Bestselling author Tim Parks embarks on an entertaining quest to understand the theories of consciousness
Born in Manchester, Tim Parks grew up in London and studied at Cambridge and Harvard. He lives in Milan.He is the acclaimed author of novels, non-fiction and essays, including Europa, In Extremis, A Season with Verona, Teach Us to Sit Still and Italian Ways. He has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Betty Trask Prize, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the John Florio Prize and the Italo Calvino Prize.
With wit, humanity and insight... [Parks] tackles a question that
the greatest philosophical and scientific minds have struggled with
for centuries: what is consciousness?... Parks is an entertaining
companion throughout * Mail on Sunday *
Consciousness is weighty philosophical and scientific ground, yet
Parks plots a chatty, accessible path through impenetrable
academic papers and conferences on his quest to understand more
about being human. So chatty, in fact, he often has conversations
with himself, making Parks an even more likable guide to these
lofty concepts. He's not afraid to question some of Manzotti's
more ridiculous ideas, and muses on everything from the meaning of
a midlife crisis to the much-loved Pixar film Inside Out, in
which five cartoon emotions battle for control of the heroine's
psyche... A thoughtful quest to understand consciousness. *
Observer *
Parks, who is best-known for his Toujours Provence-like memoirs of
life in Italy, succeeds admirably in bringing difficult ideas
down a level. Eleanora Gallitelli, his Italian partner, who
accompanies him to a psychiatric hospital in Heidelberg for
research purposes, also helps. Gallitelli recently told me that she
is deaf in one ear. The story of her sudden irreparable deafness -
how her brain began to develop a mind of its own, playing tricks
with spatial awareness and balance - is quite brilliantly
told here. Parks writes well enough to appeal to the layman and
the mind boffin alike. Out of My Head is pleasurably nutty,
self-regarding and at times quite hilarious. * Evening Standard
*
[A] fantastic journey into the human brain...Parks makes an
excellent point about what he calls the "internalist" position
(that our picture of reality is just that: a subjective one,
concocted by our brains), which is that it flatters our sense of
our own importance, making of us creators of our own effectively
unique worlds. -- Will Self * New Statesman *
By describing his efforts to understand the phenomenon of
consciousness in the form of a candid and entertaining
journal-cum-memoir, Tim Parks has made a difficult subject
interesting and accessible. He is an amateur in this crowded field
but he presents professional neuroscientists with some challenging
questions. -- David Lodge
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