Jonah Lehrer Lied to Us All, and this is Why that Matters

This is about the betrayal of the author Jonah Lehrer.

This may sound strange, but the thing I may miss the most from preaching every Sunday (I left that profession years ago), is reading Scripture aloud.  I loved reading Scripture aloud.  I’m not sure why.  But I did – and I miss it.

Maybe it is because I so honor the very idea of a sacred text.

Before you interpret a text, you make sure that you understand the text.
To understand the text, you have to assume (you have to trust) that the text is “the text.”
And in interpreting a text, you have to make sure that you are staying faithful to the intent and message of the author – and then, and only then, can you “springboard” from the text to talk about lessons and implications for this audience, in this time.

It all revolves around the sanctity of the text.

These were the guiding principles undergirding my preaching for twenty years, and though I readily admit that a business book is not such sacred text, I still try to follow these guidelines.  When I present a business book synopsis, I am very careful with the text of the author.  I quote extensively, reading quotes taken directly from the book, because that is the clearest and most sure path to letting the author speak.  And my belief is that a business book synopsis is just that – a synopsis of the content of the author(s) himself/herself.

Yes, of course, I realize that I have to be “faithful” in putting and keeping the quotes in proper context.  I can’t lift phrases out in such a way to change or manipulate the meaning.   And, inevitably, I leave key parts out – ideas that if the author were present, he or she would yell “why did you leave that out?!”  Otherwise, I would just read the entire book aloud — thus, not a synopsis, but a performance.  (And, even then, there would be “interpretation” – “oral interpretation”).

But I do my best to let the author speak – to let the text itself speak.  Thus, I work hard to say, with every presentation, “this is what the author himself/herself has to say to us.”  That is my job.

(There is a second task — that of criticism.  Once we are clear about what a book says, then a good book reviewer, a book critic, like our blogging colleague Bob Morris, can tell us if the book is good, right, well-written, clear.  Of course, my very selection of a volume reveals that I think it has valuable insight.  But I am less a “critic” and more of a “spread the word, this is what the book has to offer, book briefer.”  I think these are connected roles, but slightly different.  They of course overlap.).

But… if I view text as sacred, then in my world, a faked text, a fabricated text, a made-up text is a sin of the highest order.

Jonah Lehrer is guilty of a sin of the highest order.

Jonah Lehrer made up quotes by Bob Dylan, lied about his source on these quotes (there was no source!), plagiarized Malcolm Gladwell, and I would not be surprised if he fabricated and stole from others in other ways yet to be discovered.

{And he “recycled” his own work, which is the least objectionable of the charges.  (Aaron Sorkin does this with some frequency – and I like it when he does it).}

You can read about Lehrer’s wrongdoing here, and here is his own statement:

“The lies are over now,” he said. “I understand the gravity of my position. I want to apologize to everyone I have let down, especially my editors and readers.”
He added, “I will do my best to correct the record and ensure that my misquotations and mistakes are fixed. I have resigned my position as staff writer at The New Yorker.”

He has admitted his wrongdoing.  And he has resigned from The New Yorker.  And the publisher is pulling the books from the shelves, and the digital version also.

I presented my synopsis of his book Imagine:  How Creativity Works, at the May, 2012 First Friday Book Synopsis.  I thought it was a terrific book.  But I now feel betrayed, as should every reader.  My comprehensive handout of this book, with the audio recording of my presentation, has been available at our companion website, 15minutebusinessbooks.com.  I have sent my request to our webmaster to remove it from our offerings.

Though I do apologize to those who heard my synopsis, or read earlier blog posts that I wrote from this book, I can say that I really am at the mercy of the authors I read.  If they fabricate, if they lie, if they plagiarize, how am I to know?  In other words, a writer, a speaker has a sacred obligation to a reader and listener.  That obligation is to be truthful.  To write truthfully, to speak truthfully.  To tell the truth.  To never plagiarize, to never fabricate.  To not make stuff up.  Here is Susan Scott, on one obligation of a leader, from her book Fierce Leadership:

Do not, under any circumstances, tell a lie – of either commission or omission.  Do not stretch the truth, exaggerate, or make stuff up (she actually used a little stronger word than “stuff”) to get out of trouble or make yourself look good…

Jonah Lehrer has betrayed our trust.  I do not plan on reading him again any time soon.  Can he be “restored” to a position of credibility?  I don’t know.  I am aware that some pretty respected authors and journalists have been guilty of something similar:  Doris Kearns Goodwin (read about her plagiarism here); Nina Totenberg (She was fired from the National Observer for plagiarism.  From the Wikipedia page:  In 1995, Totenberg told the Columbia Journalism Review, “I have a strong feeling that a young reporter is entitled to one mistake and to have the holy bejeezus scared out of her to never do it again.”), to name a couple.  So maybe there will come a time…

But this I promise to my listeners.  I will treat text with honesty.  I do not make stuff up.  I try to let the text speak.

