R. Paul writes: >JL [Speranza] will have the whole story soon. Well, I was intrigued by the title: 'Thinks ...'. I suppose the intentional ambiguity is as to _what_ thinks (the mind) and what it (she?) thinks (about). Interestingly, the OED has 'think' as a dialectal noun meaning 'thought'. Some quotes provided below, plus some excerpts from customers' reviews, etc. Unless the novel gives a better context why it's titled 'thinks...'? Of course, the main problem started with A. Turing, who thought machines did not think -- but then he was not too worried: they cannot _love_ either. (In philosophy, it has been mainly G. Ryle who tried to show that the thinks are from the ghost in the machine -- his ghost in his machine?) Cheers, JL ---- From the OED 'think', n. 1. a. An act of (continued) thinking; a meditation. 1834 Tait's Mag. I. 426/1 We lie lown yonder..and have time for our ain think. 1870 MRS. WHITNEY We Girls ii, Ruth did talk..when she came out of one of her thinks. 1891 FENN Mahme Nousie II. v. 73 Let's have a cigar and a quiet think. b. nonce-use. An idea, a thought. 1886 H. MAUDSLEY Nat. Causes & Supernat. Seemings 33 To every one a thing is..what he thinks Toin effect, a think. 1887 G. MACDONALD Home Again iv, A thing must be a think before it be a thing. 2. a. What one thinks about something; an opinion. 1835 LADY GRANVILLE Lett. (1894) II. 187 My own private think is that he will execute another voluntary. 1861 J. BROWN Horæ Subs. Ser. II. 355 The cobbler..dispenses his â??thinkâ??..to all comers on all subjects. b. to have another think coming: to be greatly mistaken. 1937 Amer. Speech XII. 317/1 Several different statements used for the same Sevethat of some one's making a mistake...[e.g.] you have another think coming. 1942 T. BAILEY Pink Camellia xxvii. 199 If you think you can get me out of Gaywood, you have another think coming. 1979 Jrnl. R. Soc. Arts CXXVII. 221/2 Any design consultant who thinks he is going to get British Leyland right by himself on his own has got another think coming. 3. attrib. and Comb. (nonce-wds.), as thinkache, pain of thought, mental suffering; think-room, a room or apartment for meditation. 1892 BRIDGER Depression p. v, Each separate thinkache enumerated by my depressed patients. 1906 Month July 72 Castle, work-room, think-room. In a message dated 5/31/2004 10:40:30 PM Eastern Standard Time, JulieReneB@xxxxxxx writes: But it's a truly fascinating discussion of consciousness, wrapped in a novel -- and the plot is also an aspect of the examination and exploration of what consciousness is. Some excerpts from customers' reviews below. Cheers, JL ---- From amazon.com "a professor who runs a center for research on artificial intelligence and a recently widowed visiting writer-in-residence teaching a creative writing seminar. They spar over his work, and she explores its implications in the exercises she gives her students, all reproduced in the book. (An exploration of what it would be like to be raised in a colourless world and then suddenly exposed to colour, written in the style of the author of your choice, for example.)" Well, this is what McEvoy was trying to exercise on us ("The world is colourless", said Wittgenstein). "He also regales us with facts about the field of consciousness. But more fun is the student essay mimicking studies of bat consciousness written in the style of Samuel Beckett." -- The reference to the famous essay, "What is it to be a bat?'. Apparently, only bats know (or think they know). "this time on consciousness, particularly as it relates to cognitive science and AI" "The scientific research on Artificial Intelligenc was well-covered, so much so that I stopped after chapter 3 to see in the Acknowledgements where he had got his material from?" And where does he? Daniel Dennett? "For me, 'Thinks' is the best novel of 2001. Easily." "Upon reaching the end of the novel, in frank disbelief that this was all I would get for my money and time, I was presented with two pages of 'Acknowledgements' recommending 21 heavyweight scientific books among those 'read in preparation for this novel'. How this mass of high-level theory is connected with such a facile tale of the sexual romps of shallow and unpleasant people on a stereotypical university campus, may forever remain a puzzle as great as the problem of consciousness itself. " "Ralph Messenger is a professor, a philospher by training, but now head of the Centre for Cognitive Sciences at the University of Gloucester. He has a solid rep in his field, with past positions at Cal Tech and MIT." Aha. "I've read the works of Damasio and Pinker, among the others brain researchers mentioned by Lodge as inspirators for this book, and, believe me, if you want to know about human nature, you'll better read them." ---- Editorial reviews: Inimitable British writer Lodge (Small World; The Art of Fiction) is at his best in another of his comedies of manners set in the academic world. His 10th novel is distinguished by gentle satire, vigorous intelligence, sometimes ribald humor and a perspicacious understanding of the human condition. At the fictitious University of Gloucester, science and literature collide in the persons of 40-something Ralph Messenger and Helen Reed. Ralph's research as the director of cognitive science and his wit and charisma as an explicator of artiicial intelligence make him a bit of a star in Britain, and with the ladies. He delights in opportunities for extramarital activities within the confines of the don't-ask-don't-tell arrangement he's established with his wife. Ralph's worthy opponent, newly widowed Helen, a novelist and Henry James devotee, has come to the university to teach creative writing. Helen represents the religious conflict common to Lodge's characters. She has nostalgic respect for her Catholic upbringing, but she's enduring a crisis of faith. Because of her strong moral conscience, she disapproves of Ralph's infidelities. Yet sparks fly during their heated debates, and they share an undeniable attraction and mutual respect. Ralph argues convincingly for artificial intelligence as the next rung on the evolutionary ladder, but Lodge's own opinion clearly corresponds to Helen's: she's dubious of a machine that could embody human consciousness, "a computer that has hangovers and falls in love and suffers bereavement." The erfectly paced story unfolds alternately via Helen's diary, Ralph's audio-dictated journal and an omniscient narrator. Although still politically aware, Lodge is arguably less concerned with social commentary (as in his Booker-nominated Nice Work) than with human nature, and he digs deeper here than in Therapy into the universal mysteries of death and the soul. Readers and booksellers will be more than pleased by this entertaining and appropriately thought-provoking novel. 