The internet has transformed modes of social discourse. There's a truism if ever there was one, surely. Blogging, twitter, social networks and forums are so integrated into everyone's consciousness that it seems inconceivable that they have been around for less than a generation. And repeatedly we hear how they have utterly transformed the ways humans interact, ushering in a new, interconnected age.
Well yes, but I am firmly of the view expressed in Ecclesiastes that there is nothing new under the sun. The ways human beings interact, established over millennia, can't have changed over such a short period of time, can they?
Part of the issue is that we seem poorly equipped actually to get a clear understanding of the scale on which the internet operates. It has been suggested that humans struggle to establish a meaningful concept of a number even as big as 100, so an internet with a total number of users in the billions is simply too big for us to come close to conceptualising. The same is true of distance. We have evolved to have pretty good understanding of distances up to maybe 15 miles- the distance we can see, or can easily walk in a day- but beyond that we struggle. Aeroplanes and high-speed trains don't help of course and even cars compress distances to the extent that it is hard to remember just how far it is between places. We repeat frequently that it is a small world, but no it isn't. Try walking round it.
However what the internet does allow us to do is to tune out these problematic issues of scale. The process of engaging with computers provides an illusory but comforting sense of privacy and intimacy- of things happening on a human scale. Occasionally it is disrupted of course, such as when someone with whom one is conversing on an internet forum says that it is too late to address an issue right now when in fact it is 8am and you are just wondering what to have for breakfast. The same uncomfortable jolt comes when someone shares a link on FaceBook and as you click on it you see that 37,942 others 'like' this.
Fundamentally though, the internet allows us to pretend that we are in communication with others at an entirely human scale- it is what makes it so seductive. And what happens as a result, I believe, is that we simply replicate ancient structures of social interaction through the medium of high-speed broadband. The clues are in the words we use to describe the process, many of which point us in some surprising directions.
Take the word 'blog' for instance. It covers a multitude of sins but its etymological origins, from the log a sea captain used to keep, points to one of the purposes of weblogs. They provide a record of a journey. At the time of writing it is of course impossible for a sea captain to tell what may or may not be important to record, but he (pretty much exclusively 'he' in those days) has to record it anyway. So logs can be repetitive and mundane, leavened with the occasional touch of humour and seasoned with plenty of shipboard gossip, or they can chronicle momentous, turbulent and life-changing events.
Not all blogs are like that of course. Celebrities, authors, actors and the like blog to enhance their 'platform.' Again it is interesting that a word has been chosen from another era, because the means and the motivation are actually very similar to Charles Dickens' when he took to the platform in theatres around the country to recite from his books and impress his audiences with his wit, erudition and presence. So today those who wish to be heard take to a platform of their own creation. It is much easier than in Dicken's day because you don't need to book a theatre or print show-bills. On the other hand there are so many platforms around that it becomes like Hyde Park corner on a busy bank holiday with about as much chance of establishing an audience that actually sticks around.
Another form of internet-based discourse is what used to be called chatrooms. Of course that word barely exists any more and I think it is interesting to ponder on why that it is. The reason I think is simple: the concept of chatrooms has no real world equivalent. Who builds a special room simply for people to chat in? And if they did, who would go to it? So the word chatroom has largely been replaced by the word 'forum,' and that of course has a much more august and ancient pedigree.
I have been to the forum in Pompeii and was struck by how big, but also how open, unadorned and lacking in any focal point the Roman forum was. However it was not until I started participating in internet forums that I began to get a clear sense of what Roman forums must have been like. Initially baffling, they are in fact a demonstration of the functioning of a chaotic and noisy form of democracy. There are generally many threads of conversations going on and participants can stick with one for a while then wander off and participate in others. Some will rant and declaim and get excitable but other participants in their conversations will generally drift away, or perhaps call the harassed moderators to eject the excitable ones from the forum. Not everyone has equal status of course, and some stalk the forums sporting their imperial togas of five-figure post counts. Occasionally one of these makes an announcement, though it is rare for this to have any significant effect on the myriad conversations that proceed all around them.