But I have to rely on the credibility of the text.

That is why I feel so betrayed by Jonah Lehrer.  And so should we all.

Imagine by Jonah Lehrer – My Takeaways

At the end of each of my book synopsis presentations, I give a few of my takeaways for the books I present.  For Imagine:  How Creativity Works, I had a much longer list than usual – sixteen takeaways.  So, here they are.  If you want to be more creative, then take a good look, and ask, “what do I need to do differently – what changes do I need to make in the way I work?” 

• Sixteen “lessons” (some behaviors to adopt – a longer than usual list of take-aways): 

1)    Paint the walls blue (but hire an accountant wearing red)
2)    Make people interact
3)    Connect more.  Collaborate more.  A lot more.
4)    And, to connect, you need lots of face-to-face interactions.  There is no substitute for face-to-face! (proximity matters a lot!)
5)    If the idea has not come at all, get off task – way off task
• take walks; take showers; have a drink or two…
6)    If the idea has come, get focused – very focused… (until you need another idea – then get off task again)
7)    Embrace – insist on – debate!  (traditional brainstorming, focusing on the positive only, does.not.work!)
8)    Get outside.  Way outside! – and collaborate with outsiders; lots of outsiders.
9)    Play a little (or a lot) – At least, look with new, outsider, child’s eyes…  (familiarity/jargon – these are enemies of creativity)
10)  Only after expertise is developed can you stray from the traditional, and improvise… (think Yo-Yo Ma).  Thus, expertise precedes great breakthroughs…
11) Travel – far away from home… (and pay attention when you travel)
12) And, aim for diversity (and weirdness) in your connections
• embrace the city
13) Walk faster…
14)  Treat breakthrough performers more like athletic superstars
15)  Get much better at your powers of observation
16)  Provide “15 percent time” (or its equivalent) – use your 15 percent time to play around with new ideas……

Mind Wide Open: A book review by Bob Morris

Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life
Steven Johnson
Scribner/Simon & Schuster (2004)

How and why the brain sciences can help to “open wide the mind’s caged door”

I read this book before Steven Johnson’s later works, The Ghost Map (2006) and Where Good Ideas Come From (2011) and then re-read it recently, before composing this commentary. Because Johnson is a very serious thinker with an almost insatiable curiosity, he devotes uncommon time and thought to what he writes and how well he writes it, drawing heavily on a wealth of secondary sources that he duly acknowledges. In this book, there are generously annotated notes (Pages 217-255) and an extensive bibliography (Pages 257-262).  Other reviews have offered insightful reasons for holding this book in high regard.  I agree with those reasons and see no need to recycle them now.

Here in Dallas, there is a Farmer’s Market near the downtown area where several merchants offer slices of fresh fruit as samples of their wares. In that same spirit, I offer a selection of brief passages representative of the high quality of Johnson’s skills.

“Unlike so many technoscientific advances, the brain sciences and their imaging technologies are, almost by definition, a kind of mirror. They capture what our brains are doing and reflect that information back to us. You gaze into the glass, and the reflection says to you, ‘Here is your brain.’ This book is the story of my journey into that mirror.” (Page 17)

“The attention system works as a kind of assembly line: higher-level functions are built on top of lower-level functions. So if you have problems encoding, you’ll almost certainly have problems with supervisory attention. When people notice attention impairments, they’re usually detecting problems with the focus/execute or supervisory levels, but the original source of the problem may well be farther down the chain, or it might be localized to a particular sensory channel.” (Page 93)

“Understanding the roots of laughter requires a kind of hybrid of the Darwinian and Freudian models. We laugh primarily because laughter is a crucial component of the emotional glue that connects parent and child during the vulnerable years of development. Children who laugh and roughhouse and tickle with their guardians create powerful bonds of affection with those grown-ups, and the bonds help them survive.” (Page 127)
“For reasons probably both generic and cultural, I am not much of a mystic, but these flashes of insight [while writing this book] were the closest thing I had to the experience of mysticism. These sparks were the transcendence that Keats sought when he commanded us to ‘open wide the mind’s caged doors.’