6-city author tour. From Library Journal This audio begins quite brilliantly, with Ralph Messenger, head of the Cognitive Science department of a fictitious university, recording both deep and random thoughts on life's imponderables onto a tape. The listener is immediately engaged. The second chapter is similarly thought-provoking, with recently widowed novelist Helen Read writing her thoughts in her journal as she begins a visiting writer-in-residence tour at the same university. Ralph and Helen meet, of course, and begin to get together to discuss these conundrums. Alas, it becomes quickly apparent, unfortunately, that the real story of the book is whether, or rather when, he will persuade her into bed, despite his wife and four children. A third voice, an omniscient narrator, describes (in the present tense) what transpires in the interim between journal writing and recording. Gordon Griffin provides virtually no differentiation among the three voices, making it annoyingly necessary to gather from context who i_ speaking with each change, once the listener realizes there has been one. Two, or ideally three, readers would have been a vast improvement. The high level of interest demonstrated at the beginning quickly deteriorates into a pedestrian and predictable tale of a rather ordinary extramarital affair, making this a second choice for purchase unless the library has a large coterie of Lodge fans. _ _From Booklist_ (http://www .amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/partners/marketing/booklist.html/002-6770060-1806440) Much of the pleasure of Lodge's sparkling novels is derived from his playful yet shrewd use of fiction as a laboratory, a controlled space within which the workings of the human heart and mind--the battle between emotion and rationality, desire and morality--can be put in motion and analyzed. It makes perfect sense, therefore, that Lodge would write a tale that pits art against science. Using a favorite setting, the academy, and a favorite form, the farce, he pairs a highly responsible novelist, Helen Reed, an admirer of Henry James, no less, with an egotistical scientist, Ralph Messenger, who not only heads up the prestigious cognitive sciences department at the University of Gloucester but also disseminates his mechanistic view of consciousness on television. Helen, whose handsome husband has abruptly died, has sought refuge from her memory-laden London flat by moving on campus as the university's writer-in-residence. Ralph, quite the womanizer (an indulgence his wealthy American wife seems t accept), attempts to seduce Helen, but darned if she doesn't have scruples. Mutually attracted, however, they spar in witty discussions about the value of literature's depictions of consciousness versus science's more material approach, then retreat to confide in their journals. Helen takes a traditional approach to recording her thoughts and feelings, while Ralph, talking into a tape recorder, attempts to record verbatim the flow of his random and randy thoughts to comic effect. Events soon conspire to deepen their involvement, and as things reach a madcap crescendo during an international conference on the workings of the brain, Lodge revels in the absurdities and poignancy of the creative drive, ambition, eroticism, infidelity, mortality, and love--the lifeblood of literature, the ghost in the machine, the force no computer can measure or emulate. _The Atlantic Monthly A smart, seductive novel of ideas...Lodge is at the top of his game. _ _ David Lodge is the author of ten novels, including Changing Places, Small World (shortlisted for the Booker Prize), Nice Work (also shortlisted for the Booker Prize), Paradise News, and Therapy. He is also the author of several works of literary criticism, including The Art of Fiction and The Practice of Writing. _ Ralph Messenger is a man who knows what he wants and generally gets it. Approaching his fiftieth birthday, he has good reason to feel pleased with himself. As Director of the prestigious Holt Belling Centre for Cognitive Science at the University of Gloucester, he is much in demand as a pundit on developments in artificial intelligence and the study of human consciousness â?? â??the last frontier of scientific enquiry.â?? He enjoys an affluent lifestyle subsidized by the wealth of his American wife, Carrie. Known to colleagues on the conference circuit as a womanizer and to Private Eye as â??Media Dong,â?? he has a tacit understanding with Carrie to refrain from philandering in his own back yard. This resolution is already weakening when he meets and is attracted to Helen Reed, a distinguished novelist still grieving the sudden death of her husband more than a year ago. She has rented out her London house and taken up a post as writer-in-residence at Gloucester University, partly to try and get_over her bereavement. Fascinated and challenged by a personality radically at odds with her own, Helen is aroused by Ralphâ??s bold advances, but resists on moral principle. The stand-off between them is shattered by a series of events that dramatically confirms the truth of Ralphâ??s dictum, â??We can never know for certain what another person is thinking.â?? _ ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html