March 31st, 2010 / 9:08 pm
Craft Notes

Against Dualism: Yes That Is A Joke: A Response.

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Like Christopher, I tend to put off formal long form thinking for the most part; I like videogames and cheese. However, I feel kinda of maternal in this case, because I think it was this admittedly provocative prompt that got Roxane thinking and talking, and me thinking and talking, which lead to Chris’s rebuttal. So pardon me for this sensuous and likely embryonic blab. I’ll also adopt the third person here.
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Roxane, at the top of her post, said that it wasn’t an condemnation of experimental literature, and then, in my reading of her post, extolled plain storytelling with well rounded characters and emotional payoff,while deriding artifice and saying that artifice, or any artifice past a certain acceptable threshold, was bullshit. That’s what I gleaned. If I have misunderstood, I blame Roxane. ;) (And hark back to Chris’s claim that communication, clear communication is impossible! I tend to agree on most days. Love helps. Know that my heart beats for all of you.)
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It’s important to remember that religion probably came before the village. Religion may have been more directly responsible for the village than any other factor–geological, agricultural (way before the advent of agriculture, actually), political. Religion, or the common ancient practice of looking up at the sky and looking at the rocks and the massive creatures with horns on their head and asking, severely, ‘What in the fuck is going on?!’ is now proposed by archaeologists as the foundation of complex societal structure. Gobekli Tepe, the oldest discovered temple, predates writing by 6000 years. Read any of Joseph Campbell’s stuff and you’ll feel convinced: myth trends way similar, hence Campbell’s (by way of James Joyce/Finnegans Wake) term ‘monomyth.’ The monomyth–recently discovered like a cache of gold by Hollywood, then repeatedly misinterpreted and pillaged–still remains the architectural foundation of most story told today. And when I say most, I mean most. Again, one only needs to read Campbell; the guy was probably the most well-read human alive. A brief primer on monomyth: monomyth is basically The Hero’s Journey. You need a hero, a challenge, and some sort of redemption. Basic stuff. But, again, I think this is very important because: A) the structure of this monomyth, I argue, has lead directly to the didactic and ethical nature of most storytelling and B) sort of frustratingly mirrors the human psyche REALLY WELL.
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Addressing A): Well, it’s kind of a chicken-and-the-egg argument. If we work outward from religion, we could infer that storytelling arose primarily as a way of bringing people together, i.e. addressing loneliness, and secondarily as a way to educate people about basic ethical concerns, i.e. don’t kill your family & don’t steal, and to posit some sort of creation myth that could help people cope, i.e. drug/’opiate of the masses.’ As societal structure changed and became more complex and abstract, storytelling began to branch away from creation myth and didactic parable and evolved styles that are more inexorably joined than most think: Entertainment, Propaganda, and Art. I use these terms because they’re clean and easy to understand, but with one caveat: I think that both Entertainment and Propaganda are Art, or rather: artistic. But, in saying that Art also exists individually, I herd all of the more formal and purely aesthetic concerns into this pig pen. I’d say that Art is also the newest concern or style.
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(Briefly: I’m sure most of you are saying, ‘Yes well duh, dammit. Where’s this going. What have you got to add?)
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Okay.
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Art, or a more formal and rigorous attachment to aesthetics and to the experience of genesis that the author lives, is the pen containing the pigs that I most want to through my bread into. Entertainment, containing clearly structured emotional arcs and dramatic devices, is less interesting to me, if not more effective on me emotionally. Great writers–David Foster Wallace, Dennis Cooper & Kurt Vonnegut come to mind–are/were both aware of the role & utility of entertainment, and employed both Entertainment and Art to do their bidding: convey thoughts and emotions to an audience while satisfying themselves in the creation of a structure to accommodate said thoughts and feelings that both satisfied their urge to communicate and their urge to innovate. I am constantly looking for movies & books & plays & music that intellectually challenges (yes, I must feel challenged, provoked)  entertains (moves me to happy & to awe; structure or formal innovation and/or narrative surprise can also do this) and incites me to experience the world differently/affect me viscerally. Examples: Infinite Jest, Antichrist, Dear Everybody, The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney, The Stranger, Cat’s Cradle, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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I don’t want a good story plainly told. No: I feel dissatisfied by this. I’m more apt to accept/not feel cheated by a formal theoretical failure than a good story plainly told. Those are a dime a dozen. I want an incredible, awe inspiring, mood altering, cranial pain inducing story told that makes great leaps over very dark and deep voids.
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Now, in the age of abundance, we can have that.
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I don’t think that the age of the Hero’s Journey is over, and may not ever end as long as our psychic/cognitive architecture stays within its bounds. That said, story that has a structure and/or moral imperative that is easily seen & understood: yuck. C’mon now. That’s what religion is for.
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Art will always contain the True and the Good, because Art is made by people. As soon as something becomes shared, it is an assertion, an action. It happens. This is indicative of what is Good, and indicative of what is true: we create to pass time & to make meaning for ourselves and others. The True and the Good is implicit in the Beautiful. For the most part, unless handled by masters like DFW, the True and Good, when explicit, become ugly and/or easy. Again: religion. Concern yourself with Beauty, formally, and you’ll probably synthesize all three.
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54 Comments

