The Ghost in My Machine
David Lodge has been one of my favorite authors since I read his brilliant satires of academic life, Changing Places and Small World. His new novel, Thinks . . . , retains the bawdy humor and satiric range of these earlier works. Professor Ralph Messenger, a paradigmatic scientific reductionist and lifelong philanderer, has a romance with a lady novelist, carried on—or expressed—mainly in the parallel journals that they keep.
Messenger insists that the only reality is one that can be captured in the objective, third-person manner of scientific explanation. Helen, the novelist, exists in the world of first-person narrative. After all, she is a novelist, as is David Lodge. The result is a hilarious juxtaposition of opposing worldviews, linked by the reality of sexual desire and the constant experience of betrayal and deception.
I read the book with enjoyment, but just after I finished it, I had an experience that made me feel more like a character in the book than a reader. I had a mysterious, seemingly causeless right-brain stroke, which left me feeling that I was the “ghost in the machine” that Messenger insisted did not exist. Well, this ghost certainly did exist, with the powerful sense that the suddenly defective machine I inhabited was not “me.” My sense of being a soul in communication with other souls was only enhanced by the knowledge that I could no longer trust the machine, especially the brain, to do what it had always done.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Phillip E. Johnson is Professor of Law (emeritus) at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of Darwin on Trial, The Wedge of Truth, The Right Questions (InterVarsity Press), and other books challenging the naturalistic assumptions that dominate modern culture. He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
33.1—January/February 2020
on the Consequences of One Birth Before Roe v. Wade by Craig Kellogg Galer
28.6—Nov/Dec 2015
on the Deepest Longings of the Restless & the Lonely by William Graddy
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
