A stunningly elegant and highly original debut collection of stories at once dark and poignant, funny and bleak. Brown plumbs the hearts and minds of characters trying to make sense of their lives.

This collection of essays extends the microgenetic theory of the mind/brain state to basic problems in process psychology and philosophy of mind. The author's microtemporal model of brain activity and psychological events, which was originally based on clinical studies of patients with focal brain damage, is here extended to such topics as the concept of the moment in Buddhist philosophy, conscious and unconscious thought, the nature of the self, subjective time and aesthetic perception. The author develops a psychology of mental process, actually a cognitive metaphysics which is grounded in...

Everything Natalie said seemed, to herself, to have been said better by him. He was less fond of speaking, however, than he was of hitting people in the face, which seemed a more likely source of her love to those of us who knew him, begins Jason Brown s linked collection of beautifully haunted, violent, and wry stories set in the densely forested lands of northern New England. In these tales of forbidden love, runaway children, patrimony, alcohol, class, inheritance, and survival, Brown s elegant prose emits both quiet despair and a poignant sense of hope and redemption. These vivid accounts...