Imagine How Creativity Works By Jonah Lehrer Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 252 pp. $26
Reviewed by Rickie Roberts
What do Bob Dylan, MIT, 3M, Tel Aviv, and the "I 0 New York" logo have in common?
In Imagine, author Jonah Lehrer weaves all of these people, places, and things into a brilliant narrative about well, simply put brilliance.
Lehrer is the author of two other equally engaging books, Proust Was a Neuroscientist (2007) and How We Decide (2009). Here, in only his third decade on this Earth, Lehrer has found a recipe for interpreting the insights, impulses, and creative possibilities of the most complex species on the planet. A graduate of Columbia University, he did a double major in neuroscience and English. In this unlikely pairing of disciplines, he has found a calling putting the highly intricate processes of the human mind into a language and a narrative that bring home his ideas to the more narrowly educated reader. In Proust Was a Neuroscientist, he explored the connection between the literary and scientific communities, and in How We Decide, he tackled the multifarious issue of decision-making by tying neuro-mechanics, context, culture, emotions, and history into a combination "how-do-we" and "how-to" book.
In Imagine, Lehrer has gone one step further. By exploring the common thread of imagination in the divergent worlds of song-writing, tape manufacturing, city building, play-writing, animation producing, mop inventing, and so much more, he is able to draw upon his unique combination of skills, knowledge, and experience to welcome the reader to a creative process that is becoming more and more critical in our society.
In chapter after chapter, he brings forward case studies of the contributions that creativity and imagination have made in success stories, ranging from bartending to pharmaceutical manufacturing. But he doesn't stop there. Through careful analysis of each case he helps us to understand the process that has taken place. From what is happening in neurotransmitters at the time of insight to the paint color on the walls, he guides us through these stories as if the lessons we learn here will make each one of us somehow capable of great things.
While he makes great use of his own scientific education and background in the narrative, Lehrer is able to do so in a way that makes even us common folk comfortable. He neither speaks over our heads in scientific matters nor does he seem to assume that the reader doesn't understand how the brain functions. He speaks of the right- and left-side brain functions without over-explanation, giving his readers credit for knowing enough about these topics to put the pieces together. Many a reader will appreciate this because once you accept that we are not all Ph.D,s you can relax and take this thrilling ride through the relationships between failure and accomplishment, brilliance and biochemistry.
Smartly, Lehrer begins the books with two studies that immediately put you at ease and suck you in with the curiosity that a well-crafted book can generate: the invention of the Swiffer Sweeper and the ubiquitous musings of Bob Dylan. Who wouldn't want to read on?
His tale of how Bob Dylan "hit the creative wall" in 1965 and retreated to isolation before producing some of his most brilliant work is antithetical to his account of how Pixar Studios uses collaboration and criticism to support the creative process that has driven so many of the most heralded animated classics of the last 30 years. Yet, Lehrer makes it work. He neither prescribes nor lectures, allowing that both isolation and collaboration have value in the creative process and must be examined in the context of the task.
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"Imagine" examines the anatomy of brilliance
Recommendation and review posted by G. Smith