Note: The quotation is from the beginning of John Keats’s poem, “Fancy”:

“Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth,
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth;
Then let winged Fancy wander
Through the thought still spread beyond her:
Open wide the mind’s caged-door
She’ll dart forth, and cloudward soar.”

“To me, one of the most moving discoveries in the brain sciences – after a century of Darwinian conflict and Oedipal struggle – has been the emerging understanding of the brain’s affiliative systems. Our brains are designed to love and connect as much as they are designed to flee and fight.” (Page 264)

To his great credit, Steven Johnson relies on layman terms (to the extent possible) to explain the neurological context of  dozens of everyday situations. For example,  How to “read” people accurately? Why and how do we devise self-delusions? How to explain what I characterize as “the invisibility of the obvious”? What is the neurochemistry behind love, hate, joy, rage, and other extreme emotions? With what does a brain “teem”? Why and how can great works of art (painting, sculpture, music, ballet) move us to tears? And in anticipation of a book Johnson wrote years later, where do breakthrough ideas originate?

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to read Steven Johnson’s later works as well as Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, Gerald Edelman’s Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit, and Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine.

Creativity is a Verb, and feels like Hard Work – insight from Jonah Lehrer, Imagine

I have now read enough about creativity to know that we have our work cut out for us.

What we think, what we wish, is that creative ideas just fall from the sky in blinding moments of inspiration.  That does happen, but…  But, just as Twyla Tharp says in The Creative Habit, and Jonah Lehrer confirms in his thorough study of creativity, creative breakthroughs are the result of specific practices (“habits”), serious attention to work places, and work styles, and many, many interactions and connections, and work discipline…

Yes, breakthroughs may come suddenly, but they come at the end of some very hard and serious work.  And then, when the breakthrough arrives, there is much more hard work to do to turn the idea into something real.  Here’ s a key quote from the Lehrer book:

I think people need to be reminded that creativity is a verb, a very time-consuming verb. It’s about taking an idea in your head, and transforming that idea into something real. And that’s always going to be a long and difficult process. If you’re doing it right, it’s going to feel like work.”

Our future depends on our creative work leading to those creative breakthroughs.  So, we all need to get to work…

—————-

If you are in the DFW area, come join us this Friday, May 4, at the First Friday Book Synopsis.  I will present my synopsis of Imagine:  How Creativity Works, and Karl Krayer will present his synopsis of Take the Stairs: 7 Steps to Achieving True Success
 by Rory Vaden.  7:00 am at the Park City Club.  Click here to register.

We Need More Good Stories, with Fewer Simple Chronicles

You might not realize it, but you are a creature of an imaginative realm called Neverland.  Neverland is your home, and before you die, you will spend decades there. 
Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal:  How Stories Make Us Human

If you say, “The queen died, and the king died,” that is a chronicle.
If you say, “The queen died, and the king died, from grief,” that is a story.  (Joe Lambert and Nina Mullen, drawing from E. M. Forster).
Bob Johansen:  Get There Early:  Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present

———-

I heard Krys Boyd on KERA interview Jonathan Gottschall about his book, The Storytelling Animal.  (Krys is a great interviewer).  And I remembered the brief description of the difference between a chronicle and a story from Get There Early.

We care about stories.  We learn from stories.  We place ourselves within stories, because we all know that every story, is, in some way, our own story.  Last night I watched House.  Wilson has cancer.  A very close friend of my wife has cancer.  The fictional story is her story – our story.  You know…

Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.  
(John Donne, For Whom the Bell Tolls)

In the interview, Gottschall observed that stories always include two elements:  some form of dilemma, and some form of resolution.  It is the old “problem-solution” formula for persuasion.  And when a story is told well, it always makes us stop and ask:  “What is my dilemma?  Can I find a way out; a solution; a resolution that works for me, and hopefully for others?”

I read a lot of nonfiction books — but, sadly, too little fiction.  Gottschall observed in the interview that people who expose themselves to more fiction have an easier time interacting with others.  They are more socially connected; better connected.  And, thankfully, he reminded us that stories preceded printed books, so maybe I get almost enough fiction from my favorite television shows.  I guarantee that, in House alone, there is enough dilemma and conflict to last a while.

