confused about what the heck she was talking about until she referred to his smoking habit.
KUDROW: “I’ve been listening to physicists are thinking about the difficult question of consciousness and deciding that what makes the most sense is its consciousness is not in here [the brain]. It exists in a field, the field that is everywhere. But it’s not in here.”
MAHER: “I don’t understand that. What do you mean everywhere?”
KUDROW: “You like writing while smoking, right? Or being altered in some way?”
MAHER: “Yes, exactly.”
KUDROW: “Neuroscientists are saying the brain is a great filter, especially this front part… Once you make the filter a little more permeable, you’re getting access to some things. And creativity is one of those things that maybe doesn’t start here [the head], but it comes in when you’re in a flow.”
MAHER: “And that’s what the machines can’t do.”
What’s your take on this? Is consciousness just a product of the brain, or is Kudrow onto something here?
@SketchesbyBoze A relatively modest collection but a work in progress. There are a few more scattered about, including de Tocqueville and Burke which is particularly good.