  1. BAC

      “I’m more apt to accept/not feel cheated by a formal theoretical failure than a good story plainly told.”

      So, you’re more likely to enjoy bad gibberish than decent storytelling. . .

      I was all prepared to disagree with that , but maybe I am too.

      I know that if I’m in the mood to watch TV and there’s nothing good on, I’ll just channel surf, getting bits of this and that, stuff that doesn’t go together, rather than watch a shitty show.

      But I think the true mark of quality is if a work can be well translated, and I think that in order for a work to be well translated it has to rely slightly more on story than language, because language based works generally rely on word usage more specific to the particular language in which they were written.

      Something like Andy Devine’s “Words”, for instance (not to put down the book I’ve not yet read it), cannot be easily translated, if it can be translated at all, due to the fact that it relies on alphabetization, and many of the words Devine selected might not have alphabetic equivalents (?) in other languages. And therefore the text can most likely only exist in English.

      For all the talk of ‘good storytelling’ being fascist because it imposes a culture’s assumptions upon its readers, language for language’s sake is far more restrictive and far less accessible by members of other cultures.

      But I think it’s also important to note that ‘experimental’ story telling would not exist without ‘traditional’ story telling. But ‘traditional’ story telling would exist without ‘experimentation’, and so you can assume that ‘traditional’ ficiton is closer to the ‘natural’ state of ‘story.’

      And nothing left in it’s natural state is art.

  2. BAC

      “I’m more apt to accept/not feel cheated by a formal theoretical failure than a good story plainly told.”

      So, you’re more likely to enjoy bad gibberish than decent storytelling. . .

      I was all prepared to disagree with that , but maybe I am too.

      I know that if I’m in the mood to watch TV and there’s nothing good on, I’ll just channel surf, getting bits of this and that, stuff that doesn’t go together, rather than watch a shitty show.

      But I think the true mark of quality is if a work can be well translated, and I think that in order for a work to be well translated it has to rely slightly more on story than language, because language based works generally rely on word usage more specific to the particular language in which they were written.

      Something like Andy Devine’s “Words”, for instance (not to put down the book I’ve not yet read it), cannot be easily translated, if it can be translated at all, due to the fact that it relies on alphabetization, and many of the words Devine selected might not have alphabetic equivalents (?) in other languages. And therefore the text can most likely only exist in English.

      For all the talk of ‘good storytelling’ being fascist because it imposes a culture’s assumptions upon its readers, language for language’s sake is far more restrictive and far less accessible by members of other cultures.