Nevertheless, despite the apparent chaos, forums do generally reach vague sorts of consensus, at least over the key issues they discuss. I lived in rural India for two years and participated in a couple of village forums, called to address some issue of concern. It was utterly unlike any sort of European concept of what such meetings are like- there was no chairman, no agenda, little effort to keep the discussion to one issue and no vote at the end. I was baffled to the extent that I never even knew at the end what decision (s) had been taken, but in retrospect what those meetings were very like was internet forums.
The most interesting of all though, in terms of replicating social structures, is Twitter. For years I refused to engage in Twitter, scoffing at it as the verbal effluence of self-indulgent wankers with too much time on their hands. It won't last, I repeated sagely. It's a flash in the pan. I was wrong of course. Even kids are starting to use Twitter and that means it probably will last. But why?
Again, the clue for me is in the name. Because actually Twitter replicates social structures that pre-date the development of humanity itself. Birds such as starlings or sparrows (like many other social animals) twitter incessantly when they come together. A host of the latter or a murmuration of the former raises a din that it is hard to ignore. At first listening it comes across as a cacophony, with each participant simply making incessant noise to the extent that one wonders how any of them can bear it. Yet the twittering has a purpose of course. Some of it is self-promotion, with each participant vying to show how loud and tuneful (substitute hip and witty) they are. Some is for reassurance, so each can hear a constant stream of tweets from those around them, making them feel secure and wanted. Some, no doubt, is the transmission of gossip (if only we knew enough bird-language to follow it) with great strings of participants retweeting particularly loud or tuneful tweets they have heard. These trends can ripple through the flock so that briefly every way you turn you hear them, but generally they die away quickly into the background hubbub.
All this of course provides a backdrop that seems to instil each participant with a sense of belonging in a wide variety of different fluid and overlapping networks, all part of a vaguely glimpsed whole that is of itself too big for any participant to develop a meaningful concept of it. Some participants are particularly loud and forceful of course, and many other participants always have half an ear cocked for their particular tweets in the (to an outsider) incomprehensible cacophony of noise. Those alpha participants with a particularly strident (or tuneful) voice can have their every tweet amplified across the flock, but that does of course make them a target too, because the flock does not accept a leader.
And just occasionally the alarm is raised. When danger is at hand it only takes one participant to spot it and tweet about it and with the speed of thought suddenly the whole tone of discourse of the flock can change. Some will continue their mundane twittering as if nothing had happened but the more alert participants retweet and amplify until soon the flock is tweeting with something very like a single voice. And that can be a very impressive thing to witness.
Tuesday 17 July 2012
Thursday 12 July 2012
Applying literary theory to sporting contests
Why do people watch sport? Not a question you would think was in any way relevant to this blog, unless you believed that great sporting contests share many of the features of great literature.
So to return to the question. For some, of course, the reasons are self-explanatory and nothing to do with literature. There are the active sports(wo)men who study contests to improve their own game or to relate more closely to their role models. Then there are those who define themselves so strongly in terms of their fandom that they would never miss a match in which their team is involved. But what about the rest? What about the millions who routinely tune in to watch sporting contests simply as an alternative to another rerun of The Great Escape on a Saturday afternoon? What do they see in sporting contests that keeps them watching?
It was my sister who first put me onto the notion that sporting contests have much of the same structure and inherent narrative drive as great literature. Not necessarily the same sort of literature for each sport of course. Premier League football matches for me are like soap operas- episodes are scheduled regularly and, though each episode stands more or less alone there is a clear sense too of a narrative with longer timespans. Matches are peopled with a large cast whose key members are instantly familiar and whose onscreen and private lives it is sometimes difficult to untangle. The most exciting episodes end with a cliffhanger but there are frequently long periods which superficially resemble ordinary life (i.e. Sunday kickabouts) but are actually too carefully scripted for that.