In my own reading, I have come to realize that the best nonfiction writers are, in fact, superior story tellers.  I think this explains the popularity of Malcolm Gladwell, and why I have so warmed to The Power of Habit and Imagine just recently.  They are both written by superior story tellers  (Charles Duhigg and Jonah Lehrer).  Books that are principle-rich and story-poor just aren’t quite as engaging or gripping.  Or insightful.

And I think it is why I remember some books I read years ago more than others.  David Halberstam is always at the top of my list, because he was such a wonderful story teller.

In the realm of organizational culture, story plays a major role.  To build corporate culture, to build corporate strength, to build a true community, tell the stories of your organization.  Yes, tell the good stories, the stories of success — but tell especially the “struggle” stories.  “This is what we faced.  This is how we overcame it.”  A well-told struggle story can help a current struggle seem not quite so overwhelming.

We love a good story.  And, it turns out, we need a steady dose of good stories.

—————

Good stories move us. They touch us, they teach us, and they cause us to remember.  They enable the listener to put the behavior in a real context and understand what has to be done in that context to live up to expectations. 
…storytelling is the ultimate leadership tool.   (Elizabeth Weil).
James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Pozner:  Encouraging the Heart — A Leaders Guide to Rewarding and Encouraging Others

From Yo-Yo Ma, Your Communication Tip of the Day – “Make People Care What Happens Next”

I’ve finished reading Imagine by Jonah Lehrer.  It is a treasure, with story after story worth pondering.

Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble

One of his exemplars of creativity is Yo-Yo Ma.  Here is a brief excerpt.

For Ma, the tedium of the flawless performance taught him that there is often a tradeoff between perfection and expression. “If you are only worried about not making a mistake, then you will communicate nothing,” he says. “You will have missed the point of making music, which is to make people feel something.” Instead, he reviews the complete score, searching for the larger story. “I always look at a piece of music like a detective novel.” My job is to retrace the story so that the audience feels the suspense. So that when the climax comes, they’re right there with me, listening to my beautiful detective story. It’s all about making people care about what happens next.” (emphasis added).

“Make people care about what happens next.”  Now this is your communication tip of the day.  In your speeches, your presentations, your blog posts, your articles, even your emails, make people care about what comes next. Always.

Coming for the May 4 First Friday Book Synopsis – Imagine: How Creativity Works & Take the Stairs

Recently, a sharp entrepreneur told me that she consistently hears that the First Friday Book Synopsis is one of the top 5 networking events in the Dallas area.  I believe this is true, and you can sense it whenever you walk into the room at one of our monthly sessions.  The quality of the people, the content of the book synopsis presentations, the great food, the respect for the clock…  What more could you ask for?

We begin at 7:00 am, and you can always walk out between 8:05-8:07.  And you leave with two handouts, genuinely comprehensive takeaways with key quotes and the most useful transferable principles from the two books chosen for the morning.

And we’ve been providing these sessions every month for over 14 years.

For May 4, we have selected two books that you will find very useful.  I am presenting my synopsis of Imagine:  How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer.  It is a terrific book!  I read a lot of business books that have very good information, but some books are also written by exceptional writers.  This is one of those books.  (So is my June selection, The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg).  Jonah Lehrer, the author of Imagine, tells a story with such thorough detail.  And he tells stories in such a way that we see the insights just leap out in moments of “discovery.”  He is a really good writer.  (Click here to read the review of Imagine by our blogging colleague, Bob Morris).

Karl Krayer will present his synopsis of Take the Stairs:  7 Steps to Achieving True Success.  It is a book dealing with self-discipline.  So, if you have mastered self-discipline, you can skip this presentation.  (I suspect that you still have some work to do in that category – I sure do).

We meet at the wonderful Park City Club in Dallas, near the corner of Northwest Highway and the Dallas North Tollway, at 7:00 am – the first Friday of every month.  Come join us for the May 4 First Friday Book Synopsis.  You will be glad you did.

Click here to register.

From Celine Dion to OutKast – Melding the Brand New with the Familiar (insight from Charles Duhigg and Jonah Lehrer)

“People listen to Top 40 because they want to hear their favorite songs or songs that sound like their favorite songs.  When something different comes on, they’re offended.  They don’t want anything unfamiliar.”
Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit

How do you get someone to want to listen to these guys?

When her music feels so much more familiar?

