Publishers Weekly
02/08/2021
Fletcher (Cosmic Democracies), professor of story science at Ohio State’s Project Narrative, delivers an innovative take on storytelling that shows how stories “plug into different regions of our brain.” Each chapter examines a literary invention, such as “The Empathy Generator” and “The Fairy-Tale Twist,” and shows how engaging with various authors and thinkers can shed light on the way modern works of literature and pop culture are received. One chapter focuses on the “Valentine Armor,” meant to ward off heartbreak, and begins with Cervantes’s Don Quixote, which inspired the mock romance of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones and led to themes in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. This blending of love and irony, Fletcher writes, is especially powerful because the two are processed in different parts of the brain, and “open our heart to other people without duping us into mistaking our own desires for the laws of reality.” The “Stress Transformer,” meanwhile, shows how Frankenstein led to such modern horror films as The Cabin in the Woods and considers the “physiological rush” from the fight-or-flight response and fictional scares. Fletcher proves that understanding the classics brings new life to the craft of literary creation. The result is a fresh take on the history of literature and a testament to the enduring power of reading. (Mar.)
Antonio Damasio
Aristotle’s Poetics was new and brave but was left incomplete. Angus Fletcher finishes it in Wonderworks with some help from contemporary science and an abundance of penetrating analyses. Fletcher endorses storytelling as a foundational technology but he goes beyond that to illustrate its therapeutic value and centrality to cultural invention. Wonderworks is the perfect counter to our season in hell.
Jay Parini
I’ve been living in Wonderworks for several weeks now, dazzled by its innovations, wild surmises, gifts of insight, unlikely readings and – perhaps most of all – its inspirational force. Angus Fletcher is that rare critic who actually has something to say, who grabs us by the collar and hopes to shake sense into us. This may be one of the most important and truly useful books about literature written in the past decade. It opens a vista into reading that regards writing as a kind of continual experiment in human and societal engineering. That Wonderworks deserves a wide audience goes without saying. It’s refreshing and remarkable on so many levels.”
Malcolm Gladwell
"Fascinating. . . . It blew my mind!"
Blakely Vermeule
An epic, a masterpiece. Angus Fletcher has reached deep into history and far in contemporary neuroscience to give us a magisterial synthesis of why and how humans not just make literature but use it to navigate our worlds.
The Guardian - Jane Smiley
"If Wonderworks had been around then, I would have sat my son down and read Angus Fletcher’s exploration of the history and the psychology of literature to him, word by word. . . . I hope it will convince others that there are benefits and pleasures that you can get from literature that are unique and valuable."
Raphael Lyne
Extraordinary . . . Angus Fletcher has not only set out a radical vision of literature as a technology that helps us, he has also provided a wonderfully varied and generously introduced reading list . . . Wonderworks brings inspiration, and an exciting challenge, to read and to think hard about literature, and it's a pleasure to read.
Lawrence Manley
Drawing upon insights from neuroscience and evolutionary biology, an expert in the art of storytelling explains why literature matters by showing, through lucid examples, the myriad ways that literature’s bag of tricks works with and for our minds. Anyone who has experienced wonder in an encounter with literature will profit from this wise and clever book.
Rita Charon
Wonderworks unleashes the transport, suspense, paradox, and power of stories. All the ideas glossed—from Aristotle and Shakespeare to contemporary neurosciences—exhibit the literary invention that constitute the subject of the book, creating a tour-de-force of knowledge, fantasy, and the desire to heal.
Brené Brown
"I'm totally obsessed with Wonderworks. It swallowed me whole."
The New York Times - Sophie Gee
Wonderworks contains many instances of critical insight. . . . What’s most interesting about this compendium is its understanding of imaginative representation as a technology."
The Herald (Scotland) - Neil Mackay
"Professor Angus Fletcher has discovered the incredible effects stories have on our minds. . . . [Fletcher] is a true polymath: both a neuroscientist and Yale-educated doctor of literature. He has combined his twin passions to unlock the psychological, physiological and pharmacological effects literature has on humans."
New Scientist - Simon Ings
"An intelligent, engaged and erudite attempt to neurologically tackle not just some abstract and simplified 'story', but some of the world’s greatest narratives, from the Iliad to Dream of the Red Chamber, from Disney’s Up to the novels of Elena Ferrante. It speaks to the inner reader in us all, as well as to the inner neurologist."
Popular Science - Brian Clegg
"If you are interested in both writing and science this is an unmissable book. . . . Fresh and inspiring."
Martin Seligman
Find one polymath. Take a profound knowledge of world literature. Add a deep knowledge of modern psychology and of neuroscience. Add a cupful of worldly wisdom. Stir in an enchanting prose style. Heat until bubbling. You have just baked a unique, marvelous treat: Angus Fletcher’s Wonderworks.”
Malcolm Gladwell
"Fascinating. . . . It blew my mind!"
Brene Brown
"I'm totally obsessed with Wonderworks. It swallowed me whole."
Library Journal
01/08/2021
In this latest work, Fletcher (English, The Ohio State Univ.; Evolving Hamlet) has produced an orderly account of literary inventions throughout the centuries. The author skillfully draws attention to a number of inventions from global contexts and language backgrounds such as Zhuangzi's un-training of un-yin and un-yang in 5th century China, the invention of the psychedelic reading of "wonder" in 20th century England, and Plato's "serenity elevator" in 4th century BC Greece. A surprising element is the book's real-life application of the inventions, or, how does this work for one in real life? The missing piece in Fletcher's book is its lack of explicit statement-of-worldview under-girding the analysis. Specifically, the focus on the brain and literary allusions as well as references to deity as evidences of invention seems to portray there is no truth to the statements under examination. That being said, readers will be impressed by Fletcher's scope and inclusion of literary invention. VERDICT Wonderworks is for those readers who like to consider the history of literature, yes, but also those who like to think about the technical aspects of literary devices used across that history.—Jesse A. Lambertson, Univ. of Chicago Law Libs.
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2021-01-07
Reading good books doesn’t just entertain us; it teaches us how to better use our brains and our emotions, as this lively treatise tells us.
Fletcher, a professor of story science at Ohio State’s Project Narrative, holds doctorates in both literature and neuroscience, which meet fluently in this thought-packed survey. The long-held pedagogical view of literature, he writes, has instructed us “to see literature as a species of argument.” The author believes, however, that literature is a type of technology, “any human-made thing that helps to solve a problem.” Our problem is what to do when we think about such things as love, which, in terms of the storytelling about it, involves two elements: self-disclosure and wonder, “a feeling of awe, of specialness.” A good story about love “primes the dopamine neurons in the reward centers of our brain, sweetening our thoughts with a touch of pleasure.” So it is that Sappho’s love-drenched lyrics, a Chinese ode in the Shijing, and certain poems of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman lead us to “discover wonder intimate.” There’s plenty of deep diving into the workings of the brain in discussions framed by works of literature, some well known and some not, as well as by genres. For example, horror stories “give us a fictional scare that tricks our brain into an invigorating fight-or-flight response.” That response, Fletcher recounts, implicates various parts of the body, from the hypothalamus to the kidneys, and it can yield an entertaining rush. Other emotions and mental states that are less easy to tame, such as shame, depression, and alienation, can also respond to literary prompts, yielding paranoia and anger. The trick to calming them? Maybe try reading Winnie-the-Pooh, which “instead of giving us a reason to quake at the imagination’s wilds…treats our brain’s fear regions entirely to fun."
An idiosyncratic, richly detailed, often lyrical invitation to reconsider how and why to read literature.
