Human Traces

bi-cameral mind” was by placing it between the Iliad and the Odyssey. When the Iliad was written, the minds of our ancestors were split between awareness of the world around, and instructions – experienced as ‘supernatural’, coming from outside – on what to do. At the time of the Odyssey, modern human consciousness and modern human will had developed, and the voices from outside were silent.

It seems to me quite a smart move on Sebastian Faulks’ part to have someone come up with Jaynes’ theory some 80-odd years beforehand. It’s such a strange left-field theory – completely wacky, but incredibly suggestive (not just for religion, but for mental illnesses like schizophrenia) – that it seems like it should have been propounded by some obscure German professor in the 1890s, when so many strange psychological ideas were appearing, rather than in the 1970s, by a Princeton psychologist.

I’ll wait to see if he does anything with it. Still plenty of time to go, and Freud hasn’t been mentioned yet, though I assume he will be. Richard Webster, author of “Why Freud Was Wrong“, writes in his weblog that he received a letter from Faulks about that book:

He wrote to say that he had read the book with great appreciation and that he was about to embark on a novel on the same subject. Could he come and talk to me about it?

Soon after that he came to Oxford and we talked about Freud, Charcot and hysteria for most of the day. Human Traces was published earlier this year. There were, of course, many other influences. But it was Why Freud Was Wrong, I am assured, which set the idea for the novel in motion.

So, Human Traces is a novel of ideas, with, clearly, a great deal of background research. I turned to the back of the book for references – for Jaynes and Webster certainly, and no doubt other interesting material I wasn’t aware of – and found this author’s note:

A list of all the people and some of the books I consulted while writing this novel appeared in the hardback edition, published by Hutchinson in August 2005. I would like to reiterate my thanks to all those named.

What? I paid £7.99 for this book (well OK, it was one of a three-for-the-price-of-two deal, but still), and I expect to get the same as the hardback, only later and smaller. If there are references at the back of the hardback, I’d expect them to be at the back of the paperback, thanks very much. What’s going on here? I’m outraged. I’m hearing voices telling me to write a strongly-worded letter of complaint to Vintage paperbacks, and not to bother with their rotten publications ever again.