Motherload

Jonah Lehrer Jonah Lehrer's 2012 fall from grace, following the discovery of errors and 'self-plagiarism ' in his published work, is a well-known story in academic and journalistic circles. It seems to have been, not his editorial mistakes, which are so easy to make, as much as his subsequent lies and deception about them, which really turned people off, and caused his spectacular career shutdown.  In July 2016, Lehrer told the story of 'what happened next', for The Moth in Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife and children. Before you read any further, please listen to what he has to say: he calls the story ' Attachment '.  I had been made aware of Lehrer's book Proust was a Neuroscientist back in 2007, by friends who knew I'd written on Proust, and who sent me copies of his work. Professional jealousy compelled me to smile publicly but privately find fault with it – he seemed only to have read the opening pages of A la recherche ...

I've been exercised about exactly what creativity is for some time now. Apparently while I've been exercised about this, others have been busy appropriating it. Which is odd, because I had the feeling that creative used to be what your mother hoped you weren't, so that you'd do well in your exams and get a good job. These days, creativity is a term that is linked more often with enterprise , innovation and collaboration than with drug-fuelled hippies, going off the rails, and lone artists in garrets. What's being stolen is the origin of creativity. It's being sold back to us as a commodity, something we can buy cheaply and easily, but which effaces the origins of the product, like brightly-lit supermarkets purveying white milk in plastic containers, rather than cows. Let me give an example. Jonah Lehrer is a clever young chap, who wrote a book called Proust was a Neuroscientist (by implication, I am not, I am a grumpy old woman). I read and enjoyed ...