Here’s a tidbit from The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.  The issue is how a radio station introduces a new song by an unknown artist.  He describes in detail the attempt to make a big hit out of a song called “Hey Ya!” by OutKast.  (My apology – I don’t know this song.  You can watch the music video of it here).”  The research that music folks do that can practically guarantee when a song will be a hit was clear – this song was going to be a monster hit.  But, when stations would play it, people would switch stations during the song.  Not a good sign!

Here’s what they discovered:  they found out that even a sure-fire monster hit, when it is new, has to be sandwiched between two “familiar” songs, in order to keep people from switching stations.  And they have to follow this practice until listeners decide that this new song now sounded “familiar.”  Fascinating.

So, this is what they did:  they played a Celine Dion song, and then immediately followed with Hey Ya!, and then immediately after, they played another familiar song by another familiar artist.  The key word in all of this is “familiar.”  Interestingly, people were “sick of” Celine Dion, but they would not change the station, because she sounded “familiar.”  From Duhigg:

“There were songs that listeners said they actively disliked, but were sticky nonetheless…  Male listeners said they hated Celine Dion and couldn’t stand her songs.  But whenever a Dion tune came on the radio, they stayed tuned in.  Within the los Angeles market, stations that regularly played Dion at the end of each hour – when the number of listeners was measured – could reliably boost their audience by as much as 3 percent, a huge figure in the radio world.  Male listeners may have thought they disliked Dion, but when her songs played, they stayed glued.”      

So I was sitting in church yesterday, Easter Sunday, and we were singing the Wesley hymn Christ The Lord is Risen Today.  And, at the conclusion of the service, the choir sang the Hallelujah Chorus.  Both songs were written centuries ago.  Wesley’s hymn was first published in 1739, and it was based on a fourteenth century version of a Latin hymn.  Handle wrote the Messiah in 1741.  So, these are not exactly examples of new, modern sacred music.

It was wonderful – and wonderfully familiar.

I had just finished reading the Duhigg book, and thought about this experience, comparing it to the “Hey Ya!” challenge.  The last thing I want on Easter Sunday is some new, modern, never-heard-before song.  I want the familiar.

So, what do we do with all this?  This may explain why introducing and accepting change is so hard.  People want the familiar.  Even the “familiar” that they no longer “want,” that they are “tired of,” they still want it because it feels “familiar.”

So, if you are proposing a change at your work, asking people to buy in to something they have not ever experienced, look for ways to either make if feel familiar, or, sandwich it in between other actions that are familiar.

No wonder change is so hard…

But, Part 2 – “On the Other Hand”:

But…  we live in an era when change has to be the name of the game.  So, how do we help people become more comfortable with the unfamiliar?

There are places where we do not want the familiar.  If we go to the annual auto show, we want the new and different to be on display.  And we are looking for the “cool” factor, the new and different and unfamiliar – the “I can’t wait to try that” factor.  Same with an electronics show.  We want to see the latest new gadgets and we look for those rare breakthroughs that will change our lives for the better.

So, maybe, in our work environments, we need some “what’s new and different” shows.  In Imagine, Jonah Lehrer describes Google’s CSI (Crazy Search Ideas) events:

“It’s like a middle-school science fair.  You see hundreds of posters from every conceivable field.  The guys doing nanotechnology are talking to the guys making glue.” 

Such events are “defined as” looking for the new – looking for the next, new, new change.  Maybe we need more of these, to get our change muscles the exercise they need, so that we aren’t offended with, and driven away by, the unfamiliar.

Coming for the May First Friday Book Synopsis – Imagine by Jonah Lehrer & Take the Stairs by Rory Valden

On April 6, we began our 15^th year of the First Friday Book Synopsis.  We have presented two synopses, two books a month, every month, for now over 14 years.  A woman recently told me that in her circles, our event is described as one of the premiere networking events in Dallas, because of its combination of great participants, engaged in terrific conversations while making valuable connections with each other, as they receive the content of the book presentations.  Content + conversation + good food, in a beautiful setting, all in a fast-paced breakfast meeting.  And, this great experience respects your own busy time demands – we start at 7:00 am, and you can leave right at 8:05, and get right back at the challenges of the day.

For May 4, we have chosen two good books.  I look forward to presenting my synopsis of Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer.  Mr. Lehrer has been interviewed and profiled in many places since the publication of his book.  It is, as they say, generating “buzz.”  I am just getting starting on my reading of the book.  Bob Morris, our blogging colleague, really liked this book, and ended his review of it with these words:  ”Bravo! I also thank him for all that I have learned.”  Read Bob’s review of this book by clicking here.