      But I think it’s also important to note that ‘experimental’ story telling would not exist without ‘traditional’ story telling. But ‘traditional’ story telling would exist without ‘experimentation’, and so you can assume that ‘traditional’ ficiton is closer to the ‘natural’ state of ‘story.’

      And nothing left in it’s natural state is art.

  3. Ken Baumann

      ‘For all the talk of ‘good storytelling’ being fascist because it imposes a culture’s assumptions upon its readers, language for language’s sake is far more restrictive and far less accessible by members of other cultures.’

      Don’t think that’s what’s meant. At least: I don’t mean that. I would say that ‘good storytelling’ is more restrictive than ‘experimental writing’, because it will provoke more constructed imaginative stuff, vs. fanciful, reader-created imaginative stuff.

      ‘But I think the true mark of quality is if a work can be well translated.’

      I disagree. Seems to me you mean the true mark of a work’s popularity. A story can be incredibly effective within the bounds of a very specific culture, no? So, if that didn’t translate, you would say it isn’t quality?

  4. Ken Baumann

      ‘For all the talk of ‘good storytelling’ being fascist because it imposes a culture’s assumptions upon its readers, language for language’s sake is far more restrictive and far less accessible by members of other cultures.’

      Don’t think that’s what’s meant. At least: I don’t mean that. I would say that ‘good storytelling’ is more restrictive than ‘experimental writing’, because it will provoke more constructed imaginative stuff, vs. fanciful, reader-created imaginative stuff.

      ‘But I think the true mark of quality is if a work can be well translated.’

      I disagree. Seems to me you mean the true mark of a work’s popularity. A story can be incredibly effective within the bounds of a very specific culture, no? So, if that didn’t translate, you would say it isn’t quality?

  5. Lincoln

      “But I think the true mark of quality is if a work can be well translated,”

      Hmm, I’d love to hear you explain this more. I can’t really understand why this would be the case at all. Something like Alice in Wonderland can’t be quality since it relies on puns and English-language play?

      To say nothing of what Ken says regarding a work having power in for one specific culture…

  6. Lincoln

      “But I think the true mark of quality is if a work can be well translated,”

      Hmm, I’d love to hear you explain this more. I can’t really understand why this would be the case at all. Something like Alice in Wonderland can’t be quality since it relies on puns and English-language play?

      To say nothing of what Ken says regarding a work having power in for one specific culture…

  7. Amber

      Actually, I’d argue survival needs and agriculture created the village. Religion would’ve just left everyone standing around praying for shelter and food.
      Just kidding, of course. :) I’m an atheist but I definitely credit religion with giving us the first narratives. The first stories. I’ve read my Freud. This was a great post, Ken. l love me some Campbell for sure.

      I guess I just wonder in all this debate why there isn’t room for both? I’m not trying to get all Rodney King up in here but isn’t there anybody besides me who likes it both ways? I can enjoy Roxane’s good story, plainly told, just as much as I fucking love the Age of Wire and String and surely I can’t be the only one.

  8. Lily Hoang

      In Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze & Guittari write, “The real is not impossible; on the contrary, within the real, everything is possible; everything becomes possible” (27).

  9. Amber

      Actually, I’d argue survival needs and agriculture created the village. Religion would’ve just left everyone standing around praying for shelter and food.
      Just kidding, of course. :) I’m an atheist but I definitely credit religion with giving us the first narratives. The first stories. I’ve read my Freud. This was a great post, Ken. l love me some Campbell for sure.

      I guess I just wonder in all this debate why there isn’t room for both? I’m not trying to get all Rodney King up in here but isn’t there anybody besides me who likes it both ways? I can enjoy Roxane’s good story, plainly told, just as much as I fucking love the Age of Wire and String and surely I can’t be the only one.

  10. Lily Hoang

      In Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze & Guittari write, “The real is not impossible; on the contrary, within the real, everything is possible; everything becomes possible” (27).

  11. BAC

      The first quote addressed something in Higgs post.

