Beyond Reason: The Top Ten

[craner]

I'll toss out a preliminary list here and then I'll explain some of my choices later tonight/tomorrow, when I'm back from apple-picking

You've set up too high of expectations here, I'm not sure I can deliver an adequately idiosyncratic and quality list, but I'll try

- Andre Dubus, "On Charon's Wharf"
- Random Cloud, “Fiat Flux”
- Erving Goffman, Strategic Interaction
- Lynn Margulis, Microcosmos
- Peli Grietzer, Amerikkkka
- Sarah Perry's Ribbonfarm essays
- Ben Lerner, "The Media"
- Samuel Beckett, Endgame
- Annie Baker, The Flick + Antipodes
- Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts
- Benjamin Labatut, When We Cease to Understand the World (opening chapter)
- Eliot, "East Coker" (closing stanzas)
- Robert Pogue Harrison, Gardens + Forests
- Franzen, Freedom
- Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
- Michael Shaara, Killer Angels
- Don DeLillo, Underworld (prologue)
- Austen, Emma
- Schelling, Strategy of Conflict
- Paglia, Sexual Personae (intro)
- Keith Thomas, Man & the Natural World

And I'll add some movies/TV series, since they're texts too

- Mamet, House of Games
- Herzog, Wrath of God
- PTA, Punch-Drunk Love + Phantom Thread
- Malick, New World
- Altman, Short Cuts + Nashville
- Kubrick, Barry Lyndon
- Dunham, Girls (S5)
- Gavin, Lodge 49
- Wyler, Ben Hur

@sus

This is unfinished. I’d still like to hear you talk about more of these things.

Also, could you list the Top 10 pieces of work you’ve written.

Finally, did you know that Keith Thomas went to Barry Grammar School and was born down the road from me in the Vale of Glamorgan?

 

[sus]

Well this is very generous and kind, I'm not sure whether you are pulling my leg but I will go along with it sincerely and write about some of these texts

 

[sus]

Erving Goffman—what can I say?—my whole life I wondered whether someone had put together a working model of sociality and... Erving did.

One of my favorite Goffman moments comes from Public Relations: the simple act of naming "the stall," of creating this strange and obvious and deeply familiar concept—a "stall" being a seat on a train, a cafe table, a market stall, a parking spot—any partitioning of space that can be claimed and occupied. Suddenly we can talk about the way a train passenger might make his row especially unappealing to join, make it difficult for others to request permission to join him—by putting in headphones, by taking his shoes off revealing sweaty feet, by putting his bags up on the seats next to him. Suddenly we can talk about what it takes to claim a stall for future use—what objects you can place on a cafe table so that others will not contest it; the correlation between how valuable & personal an item is, and how strong a claim it exerts on the stall (napkins and newspapers versus a purse or jacket).

Strategic Interaction is Goffman at his most cynical, his most Machiavellian, his most game-theoretic, modeling the social world as a system of espionage and counter-espionage, of public performances and probing attempts to get behind others' masks. This is the paranoid approach that gets discussed in the Mike Antenna interview.

But Presentation of Self is his first book, it's where he lays out the basics. Every book after that one (and there are a dozen plus) throws out the old vocabulary, requires no previous experience with Goffman's oeuvre, builds a new vocabulary a new framework to describe the specific social arena described (a psychiatric institution, public space, social taboo & shame). But all of them are connected and indebted to that first, dramaturgical, quasiShakespearean framework of Presentation: "the definition of self," "frontstage," "backstage," "teams." Belief in the part one is playing. Idealization of types. Dramatic realization of performances. Maintenance of expressive control.

 

[sus]

Lynn Margulis I love in part because I'd been immersed in Cold War conflict literature so long, and Margulis takes the opposite stance, her evolutionary theory always placed primary importance on symbiosis.

But really I love her because of the way she denaturalizes, defamiliarizes the human world by looking at it from a bacterial perspective. I got into her because of a great Charles Mann anecdote told 5:50 minutes in to this Long Now Foundation talk:

"It was about ten years ago that I finally read that Al Gore book about climate change in a cafe... There's a tap on my shoulder... Lynn snatched the book from my hand and looked at it in great disdain. And because I'm an idiot, I say, 'What what what?' She looks at it and there's a picture of a polar bear and she says, you know, 'Mammals.' ...She's one of the people who's established that 99% of the world's biomass is bacteria... 99% of the world's evolutionary creativity is there, and we mammals are basically just epiphenomena. They're cute, she'd say—'You guys are cute.' Stupidly I defend us mammals: 'Look, don't you think it would be sad if people got wiped out by climate change?' and she looks at me pityingly: 'Look—it's the fate of every successful species to wipe itself out.'"

 

[william kent]

Erving Goffman—what can I say?—my whole life I wondered whether someone had put together a working model of sociality and... Erving did.