Cricket matches are a different sort of literature altogether. More like rambling Victorian novels they seem initially immensely dry and tedious but then draw you in to their intricate web of tension and uncertainty. They are conveniently divided into four volumes, all involving the same characters and each leading into the next, though it is possible to engage with a single volume on its own. Sometimes the narrative is almost unbearably claustrophobic as line and length bowlers seek to pin the batsmen back and the poised, judgemental slip cordon looks on with ill-disguised glee. Occasionally a batsman seeks to break free, challenging the constricting bounds of social acceptability with a four or even a six, but we know that in the end conformity will win through and (s)he will be out. They will allow their defences to be broken down by the relentless accuracy of the jibes directed at them or they may be caught in the very act of social transgression itself and made to slump dejectedly to the poorhouse or debtors' prison that awaits beyond the boundary.
The Tour de France is perhaps closer to a Tarkovsky film, impenetrable to the uninitiated but redolent of pain, desperation and fear. Days follow a relentless, repetitive cycle whereby a small group launch themselves off the front of the peloton, ride themselves into exhaustion through the pitiless beauty of the alpine roads, temporarily burying their differences and working together in desperate, and nearly always doomed, attempt to stay away. In the peloton itself riders take turn at the front, burying themselves (it is a cycling term) to drag the hordes behind them. We see into their faces and can read nothing. Why do they do this? How do they keep going in the face of the pain that is destroying them? We do not know. We cannot know. Yet the road stretches on, relentlessly.
Yet it is tennis that is perhaps the purest example of sporting contest as work of literature. There is a protagonist and an antagonist held together in a fundamental conflict. Action progresses through a series of small conflict-resolution cycles, all set in the framework of the central conflict and building towards a final resolution. The best matches even follow the classic Shakespearean five-act dramatic structure (it's why women's tennis really should be in five sets too).
Of course the question of who is the protagonist and who the antagonist is often a moot one, but focusing on it makes very clear just how similar a tennis match is to a Shakespearean tragedy. You see I don't think it depends on who you support, but rather on what you believe the stakes to be.
Take the recent Murray/Federer match for instance (not a proper five-acter I know, but you can't have everything). Clearly you could see Murray as the protagonist. A tragic story of a nation pinning their collective hopes on a flawed but brilliant hero. Can the truculent Scot conquer his demons and lift the pall of humiliation and despair that has blighted the nation for 76 years? Er, no.
On the other hand you could see Federer as the protagonist. This is the old chief, beaten almost into submission by the young, fit but ultimately soulless pretenders who have sought for so long to topple him from his rightful throne. For long and long he was down. Defeated and destroyed. Made to look old and out of touch and beyond redemption. Yet he has arisen again. Can he drive the barbarians from the gate one last time? Can his guile and his artistry, honed over the long bitter years of his reign, banish the energy drinks and the motivational coaches from his kingdom? Hell yes.
So there you go. I was hooked anyway. Or I would have been if I hadn't been trying to finish my novel at the time.
So to return to the question. For some, of course, the reasons are self-explanatory and nothing to do with literature. There are the active sports(wo)men who study contests to improve their own game or to relate more closely to their role models. Then there are those who define themselves so strongly in terms of their fandom that they would never miss a match in which their team is involved. But what about the rest? What about the millions who routinely tune in to watch sporting contests simply as an alternative to another rerun of The Great Escape on a Saturday afternoon? What do they see in sporting contests that keeps them watching?
It was my sister who first put me onto the notion that sporting contests have much of the same structure and inherent narrative drive as great literature. Not necessarily the same sort of literature for each sport of course. Premier League football matches for me are like soap operas- episodes are scheduled regularly and, though each episode stands more or less alone there is a clear sense too of a narrative with longer timespans. Matches are peopled with a large cast whose key members are instantly familiar and whose onscreen and private lives it is sometimes difficult to untangle. The most exciting episodes end with a cliffhanger but there are frequently long periods which superficially resemble ordinary life (i.e. Sunday kickabouts) but are actually too carefully scripted for that.