      No. I’m not sure that popularity is what I’m referring to with regards to the strength of a work’s quality. Maybe to a certain extent a universality. But–and to a certain extent this was more directed toward language in Higg’s post–if the assumption is that ‘narrative’ imposes a culture identity upon the reader, then you must also make the assumption that language itself serves as an imposition to an audience.

      What is and isn’t art is generally highly specific to cultures. However, if a translated work is considered art as it exists in a variety of languages, by highly discerning afficianados in multiple cultures, then it must in some ways be deemed superior to a work that can only be considered art in the specific language which it was written in, because in effect what it has done is destroyed the limitations of narrative by shucking some belief that narrative is reliant upon pre-existing cultural assumptions.

      But, again, I think what I was doing, for the most part, was agreeing with you.

      I’m against the seperation of the two aesthetics. However, I think that writing should lean gently toward narrative as the reason for its existence.

  12. BAC

      The first quote addressed something in Higgs post.

      No. I’m not sure that popularity is what I’m referring to with regards to the strength of a work’s quality. Maybe to a certain extent a universality. But–and to a certain extent this was more directed toward language in Higg’s post–if the assumption is that ‘narrative’ imposes a culture identity upon the reader, then you must also make the assumption that language itself serves as an imposition to an audience.

      What is and isn’t art is generally highly specific to cultures. However, if a translated work is considered art as it exists in a variety of languages, by highly discerning afficianados in multiple cultures, then it must in some ways be deemed superior to a work that can only be considered art in the specific language which it was written in, because in effect what it has done is destroyed the limitations of narrative by shucking some belief that narrative is reliant upon pre-existing cultural assumptions.

      But, again, I think what I was doing, for the most part, was agreeing with you.

      I’m against the seperation of the two aesthetics. However, I think that writing should lean gently toward narrative as the reason for its existence.

  13. Ken Baumann

      Mixed up some i.e.’s and e.g.’s. Oops! I’ll fix when I’m home.

  14. Ken Baumann

      Mixed up some i.e.’s and e.g.’s. Oops! I’ll fix when I’m home.

  15. BAC

      Alice in Wonderland can be translated. In fact it has been translated. Well. People all over the world read it.

      And yes, things can have power of a specific culture, but my opinion of what makes strong art is that is has the ability to outlast the cultures that produced it. If a work is only art to a specific culture, and that specific culture dissentigrates, then so does the validity of the work as a piece of art.

  16. BAC

      Alice in Wonderland can be translated. In fact it has been translated. Well. People all over the world read it.

      And yes, things can have power of a specific culture, but my opinion of what makes strong art is that is has the ability to outlast the cultures that produced it. If a work is only art to a specific culture, and that specific culture dissentigrates, then so does the validity of the work as a piece of art.

  17. Lincoln

      Anything can be translated, but you sayd “well translated.” I don’t think it is possible to properly translate a book like Alice in Wonderland into another language, at most you are recreating a similar type of story from another cultures words and cultural connotations…

  18. Lincoln

      Anything can be translated, but you sayd “well translated.” I don’t think it is possible to properly translate a book like Alice in Wonderland into another language, at most you are recreating a similar type of story from another cultures words and cultural connotations…

  19. Tim Horvath

      Check out Brian Boyd’s On the Origin of Stories, however. He makes a convincing case that storytelling emerges evolutionarily from a series of capacities revolving around play, which is adaptive among animals–i.e. young animals engage in it to sharpen minds and bodies alike. Starting with the prehuman, he works through the cognitive bases needed to tell stories from attending to patterns, being able to remember and represent events, theory of mind capacity (i.e. to impute motives and intentions and emotions to others), and eventually inventing events. Boyd’s argument is that fiction itself is adaptive, and he spends considerable time using Homer’s Odyssey and Horton Hears a Who to back him up. He does devote a chapter to religion and argues explicitly against the idea that it is a progenitor of art, although seeing many parallels in terms of the way each lends itself to social cohesion, religion through ritual.

