"'I knew I had some intellectual horsepower,' he says. 'But I didn't know where my tires would catch purchase.'"
— Bilger, Burkhard
Author
Work Title
Date
April 25, 2011
Metaphor
"'I knew I had some intellectual horsepower,' he says. 'But I didn't know where my tires would catch purchase.'"
Metaphor in Context
As an undergraduate at Rice, Eagleman wanted to be a writer, but his parents persuaded him to major in electrical engineering instead. "It was like chewing on autumn leaves," he says. An extended sabbatical ensued. After his sophomore year, Eagleman joined the Israeli Army as a volunteer, then spent a semester at Oxford studying political science and literature, and finally moved to Los Angeles to become a screenwriter and a standup comic. Nothing took. "I knew I had some intellectual horsepower," he says. "But I didn't know where my tires would catch purchase." Back at Rice, he began to read books about the brain in his spare time and decided to take a course in neurolinguistics. "I was immediately enchanted just by the idea of it," Eagleman says. "Here was this three-pound organ that was the seat of everything we are--our hopes and desires and our loves. They had me at page one."
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Burkhard Bilger, "The Possibilian" in The New Yorker (April 25, 2011). <Link to newyorker.com>
Date of Entry
10/10/2011