Cricket matches are a different sort of literature altogether. More like rambling Victorian novels they seem initially immensely dry and tedious but then draw you in to their intricate web of tension and uncertainty. They are conveniently divided into four volumes, all involving the same characters and each leading into the next, though it is possible to engage with a single volume on its own. Sometimes the narrative is almost unbearably claustrophobic as line and length bowlers seek to pin the batsmen back and the poised, judgemental slip cordon looks on with ill-disguised glee. Occasionally a batsman seeks to break free, challenging the constricting bounds of social acceptability with a four or even a six, but we know that in the end conformity will win through and (s)he will be out. They will allow their defences to be broken down by the relentless accuracy of the jibes directed at them or they may be caught in the very act of social transgression itself and made to slump dejectedly to the poorhouse or debtors' prison that awaits beyond the boundary.
The Tour de France is perhaps closer to a Tarkovsky film, impenetrable to the uninitiated but redolent of pain, desperation and fear. Days follow a relentless, repetitive cycle whereby a small group launch themselves off the front of the peloton, ride themselves into exhaustion through the pitiless beauty of the alpine roads, temporarily burying their differences and working together in desperate, and nearly always doomed, attempt to stay away. In the peloton itself riders take turn at the front, burying themselves (it is a cycling term) to drag the hordes behind them. We see into their faces and can read nothing. Why do they do this? How do they keep going in the face of the pain that is destroying them? We do not know. We cannot know. Yet the road stretches on, relentlessly.
Yet it is tennis that is perhaps the purest example of sporting contest as work of literature. There is a protagonist and an antagonist held together in a fundamental conflict. Action progresses through a series of small conflict-resolution cycles, all set in the framework of the central conflict and building towards a final resolution. The best matches even follow the classic Shakespearean five-act dramatic structure (it's why women's tennis really should be in five sets too).
Of course the question of who is the protagonist and who the antagonist is often a moot one, but focusing on it makes very clear just how similar a tennis match is to a Shakespearean tragedy. You see I don't think it depends on who you support, but rather on what you believe the stakes to be.
Take the recent Murray/Federer match for instance (not a proper five-acter I know, but you can't have everything). Clearly you could see Murray as the protagonist. A tragic story of a nation pinning their collective hopes on a flawed but brilliant hero. Can the truculent Scot conquer his demons and lift the pall of humiliation and despair that has blighted the nation for 76 years? Er, no.
On the other hand you could see Federer as the protagonist. This is the old chief, beaten almost into submission by the young, fit but ultimately soulless pretenders who have sought for so long to topple him from his rightful throne. For long and long he was down. Defeated and destroyed. Made to look old and out of touch and beyond redemption. Yet he has arisen again. Can he drive the barbarians from the gate one last time? Can his guile and his artistry, honed over the long bitter years of his reign, banish the energy drinks and the motivational coaches from his kingdom? Hell yes.
So there you go. I was hooked anyway. Or I would have been if I hadn't been trying to finish my novel at the time.
Monday 9 July 2012
Online writing forums and the development of the writer's 'voice'
Online writing forums are wonderful things. Really they are. I use Absolute Write a lot but I am sure there are tons more. Sure they eat up time and lots of the writing is mediocre and some of the opinions and advice unhelpful. But these problems are massively outweighed by the tremendous benefits of putting writers in touch with each other, letting creativity and talent magnify and grow and feed off each other.
Well sort of. Because inherent in these forums (fora? I'll settle for forums) are a series of contradictions for an aspirant writer to navigate. There's the tension between mutual congratulation and one-upmanship for instance. Almost by definition the people who contribute the most to these forums are those who have yet to achieve real success as writers. This provides for a sense of community certainly, and there is a lot of genuine emphasis on mutual support. On the other hand it is very hard not to seek weaknesses in everyone else's work, simply because it makes you feel better, and as the phenomenon of internet trolling has shown, the distance that the internet provides does allow for a higher degree of cruelty than would be possible in a face-to-face encounter. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing of course. Sometimes that sort of directness is the only thing to make you realise that what you have submitted is actually pretty shit.
