Cartoonist Art Spiegelman was at BookPeople tonight to talk about his new book, Breakdowns. He was funny, he smoked a lot, and he couldn’t believe anyone would rather come see him when they could be at home watching the presidential debates.

Spiegelman is fascinating not because of Maus and the Pulitzer Prize—he’s fascinating because he is someone whose who life has been consumed by and obsessed with comics. The son of immigrant parents, he says he “discovered America” through comics. He has a lazy eye, which makes him see the world in 2-D. He’s spent almost every waking moment researching comics, looking up the words “comics” and “caricature” and “narrative” in any nearby encyclopedia or dictionary.

He’s a prime example of how when you look at everything in life through the lens of your obsession, you not only gain this vast, treasure trove of specialized knowledge, you gain a kind of universal knowledge as well.

It all comes through in his slide show:

He kept talking about how our brains are “hard-wired” to understand comics, so I asked him if he’d come across any specific pieces of neuroscience on the subject that he’d recommend reading. He told me cognitive psychology is a much richer place to look, and gave examples: babies recognizing a smiley face before they can recognize their mother…baby red-beaked birds preferring the caricature of their mother to their real mother—worms fed to them with red chopsticks!

While he was signing my book, my friend Sunni asked him how long he was gonna be in Texas. He said ’til 7AM the next morning. (Book tour has to be a real pain in the ass when it’s all squashed together.)

Thanks Art, for coming to Texas…hope you’ll return when you can stay longer!

Links:

• Buy Breakdowns on Amazon
• Interview with the Austin American-Statesman
• Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@?*! (Installment #1)
• Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@?*! (Installment #3)
• Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@?*! (Installment #4)
• My other posts about Art Spiegelman

Trying hard to solve that impossible problem? Hit the topless bar, take a warm shower, and sleep on it.

Three tips I gathered from Jonah Lehrer‘s great article in the July 28th New Yorker called “The Eureka Hunt,” all about “insight,” where our good ideas come from, when they come to us, and why.

The formula:

total immersion → relaxing distraction = moment of insight

The insight process…is a delicate mental balancing act. At first, the brain lavishes the scarce resource of attention on a single problem. But, once the brain is sufficiently focussed, the cortex needs to relax in order to seek out the more remote association in the right hemisphere, which will provide the insight. “The relaxation phase is crucial,” Jung-Beeman said. “That’s why so many insights happen during warm showers.” Another ideal moment for insights, according to the scientists, is the early morning, right after we wake up. The drowsy brain is unwound and disorganized, open to all sorts of unconventional ideas. The right hemisphere is also unusually active. Jung-Beeman said, “The problem with the morning, though, is that we’re always so rushed. We’ve got to get the kids ready for school, so we leap out of bed and never give ourselves a chance to think.” He recommends that if we’re stuck on a difficult problem, it’s better to set the alarm clock a few minutes early so that we have time to lie in bed and ruminate. We do some of our best thinking while we’re still half asleep.

The mathematician Henri Poincaré had his “seminal insight into non-Euclidean geometry…while he was boarding a bus.”

Poincaré insisted that the best way to think about complex problems is to immerse yourself in the problem until you hit an impasse. Then, when it seems that “nothing good has been accomplished,” you should find a way to distract yourself, preferably by going on a “walk or a journey”. The answer will arrive when you least expect it.

And let’s not forget Richard Feynman:

the Nobel Prize winning physicist, preferred the relaxed atmosphere of a topless bar, where he would sip 7UP, “watch the entertainment,” and, if inspiration struck, scribble equations on cocktail napkins.

The good stuff comes along when you’re not forcing it—what Lynda Barry and Donald Barthelme call “not-knowing.”

My “Eureka!” moments always come to me in the shower, which is why I keep a dry-erase marker in the bathroom.

When do y’all get your best ideas?

Adapted from John Medina‘s cool book, Brain Rules:

1. EXERCISE boosts brain power.

Moving around gets more blood and oxygen pumping to the brain, which gives you more ideas. (See Haruki Murakami’s essay on writing and running in the New Yorker.)

4. We don’t pay ATTENTION to boring things.

Elmore Leonard says, “Leave out the parts readers tend to skip.” Kurt Vonnegut called it “being a good date.”

7. SLEEP well, think well.

Get plenty of shut eye, and figure out when you’re most creative: it’s probably either early in the morning or late at night. NO ONE is creative during the mid-afternoon, and that’s why some of the greatest thinkers of all time were notorious for 3PM naps. (Salvador Dali napped with a spoon.) Hit a snag? Sleep on it: our brain is constantly working things out in our sleep. Keep a dream journal.

9. Stimulate more of THE SENSES.

Pictures and words belong together. Write by hand with a pen or paintbrush. Cut words out of magazines. Use a Sharpie and a newspaper….

10. VISION trumps all the other senses.

Words are seen, and stories are images.

12. We are powerful and natural EXPLORERS.

Even at an old age, our brain is still malleable. We can still learn new things and improve. It ain’t over ’til it’s over.

Links:

• Brain rules for PowerPoint & Keynote presenters
• Visit the Brain Rules Website
• Buy the book on Amazon

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and The Brain is okay. As a huge Oliver Sacks fan and a musician, I thought I was going to like it more than I did. But really, it’s a pretty scattered book. There’s not much of an overarching theme or thread — just 350 pages of Oliver Sacks writing about music and the brain. Which is very cool and all, but it doesn’t make for an engaging long narrative. It might be a good bathroom book: you just pick up a chapter here and there, rather than reading it straight through.

Here’s a big roundup of links related to the book:

• Seed Magazine » The Listener » As Oliver Sacks observes the mind through music, his belief in a science of empathy takes on new dimension
• Wired Magazine » Oliver Sacks on Earworms, Stevie Wonder and the View From Mescaline Mountain
• The New Yorker » Oliver Sacks » A Neurologist’s Notebook » Music and amnesia
• Oliver Sacks » The Bat Segundo Show

This book blew my mind. I read it based on the recommendations of both George Saunders and Bill Clinton. Saunders’ recommendation pretty much sums it up:

“It deals with the way our brains process political information, and particularly with the need for people on the left to become more honest and direct in the way they talk about things – to stop trying to appease the growing right-wing movement and really say, flat-out, what they believe and why they believe it, directly and fiercely. Westen includes an incredible “here’s-what-he-should-have-said” speech that Al Gore should have made when Bush questioned his character during one of the debates. Really a mind-expanding book…”

Highly recommended →