      All due respect to Campbell but one thing that Boyd seems to have the edge in is his being well-versed in the scientific literature. He cut his teeth on Nabokov, so he’s not just someone who wants to reduce art to science or anything like that. I have some points of contention with Boyd, mostly that he focuses on character and plot, when I think that style is at the core of our inventiveness, especially today. If play is at the roots of our propensity for and hunger after fictions, then the dichotomy between realistic and experimental narratives is, maybe, less salient. Like Amber I find myself an itinerant wandering between these two cities. Having taught a semesterlong class where I was reading exclusively so-called “experimental” stuff, I’ve seen, too, how acclimated the mind can get to that, so that there is a culture shock on the return to realism, a surfeit of oxygen that can be dizzying. Bluntly, realism can look pretty damned strange. It’s all defamiliarization at some point, isn’t it?

  20. Tim Horvath

      Check out Brian Boyd’s On the Origin of Stories, however. He makes a convincing case that storytelling emerges evolutionarily from a series of capacities revolving around play, which is adaptive among animals–i.e. young animals engage in it to sharpen minds and bodies alike. Starting with the prehuman, he works through the cognitive bases needed to tell stories from attending to patterns, being able to remember and represent events, theory of mind capacity (i.e. to impute motives and intentions and emotions to others), and eventually inventing events. Boyd’s argument is that fiction itself is adaptive, and he spends considerable time using Homer’s Odyssey and Horton Hears a Who to back him up. He does devote a chapter to religion and argues explicitly against the idea that it is a progenitor of art, although seeing many parallels in terms of the way each lends itself to social cohesion, religion through ritual.

      All due respect to Campbell but one thing that Boyd seems to have the edge in is his being well-versed in the scientific literature. He cut his teeth on Nabokov, so he’s not just someone who wants to reduce art to science or anything like that. I have some points of contention with Boyd, mostly that he focuses on character and plot, when I think that style is at the core of our inventiveness, especially today. If play is at the roots of our propensity for and hunger after fictions, then the dichotomy between realistic and experimental narratives is, maybe, less salient. Like Amber I find myself an itinerant wandering between these two cities. Having taught a semesterlong class where I was reading exclusively so-called “experimental” stuff, I’ve seen, too, how acclimated the mind can get to that, so that there is a culture shock on the return to realism, a surfeit of oxygen that can be dizzying. Bluntly, realism can look pretty damned strange. It’s all defamiliarization at some point, isn’t it?

  21. Roxane Gay

      See, that last part, that’s what I’m saying. It’s not either or.

  22. Roxane Gay

      See, that last part, that’s what I’m saying. It’s not either or.

  23. BAC

      that is true. and to me if you can recreate the similar story using another culture’s language, and the work is considered art in both instances, then you’ve done a superior job as a story teller.

      if there is no story as a guideline for said recreation then, in my opinion, the work is too specific to a particular culture, and therefore less substantial.

      but, if your assumption is that specificity is the driving criteria for what is and is not art, then the greatest artist is the one who can only appeal to a single-member audience.

  24. BAC

      that is true. and to me if you can recreate the similar story using another culture’s language, and the work is considered art in both instances, then you’ve done a superior job as a story teller.

      if there is no story as a guideline for said recreation then, in my opinion, the work is too specific to a particular culture, and therefore less substantial.

      but, if your assumption is that specificity is the driving criteria for what is and is not art, then the greatest artist is the one who can only appeal to a single-member audience.

  25. Lincoln

      But if you scrutinize the “good stories” “plainly told” that you love, how many of them are truly totally conventional and truly plain? I read tons of realist stories I love, but they all have something unique going on to make them special, whether story or voice or structure or style… something has to be going on, right?

  26. Lincoln

      But if you scrutinize the “good stories” “plainly told” that you love, how many of them are truly totally conventional and truly plain? I read tons of realist stories I love, but they all have something unique going on to make them special, whether story or voice or structure or style… something has to be going on, right?

