The Story Species: Our Life-Literature Connection.

Dr. Joseph Gold's new book is called, The Story Species: Our Life-Literature Connection. Taking advantage of recent advances in knowledge of brain function, this is a ground breaking account of the human uses of literature, a validation and explanation of how we humans produce and use literature as part of our biological evolution. Dr. Gold goes beyond the classic tradition of great "Defenses" of literature from earlier times, cultural landmarks by Sidney and Shelley, for instance. He argues that literature is necessary for our very survival as a species. Without it, in an electronic world, subject as we are to increasing disconnectedness from each other and from our feelings, threatened by dumbing down, by phony media messages instead of thought, we are at risk of losing our very human identity itself.

With the knowledge of neuroscience and the psychological insight available to our own time, The Story Species argues that literature is the only continuous record of human behaviour, the repertoire of how we render the world we experience into a manageable brain store. Stories and poems must be viewed as human adaptive and survival behaviours, as neural information processes occurring in the service of the species, rather than as "art". Literature grows from and along with the language specialization of human brains over millions of years, first in oral transmission and then in writing. Its roots are in the organizational story processing function of the human Central Nervous System, in perception and memory.

Dr. Gold explains in clear and colourful language how Literature is an indispensable aid in human identity formation, in maintaining health and in achieving personal and social freedom. Fiction and poetry provide a necessary grounding for human stability and balanced adaptive functioning, both for individuals and the social systems people form.