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!"
Brené Brown
"I'm totally obsessed with Wonderworks. It swallowed me whole."
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 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."
Library Journal
Readers will be impressed by Fletcher’s scope and inclusion of literary invention. 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.
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."
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."
Publishers Weekly
"Innovative . . . A fresh take on the history of literature and a testament to the enduring power of reading."
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"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 . . . An idiosyncratic, richly detailed, often lyrical invitation to reconsider how and why to read literature."
Popular Science - Brian Clegg
"If you are interested in both writing and science this is an unmissable book. . . . Fresh and inspiring."
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."
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.”
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.
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.
Malcolm Gladwell
"Fascinating. . . . It blew my mind!"
Brene Brown
"I'm totally obsessed with Wonderworks. It swallowed me whole."
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.