One of my favorite Goffman moments comes from Public Relations: the simple act of naming "the stall," of creating this strange and obvious and deeply familiar concept—a "stall" being a seat on a train, a cafe table, a market stall, a parking spot—any partitioning of space that can be claimed and occupied. Suddenly we can talk about the way a train passenger might make his row especially unappealing to join, make it difficult for others to request permission to join him—by putting in headphones, by taking his shoes off revealing sweaty feet, by putting his bags up on the seats next to him. Suddenly we can talk about what it takes to claim a stall for future use—what objects you can place on a cafe table so that others will not contest it; the correlation between how valuable & personal an item is, and how strong a claim it exerts on the stall (napkins and newspapers versus a purse or jacket).

Strategic Interaction is Goffman at his most cynical, his most Machiavellian, his most game-theoretic, modeling the social world as a system of espionage and counter-espionage, of public performances and probing attempts to get behind others' masks. This is the paranoid approach that gets discussed in the Mike Antenna interview.

But Presentation of Self is his first book, it's where he lays out the basics. Every book after that one (and there are a dozen plus) throws out the old vocabulary, requires no previous experience with Goffman's oeuvre, builds a new vocabulary a new framework to describe the specific social arena described (a psychiatric institution, public space, social taboo & shame). But all of them are connected and indebted to that first, dramaturgical, quasiShakespearean framework of Presentation: "the definition of self," "frontstage," "backstage," "teams." Belief in the part one is playing. Idealization of types. Dramatic realization of performances. Maintenance of expressive control.

What do you see as the value of this sort of thing? I find it interesting, but I'm not sure what to do with it beyond discuss and think about it. When I actually interact with people and move around, all the theory I've read goes quiet. I don't consciously think my way through things in those terms. It's only when I come on here, read something, or specifically talk about this sort of thing with someone that this stuff comes to the fore. The rest of the time it's just swirling around in there with all the other information and I don't feel as though I'm able to access it and make practical use of it in the moment.

Perhaps that's a good thing as I can see someone making heavy use of it in their day-to-day becoming quite the manipulator, but I can also see how it might be useful.

 

[craner]

Well this is very generous and kind, I'm not sure whether you are pulling my leg but I will go along with it sincerely and write about some of these texts

I'm not pulling your leg.

 

[sus]

What do you see as the value of this sort of thing? I find it interesting, but I'm not sure what to do with it beyond discuss and think about it. When I actually interact with people and move around, all the theory I've read goes quiet. I don't consciously think my way through things in those terms. It's only when I come on here, read something, or specifically talk about this sort of thing with someone that this stuff comes to the fore. The rest of the time it's just swirling around in there with all the other information and I don't feel as though I'm able to access it and make practical use of it in the moment.

I think that's fair. For me, it subtly remaps my ontology. I start looking at the world in new categories, new disjunctions and distinctions. I also think there's an ethical dimension. A lot of social performance is done unconsciously—but now that you're aware of this game around stalls, and claiming stalls, you can't obliviously put in earbuds, put your feet up, pretend you're not discouraging others joining you. As you become more aware of the game, and how you and others play it, you also gain responsibility.

 

[sus]

I'm not pulling your leg.

Of the stuff I've written, probably the pieces for Cleveland Review are among my best. I'm not sure I'd recommend them though. I was proud of them when I wrote them, but opinion sours over time...

 

[sus]

I want to know more about craner, spend my time finishing his Bin Laden essay, learn what his interest in this thread is, why he's being polite to a beggar boy with no impressive wares, nothing to advertise with qualities worth his heeding

 

[william kent]

I think that's fair. For me, it subtly remaps my ontology. I start looking at the world in new categories, new disjunctions and distinctions. I also think there's an ethical dimension. A lot of social performance is done unconsciously—but now that you're aware of this game around stalls, and claiming stalls, you can't obliviously put in earbuds, put your feet up, pretend you're not discouraging others joining you. As you become more aware of the game, and how you and others play it, you also gain responsibility.

This stuff does actually come to mind for you when you're interacting with people then? Also, do you not find it a hindrance to consciously process these previously unconscious moves?

"Thought is the enemy of flow"

"Thought is the enemy of flow" This quote could probably be a thread in the Music forum, because it's by a famous drummer, Vinnie Colaiuta (a famous drummer I'd never heard of until I saw someone post this quote - but apparently he is King Drummer, toast of the technical mags. I wondered if...

www.dissensus.com

 

[sus]

@version can you share with us a phenomenology of faceswaps, the way your posting is changed when you change your avatar, the way your relation to the board, your stance and orientation and attitude and style are anchored and altered by a profile picture

 

[sus]

This stuff does actually come to mind for you when you're interacting with people then?

No my head is always empty, empty brain, blank brain, reverb when you knock. But in this bliss-brained idiotzen state, the way I see the world is still structured by these systems.

