“Though thought may incorporate other material, such as images, it seems to be predominantly linguistic…

Thoughts are often fragmentary and frequently condensed or elliptic: Many things are left unsaid, and the dots are not joined.

This presents a challenge to novelists who want to deliver a character and her world entirely through interior monologue. Our consciousness, after all, doesn’t have to tell itself many things that readers may need to know in order to follow the plot.”

Raymond Tallis on “The Voices Within” by Charles Fernyhough (WSJ, Books, Sat/Sun, October8–9, 2016.)