Karl Krayer will present his synopsis of Take the Stairs: 7 Steps to Achieving True Success by Rory Valden, a book with an always-needed reminder to develop and practice self-discipline.

You will be able to register soon from this web site for our May 4 event.  If you are in the DFW area, come join us, bring a bring, join in the conversation, and keep learning with us at the First Friday Book Synopsis.

You can click on the flier below for a full and printable view.

Click image for larger view

Imagine: A book review by Bob Morris

Imagine: How Creativity Works
Jonah Lehrer
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2012)

How and why our ability to imagine what has never existed is “our most important mental talent”

An abundance of books and articles continues to be produced as research in neuroscience continues to reveal more of what the brain is and does, especially in terms of its impact on initiatives and processes that involve decision-making, problem-solving, creativity, innovation, and collaboration. Jonah Lehrer is among the most thoughtful and eloquent of writers who contribute to our increased understanding, first with an article (“The Eureka Hunt,” The New Yorker, July 28, 2008) and then with two books, How People Decide (2009) and Imagine (2012).

His latest contributions (in this brilliant book) are in two separate but related areas: individual creativity and collaborate creativity. Why are some individuals and teams more creative and productive than are others? How can a work environment encourage and nourish creative and innovative thinking by both individuals and teams? We know by now that most (not all) human limits are self-imposed and that is especially true insofar as creativity and the creative process are concerned. I wish I had a dollar (or even a quarter) for every time I have heard someone claim, “I’m just not a creative person.” Lehrer does his best to eliminate such misconceptions (some of which may be a cop-out) but his ultimate objective is to explain how and why our ability to imagine what has never existed is “our most important mental talent.” And I agree with him that almost anyone, over time with both patience and practice, can develop skills and techniques that will enable them to think more creatively and more innovatively.

Here in Dallas, we have a farmers market near the downtown area at which several merchants offer slices of fresh fruit so people can sample their wares.  In that spirit, I offer a representative selection of Lehrer’s insights.

On the material source of the imagination, the three pounds of flesh inside the skull: “William James described the creative process as a ‘seething cauldron of ideas, where everything is fizzling and bobbing about in a state of bewildering activity.’ For the first time, we can see the cauldron itself, that massive network of electrical cells that allow individuals to form new connections between old ideas.” (Page xvii)

“The reality of the creative process is that it often requires persistence, the ability to stare at a problem until it makes sense…We can’t always wait for the insights to find us; sometimes we have to search for them.” (Page 56)

“The lesson of letting go is that we constrain our own creativity. We are so worried about playing the wrong note or saying the wrong thing that we end up with nothing at all, the silence of the scared imagination.” (Page 104)

Note: One of my favorite quotations is provided by Miles Davis, a truly great jazz musician: ““Don’t play what’s there…play what’s not there.” Yes, great jazz involves great improvisation but as Davis would be the first to point out, form and structure are essential, first because they provide a point of departure, of course, but also because they establish limits without which improvisation worthy of the name is impossible. Check out what Lehrer has to say about jazz improvisation (Pages 89-91) and comic improvisation (Pages 99-104).

“Sometimes a creative problem is so difficult that it requires people to connect their imaginations together; the answer arrives only if we collaborate. That’s because a group is not just a collection of individual talents. Instead, it is a chance for those talents to exceed themselves, to produce something greater than anyone thought possible.” (Page 139)

“The mystery is this: although the imagination is inspired by the everyday model – by its flaws and beauties — we are able to see beyond our sources, to imagine things that exist only in the mind. We notice an incompleteness and we can complete it; the cracks in things become a source of light. And so the mop gets turned into the Swifter, and Tin Pan Alley gives rise to Bob Dylan, and a hackneyed tragedy becomes Hamlet. Every creative story is different. And every creative story is the same. There was nothing. Now there is something. It’s almost like magic.” (Pages 252-253)

These brief excerpts (selected from several hundred I considered) correctly suggest but by no means reveal the scope and depth of Jonah Lehrer’s explanation of how and why our ability to imagine what has never existed is “our most important mental talent.” Having read and then re-read his latest book, I congratulate him on a brilliant achievement. Bravo! I also thank him for all that I have learned. Those who share my high regard for his book are urged to check out Michael Michalko’s Creative Thinkering: Putting Your Imagination to Work.