BRACERS Record Detail for 130774
To access the original letter, email the Ready Division.
Two photocopies of an excerpt from BR's handwritten signed letter to Lionel Britton, found in James Lowe Autographs Ltd.: Catalogue 10.
"... I do not know why Read thought this book [probably Brain] would infuriate philosophers; it certainly does not infuriate me ... its philosophy is closely similar to that of my still unpublished Human Knowledge—even sometimes in small details, as in how we know a shadow to be ours (p. 450). The whole conception of the relation of the world to private experience is the same as my own. ... I liked the advice to make a synopsis of 100 words, then 10 chapters, etc., and to make analyses of existing books. I did exactly this in adolescence, for my style of book. I was less convinced by the advice to analyse 1000 thrillers before writing one ... when it comes to 'inspiration at will', I confess I am unconvinced. ... Shaw should be instanced as having a scientific outlook (p. 313); he is anti-scientific and anti-rational. ... A general idea is primarily a general work; a word is a class of closely similar particulars. What is called 'abstraction' consists in obviously similar reactions to not obviously similar stimuli...."