This book is pretty much exactly as advertised. Each chapter
is a small tale about music and the brain, usually about what happens when
things go wrong with the brain and its effect on music. Which leads into
insights about how we perceive music while healthy as well.
As someone who loves both music and science, there was a lot
that I really enjoyed about this. However, I will say that there are chapters
where Sacks does not really explain what the name of the affliction is. He’ll
just continue on about the effect of dystonia or whatever on his patient
assuming that you know what that means. There are other chapters (like the one
on William’s syndrome) where he does an excellent job of explaining what is
happening biologically, but it is inconsistent.
Similarly, possibly because each chapter can function
independently, I had a hard time pinning down his voice and tone throughout the
book. As a result I wasn’t sure whether I liked it or not, which made the whole
work rather disjointed.
Having said that, this is a really interesting overview of
how little we really understand about ourselves and the effect that art has on
us biologically. Scientists tend to get bogged down into exactly what molecule
is doing what, which is so hard to pin down when it comes to something as
pervasive as music. Hopefully the coming years will reveal new insights into
this, because I find it all fascinating.
No comments:
Post a Comment