"We were not one, continuous, indivisible whole, but instead, hundreds of separate subsystems, with changes in any one sufficient to disperse the provisional confederation into unrecognizable new countries."
— Powers, Richard (b. 1957)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
New York
Publisher
Picador
Date
2006
Metaphor
"We were not one, continuous, indivisible whole, but instead, hundreds of separate subsystems, with changes in any one sufficient to disperse the provisional confederation into unrecognizable new countries."
Metaphor in Context
Weber listened. This couldn't be it. He couldn't be worried about the book. The Country of Surprise was the richest thing he'd ever written. It consisted of a dozen re-created case histories of patients who'd suffered what Weber studiously refused to call brain damage. Each of his twelve subjects had been changed so profoundly by illness or accident that each called into question the solidity of the self. We were not one, continuous, indivisible whole, but instead, hundreds of separate subsystems, with changes in any one sufficient to disperse the provisional confederation into unrecognizable new countries.
(p. 171)
(p. 171)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Richard Powers, The Echo Maker (New York: Picador, 2006).
Date of Entry
06/08/2015