  27. Lincoln

      Hmm maybe what I should be asking is what you think a untranslatable story is (or what works are not able to be translated well)?

  28. Lincoln

      Hmm maybe what I should be asking is what you think a untranslatable story is (or what works are not able to be translated well)?

  29. Amber

      Sure, absolutely. Absolutely, yes. But I feel like the argument became traditional realism versus experimentalism, with everyone claiming to like one or the other but not both. I think maybe everybody’s getting hung up on the word “plainly” in Roxane’s phrase, which i think people are wrongly interpreting to mean “boringly.” Nobody here, including Roxane, digs boring or pedestrian stories, obviously.

      I just wonder if, judging by the writers people love here, that most people on HTML have a lot broader tastes than they’re claiming to, just for sake of argument.

  30. Amber

      Sure, absolutely. Absolutely, yes. But I feel like the argument became traditional realism versus experimentalism, with everyone claiming to like one or the other but not both. I think maybe everybody’s getting hung up on the word “plainly” in Roxane’s phrase, which i think people are wrongly interpreting to mean “boringly.” Nobody here, including Roxane, digs boring or pedestrian stories, obviously.

      I just wonder if, judging by the writers people love here, that most people on HTML have a lot broader tastes than they’re claiming to, just for sake of argument.

  31. Roxane Gay

      People are absolutely getting hung up on a couple words and completely ignoring the other 1600 words in my post. I’m loving this discussion but the myopic reading is a little frustrating.

  32. Roxane Gay

      People are absolutely getting hung up on a couple words and completely ignoring the other 1600 words in my post. I’m loving this discussion but the myopic reading is a little frustrating.

  33. MG

      No, don’t! I liked this a lot as it was written:

      “. . . and secondarily as a way to educate people about basic ethical concerns, i.e. don’t kill your family & don’t steal . . .”

  34. MG

      No, don’t! I liked this a lot as it was written:

      “. . . and secondarily as a way to educate people about basic ethical concerns, i.e. don’t kill your family & don’t steal . . .”

  35. JScap

      Tim– I couldn’t agree more with what you’re saying, here. Especially this: “Blunty, realism can look pretty damned strange. It’s all defamiliarization at some point, isn’t it?”

      I think some of the best realistic fiction derives its energy from strangeness– the strangeness that makes for the excitiment and horror in our “real” lives.

      And arguably, some experimental fiction derives its energy from “realness”– from the way it accurately captures (visercally, intellectually, or both) “real” emotional or existential states of being and becoming, whether it does so directly or indirectly.

      (A continuum of sorts, perhaps?)

      Thanks for mentioning Boyd. I’ll be checking that out for sure.

  36. JScap

      Tim– I couldn’t agree more with what you’re saying, here. Especially this: “Blunty, realism can look pretty damned strange. It’s all defamiliarization at some point, isn’t it?”

      I think some of the best realistic fiction derives its energy from strangeness– the strangeness that makes for the excitiment and horror in our “real” lives.

      And arguably, some experimental fiction derives its energy from “realness”– from the way it accurately captures (visercally, intellectually, or both) “real” emotional or existential states of being and becoming, whether it does so directly or indirectly.

      (A continuum of sorts, perhaps?)

      Thanks for mentioning Boyd. I’ll be checking that out for sure.

  37. mimi

      The Boyd is waiting for me on my book shelf, purchased thanks to a HTML GIANT post.

      JScap – Agree totally with you here on “…..some of the best……directly or indirectly.” You have put into words something that I have long been thinking and that I think I believe.

      My eyeballs hurt.

  38. mimi

      The Boyd is waiting for me on my book shelf, purchased thanks to a HTML GIANT post.

      JScap – Agree totally with you here on “…..some of the best……directly or indirectly.” You have put into words something that I have long been thinking and that I think I believe.

      My eyeballs hurt.

  39. Steve Silberman

      Wonderfully thought-provoking, Ken.

