Strange Loops

"Enthralling. . . . A story that burns with intensity and daring." —Iain Reid A propulsive novel about the power and paradoxes of desire, from the acclaimed author of The Amateurs. As small children, Francine and her twin Philip shared a seemingly unbreakable bond—but in adolescence the connection frayed, and in adulthood the siblings are locked in a repeating loop of complex, destructive emotions. Matters have reached a breaking point, and Francine, now in her thirties and the married mother of two small boys, is convinced that Philip’s teenaged infatuation with religion and subsequent ongoing obsession with his sister’s “moral impropriety”—sparked by his discovery of her involvement in a forbidden relationship—are to blame. As storm clouds of resentment and mutual betrayal gather ominously, threatening to upend both siblings’ lives and damage their families, Francine unexpectedly finds herself in a situation that mirrors her earlier transgression: stirred and unsettled by her attraction to a wildly inappropriate man. And the one person who suspects is the last person she trusts—her disapproving twin. With the plot twists of a thriller, lean prose crackling with intensity, and big ideas explored alongside the messy truth of human relationships, Strange Loops simultaneously shocks and thrills the reader, all while asking vital questions about faith, love, and desire.

Can thought arise out of matter? Can self, soul, consciousness, “I” arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the “strange loop”—a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. The most central and complex symbol in your brain is the one called “I.” The “I” is the nexus in our brain, one of many symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse. How can a mysterious abstraction be real—or is our “I” merely a convenient fiction? Does an “I” exert genuine power over the particles in our brain, or is it helplessly pushed around by the laws of physics? These are the mysteries tackled in I Am a Strange Loop, Douglas Hofstadter's first book-length journey into philosophy since Gödel, Escher, Bach. Compulsively readable and endlessly thought-provoking, this is a moving and profound inquiry into the nature of mind.

In the style of Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood, Dave Eggers' The Circle: a post-apocalyptic examination of nostalgia, loss and the possibility of starting over. Allow us to introduce you to the newest product from PINA, the world's largest tech company. "Port" is a curiously irresistible device that offers the impossible: space-time travel mysteriously powered by nostalgia and longing. Step inside a Port and find yourself transported to wherever and whenever your heart desires: a bygone youth, a dreamed-of future, the fabled past. In the near-future world of Liz Harmer's extraordinary novel, Port becomes a phenomenon, but soon it is clear that many who pass through its portal won't be coming back—either unwilling to return or, more ominously, unable to do so. After a few short years, the population plummets. The grid goes down. Among those who remain is Marie, a thirtysomething artist living in a small community of Port-resistors camping out in the abandoned mansions of a former steel town. As winter approaches the group considers heading south, but Marie clings to the hope that her long lost lover will one day return to the spot where he disappeared. Meanwhile, PINA's corporate campus in California has become a cultish enclave of survivors. Brandon, the right-hand man to the mad genius who invented Port, decides to get out. He steals a car and drives north-east, where he hopes to find his missing mother. And there he meets Marie. The Amateurs is a story of rapture and romance, and an astoundingly powerful tale about what happens when technology meets desire.

One of the most exciting theories to emerge from cognitive science research over the past few decades has been Douglas Hofstadter's notion of “strange loops,” from Gödel, Escher, Bach (1979). Hofstadter is also an active literary translator who has written about translation, perhaps most notably in his 1997 book Le Ton Beau de Marot, where he draws on his cognitive science research. And yet he has never considered the possibility that translation might itself be a strange loop. In this book Douglas Robinson puts Hofstadter's strange-loops theory into dialogue with a series of definitive theories of translation, in the process showing just how cognitively and affectively complex an activity translation actually is.

'What is a self and how can a self come out of inanimate matter?' This is the riddle that drove Douglas Hofstadter to write this extraordinary book. In order to impart his original and personal view on the core mystery of human existence - our intangible sensation of 'I'-ness - Hofstadter defines the playful yet seemingly paradoxical notion of 'strange loop', and explicates this idea using analogies from many disciplines.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The author’s mother said that the photograph of her father had no meaning, and that it was just a flat piece of paper with dark spots on it. The author explained to her that the photograph was a soul-shard of someone departed, and that she should cherish it as long as she lived. #2 I do not feel any sense of guilt when I slice up and eat tomatoes. I do not go to bed uneasily after having consumed a fresh tomato. I do not believe it is meaningful to try to imagine how the tomato felt as it was sitting on my plate being sliced apart. #3 I had a summer job at age 15 punching buttons on a Friden mechanical calculator in a physiology lab at Stanford University. I was asked to bring down two animals for my friend’s next round of experiments. I fainted right away, and the next day, I was told not to do that again. #4 I was 21 when I read the Norwegian-English writer Roald Dahl’s short story Pig, which changed my life and the lives of other animals as well. It showed me that meat-eating was a common background fact in the lives of my friends, and that vegetarians were strange and sternly moralistic nutcases in my mind.

(Vocal Selections). Winner of the Tony Award for Best Musical, Michael R. Jackson's Pulitzer Prize-winning blisteringly funny masterwork exposes the heart and soul of a young artist grappling with desires, identity, and instincts he boths loves and loathes. This collection features 15 songs from the show arranged for vocal line with piano accompaniment. Songs include: Boundaries * Didn't Want Nothin' * Exile in Gayville * Inner White Girl * Intermission Song * Inwood Daddy * Memory Song * Periodically * Precious Little Dream / AIDS Is God's Punishment * Second Wave * A Strange Loop * A Sympathetic Ear * Today * Tyler Perry Writes Real Life * We Wanna Know.

Strange Loops and Gestures of Creation brings the lifetime work of Joseph Chilton Pearce into symphonic resonance, sounding all of the themes that have made him one of the most significant thinkers of this time. The book, however, hardly repeats his previous work. Here it is framed in intimate, spiritual, and personal ways that open us to surprising revelations. Joseph Chilton Pearce confronts, more clearly, precisely and convincingly than any previous writing, our dire cultural situation --- we live in a collective, society that lacks true meanings of nurturing in every way. He, with equal intensity, points toward the inherent capacity of the heart – the physical heart – to bring the survival oriented brain, functioning through violence, astute manipulative sensing and perceiving, and calculative cleverness, into balance and, indeed to new creative capacities. The key to a creative culture lies in the phenomenon of the ‘strange loop’ between potential and actuality, the relation between the heart as the palpable presence within us of the universal, and the mind as the individual aspect of things. The many examples, ranging from biographical sketches of individuals to neurological research to intimate and personal stories, bring home the inescapable conclusions – we must find again the way to a holy science, that the spirit can be approached with all of the rigor of observational science, and the spirit is not ‘out there’ in the universe, but within our very being, both heart and brain.