A metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll The dialogues are supposed to be whimsical and bizarre dream-like riffs on the topic

A metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll The dialogues are supposed to be whimsical and bizarre dream-like riffs on the topic at hand, a la Alice in Wonderland, not sharp teaching instruments. I think Hofstadter did get the supposed point of Cage’s piece, or why would he have joked about whether people want to hear ambient noise or not? The review gets good in the middle when it starts talking about Zen, and I agree with some of the conclusions towards the end. As another commenter pointed out, Hofstadter was young. In a way, the whole book is like an amateur piece of music or film or poetry, at times clumsy or campy but generally endearing. I understood this even as a kid.