  40. Steve Silberman

      Wonderfully thought-provoking, Ken.

  41. reynard

      all of kurt vonnegut’s work (that i’ve read and especially his early stuff) has a story that has a structure and/or moral imperative that is easily seen & understood: yuck? so does 2001, doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out, nor does the stranger. i read all that stuff in high school and i understood it just as well then as i do now and i wasn’t even a rocket scientist yet, and, frankly, that’s what made all that stuff ‘good.’ because it’s good for people with simple minds as well as those without minds at all.

  42. reynard

      all of kurt vonnegut’s work (that i’ve read and especially his early stuff) has a story that has a structure and/or moral imperative that is easily seen & understood: yuck? so does 2001, doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out, nor does the stranger. i read all that stuff in high school and i understood it just as well then as i do now and i wasn’t even a rocket scientist yet, and, frankly, that’s what made all that stuff ‘good.’ because it’s good for people with simple minds as well as those without minds at all.

  43. Matt Cozart

      my mind is very simple, when it’s there at all.

  44. Matt Cozart

      my mind is very simple, when it’s there at all.

  45. mimi
  46. mimi
  47. Tim Horvath

      Yes, everyone I know has been sending me this link. Lisa Zunshine’s work is very cool, although in my opinion she overemphasizes the number of levels of intentionality that we can hold in our heads at any given moment (in her example, “Peter said that Paul believed that Mary liked chocolate”). As stated in the article most people can keep track of three, four is pushing it, and Virginia Woolf requires six, or so she argues (Boyd has argued against her interpretation of Woolf). But anyway, it’s very cool that they are doing this study at Yale but the measure of “complexity” in terms of how keeping track of numbers of sources is off the mark if you ask me. Complexity in literature is far more difficult to measure and even if you are talking about Theory of Mind it is more interesting to consider a single character with multiple motives than it is to analyze Peter and Paul and Mary above. But not so easily quantifiable. I suppose you have to quantify to get the research $$$$, access to the fMRI machine, and so forth. When complexity in literature gets debated around HTML Giant I think we can see more of a sense of what is at stake, how complex complexity is.

  48. Tim Horvath

      Yes, everyone I know has been sending me this link. Lisa Zunshine’s work is very cool, although in my opinion she overemphasizes the number of levels of intentionality that we can hold in our heads at any given moment (in her example, “Peter said that Paul believed that Mary liked chocolate”). As stated in the article most people can keep track of three, four is pushing it, and Virginia Woolf requires six, or so she argues (Boyd has argued against her interpretation of Woolf). But anyway, it’s very cool that they are doing this study at Yale but the measure of “complexity” in terms of how keeping track of numbers of sources is off the mark if you ask me. Complexity in literature is far more difficult to measure and even if you are talking about Theory of Mind it is more interesting to consider a single character with multiple motives than it is to analyze Peter and Paul and Mary above. But not so easily quantifiable. I suppose you have to quantify to get the research $$$$, access to the fMRI machine, and so forth. When complexity in literature gets debated around HTML Giant I think we can see more of a sense of what is at stake, how complex complexity is.

  49. Tim Horvath
  50. Tim Horvath
  51. Ken Baumann

      Tim: Big thanks for the thoughtful response, and recommendation. I’m going to check that Boyd soon. And I agree with you on all clips here. So, yes. Thanks again.

  52. Ken Baumann

      Tim: Big thanks for the thoughtful response, and recommendation. I’m going to check that Boyd soon. And I agree with you on all clips here. So, yes. Thanks again.

  53. Ken Baumann

      (Oops, double post)

      Tim: Big thanks for the thoughtful response, and recommendation. I’m going to check that Boyd soon. And I agree with you on all clips here. So, yes. Thanks again.

  54. Ken Baumann

      (Oops, double post)

      Tim: Big thanks for the thoughtful response, and recommendation. I’m going to check that Boyd soon. And I agree with you on all clips here. So, yes. Thanks again.