Irving Massey, The Neural Imagination

Talking Leaves is pleased to announce that we will host a publication discussion and book signing with long-time customer and friend Irving Massey to celebrate the release of his new book, The Neural Imagination: Aesthetic and Neuroscientific Approaches to the Arts (University of Texas Press), on Wednesday, December 2, at 7 pm, at our Main Street store. The public is invited to this free event; copies of Dr. Massey’s work will be available for purchase.

Art and technology have been converging rapidly in the past few years; an important example of this convergence is the alliance of neuroscience with aesthetics, which has produced the new field of neuroaesthetics.  Irving Massey examines this alliance, in large part to allay the fears of artists and audiences alike that brain science may "explain away" the arts. The first part of the book shows how neuroscience can enhance our understanding of certain features of art. The second part of the book illustrates a humanistic approach to the arts; it is written entirely without recourse to neuroscience, in order to show the differences in methodology between the two approaches. The humanistic style is marked particularly by immersion in the individual work and by evaluation, rather than by detachment in the search for generalizations. In the final section Massey argues that, despite these differences, once the reality of imagination is accepted neuroscience can be seen as the collaborator, not the inquisitor, of the arts.

            “Irving Massey has long desired to make a minute comparison of neuroscientific and aesthetic approaches to the arts, and now he has succeeded brilliantly.  Moving effortlessly from wonderful examples of music, dreaming, literature, metaphor, and visual arts to profound questioning of their inner and neural nature.  The Neural Imagination combines rigorous scholarship with an intensely personal sensibility and style.  The power of Massey’s own imagination, and his vivid writing, make this book a delight.”
                                                                     Oliver Sacks

Irving Massey has lived and taught in Buffalo for many years.  He is an Emeritus Professor in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature at the University at Buffalo.