 

[william kent]

@version can you share with us a phenomenology of faceswaps, the way your posting is changed when you change your avatar, the way your relation to the board, your stance and orientation and attitude and style are anchored and altered by a profile picture

It has no effect for me. They're interchangeable. You're better off asking @Corpsey as he had an alter ego on here he said felt like a distinct persona.

 

[sus]

Mental. You're struck off my sanity list. Only woops perdures.

 

[william kent]

Mental. You're struck off my sanity list. Only woops perdures.

It has an effect in the sense of it's nice to have a new lick of paint, but I haven't felt a difference in my posts based on specific profile pics.

 

[sus]

@craner as a mark of my desire to impress you, and because I have such a low opinion of all my past work, and believe only in my present work, I am going to share some in progress writing that I think is some of my finest. Normally I wouldn't drag this out into the light but as a man of taste and experience perhaps you will appreciate what I am trying to do. This is the prologue to Saj' for Suspended Reason. It goes on for many chapters but this is a first taste.

In golden hills with hungry gulls, where stillness kills and weather lulls, and mission bells ring culture dull; on sunset’s coast a teacher’s son, our host my ghost your medium—Promethean, bohemian, chameleon (qué bien & some)—with happy heart, nor art, the eyes fixed singly on the mark, and swimming laps from dark to dark—suspended, sea-logged, racing barque—yet nagging deep was discontentment: all achievement that was lent him came at cost of such neglection: words forgotten, song unpracticed, “heart of mine so like a cactus.”

Til one morning in the mountains—clearings where a libr'y founded, He-Man Miller, gene'rous'd fountain—were all his doubt and debt surmounted, romancing to find his Merlin, and thus announced his route would swerve then.

A violin, a pedal loop, a puff of pipe-weed, o'raggad group; his Lady came from Guadalupe, and waved her arms amnesiac fog so he forgot about the odds—forgot the math, the path, the bath, of standing up to west wind’s wrath; the cries of gulls too much to take; from ghouls of death, sought lemniscate. The motto that he drank like nectar, brandished though he were defector: “I am muscle, I am arrow, I am bone and I am vector.”

So if it pleases, you may hear—my song so human and so flawed—of Heman the Americanite, his journey prolonged, in a nutative rhythm with writing that nods, with bouquets of distinctions that add up to God. (A cooing, an evenness, assonance, warble. A raga of throat-sounds that cast away foibles—that open up portals, make singers immortal.)

But what use is a bower that has not its bird? Flowers sans pollen are wasteful, absurd. The power of beauty, our interest, for hours; the sweetness of nectar, abhorrence of sour, is nutriment promised for which we devour. So the function of flourish is moral inferred, the lessons embedded in words we have heard. The rhyme is the dangler attached to the angler, and if it betrays, then it earns reader rancor. But reader is gambler and writer is card; a critical ear is a ward against bards. So caveat emptor and hurry along.

 

[craner]

@linebaugh what a waste, she could've written like that her entire career, we could've gotten books on The Avengers, instead she spent all her life-force on talk shows trying to win a culture war, prematurely aged a decade

She did write a chapter of a book describing Revenge of the Sith as the greatest work of art of the era.

If she is not doing what you want, maybe it is your job to do it.

 

[craner]

What do you see as the value of this sort of thing? I find it interesting, but I'm not sure what to do with it beyond discuss and think about it. When I actually interact with people and move around, all the theory I've read goes quiet. I don't consciously think my way through things in those terms. It's only when I come on here, read something, or specifically talk about this sort of thing with someone that this stuff comes to the fore. The rest of the time it's just swirling around in there with all the other information and I don't feel as though I'm able to access it and make practical use of it in the moment.

Perhaps that's a good thing as I can see someone making heavy use of it in their day-to-day becoming quite the manipulator, but I can also see how it might be useful.

I'm going to answer for @sus which I know is arrogant and unfair, but I think the value of it is (for him) the way it fits into his own very specific set of interests and a developing worldview.

This is why his 'canon' is so interesting and singular; it is not obvious and needs explaining. Or, as Sus might put it, 'explicating'.

Nobody else could have put together a list like this because it's determined by a unique, hermetic, obsessive pursuit of a series of social themes, behaviors and strategies. It's not just a list of stuff he likes. It's the most disciplined and deliberate system-building we've seen here since the days of K-Punk. It may not be as extensive and sweeping as that, but it's more intricate/intimate.

 

[luka]

can't beleive Craner has only just noticed Gus, after all these years. hes going to act like he discovered him now, you wait and see.

 

[craner]

can't beleive Craner has only just noticed Gus, after all these years. hes going to act like he discovered him now, you wait and see.

I feel like I've been preoccupied for years and I'm only just raising my head and looking around again.