Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

A Clue to the Exit

London

Chatto & Windus

2000

"And some doctors, mapping out brain function in a style no less convincing than medieval cartography."

The conference was not designed to answer her particular preoccupation. It revelled in all kinds of fringe experiences: the petit mal, the Korsakov's syndrome, the neurological dysfunctions that Oliver Sacks had made into a middlebrow passion; the pets who knew their owners were coming home; the twins separated at birth and living in distant cities who purchased the same dress on the same day; the flight of homing pigeons; the astral journeys of psychotic patients; the minuscule but robust incidents of paranormal phenomena; the consciousness which civilisation had gained and the consciousness it had lost. There were of course philosophers with their qualia and their Artificial Intelligence. And some doctors, mapping out brain function in a style no less convincing than medieval cartography.
(pp. 37-8)

Geography::Map

Reading

Edward St. Aubyn, A Clue to the Exit (London: Chatto & Windus, 2000).

09/19/2015