[extropy-chat] book review: The Human Touch by Michael Frayn

[Damien Broderick]

At 12:42 AM 3/2/2007 -0500, PJ wrote:


>re-reading it, it's still confusing.)  [Does that mean you disagree 
>with his disagreement with the often disagreement-provoking Chomsky...?  ;-) ]

There's no way to tell from that paragraph: I'm just summarizing the 
great, even absurd, plenitude of the domains he takes in, and his 
unfashionable (e.g. contra Chomsky) or apparently paradoxical (e.g. 
believers are not really believers) stances.

I might as well add that after my piece appeared in an Australian 
newspaper I got a very pleasant letter from Frayn's old Cambridge 
philosophy tutor (who is profoundly and repeatedly acknowledged in 
the book), who commented that he'd eagerly read all the reviews he 
could find and regarded mine as the only one "that has put precise 
fingers on the two central defects of the work - its tackling far too 
much, and its being organised around a non-existent 'paradox'." FWIW. :)

Damien Broderick