Another tension is around the reasons people spend their time on these forums. On the one hand they are an invaluable tool in the service of a writer wishing to improve their style, both by having their work critted and by critting that of others. On the other it is perfectly clear that being on the forum is a guilty pleasure for most- something they do when they should be working. They become big online societies like any other, with their humour, their letting off steam, their politics and their feuds. All fascinating to absorb yourself in and a great way to put off writing.
But for me the biggest contradiction is around the issue of 'voice.' For those not in the writing and/or reading world (though why on earth you would read this if you weren't...) voice is the indefinable but essential quality of an author's writing that sets them apart and makes them unique. Without a distinctive and powerful voice, one is told on these forums, no agent will consider your work.
And yet these online communities have also worked to instil a conformity in writing style that I am sure is orders of magnitude greater than any that existed before. At the moment the received wisdom is that sparseness and leanness is what you want. Cut down the adverbs and adjectives. Pleonasms are beyond the pale (and if you had to look up 'pleonasms' then don't worry, so did I. It means a formulation involving redundant words, like 'burning fire.')
It goes beyond this though. Wherever you look on these forums you will get the same sort of (excellent) advice: don't have your character 'walk quickly' out of the room if they can 'stride' or 'storm' or even 'hurry' out. Each of these contains the sense of 'walk quickly' but does so in a single word, and conveys something more too. And while you're at it, don't bother to have them 'stride purposefully' because the idea of purposefulness is inherent in the verb stride. You can't stride hesitantly. The same people will go over whole passages for you and point out entire sentences that are redundant or could be subsumed in a single phrase, or even word. Pretty soon you end up being able to do it yourself.
Now I have nothing against this sort of advice at all. It is excellent and the internet permits it to spread with the speed and efficacy of an air-born virus. The thing is, how is the ubiquity of a similar set of pieces of advice consistent with the development of a unique 'voice'?
Well to return to a theme I have explored in a number of posts (imagery for instance, or symbols) I think the key is in the image we use to describe what we mean here: the image of a human voice, telling a story. I think our species is hard-wired to respond to the sound of a voice telling a story. For millenia before literacy was widespread it was how we engaged with fiction and I think it has become a process akin to telepathy. I know that sounds far-fetched, but it is instructive for instance actually to listen to children telling each other stories. The spoken words transcribed are often close to meaningless yet everyone present gets the story completely. In the same way, when I used to read a book to a class (up to A level, even) I would begin to see students round the room dropping their texts and simply listening. And for the first time the story would really make sense to them.
Because if you listen to a piece of writing being read to you by someone who really gets it then, unbeknownst to you, all sorts of things beyond the words themselves somehow get communicated too, bypassing your conscious mind perhaps, but no less powerful for all that. The challenge for a writer of course is to imbue the words themselves with that same magic, so that the reader's internal voice can give them the same cues that you no doubt would if you were reading the text aloud to them.
And that is where the real value of these online forums lies. You see when you read your own writing then the voice you hear it read in is your own, and you get it (or hopefully you do. If you don't then stick it in the bin NOW). And if your friends or family read your work then they will hear it in your voice too, and will unconsciously imbue it with the meaning they know you see in it. But if another contributor to an online forum reads it, then they have no extraneous 'voice' of yours to read it in, so the words have to stand absolutely by themselves. And if they don't, then those same contributors will not hesitate to tell you.
And it can be a salutary lesson to learn. Except of course I should cut out the 'to learn' bit, because that's redundant, isn't it?
Well sort of. Because inherent in these forums (fora? I'll settle for forums) are a series of contradictions for an aspirant writer to navigate. There's the tension between mutual congratulation and one-upmanship for instance. Almost by definition the people who contribute the most to these forums are those who have yet to achieve real success as writers. This provides for a sense of community certainly, and there is a lot of genuine emphasis on mutual support. On the other hand it is very hard not to seek weaknesses in everyone else's work, simply because it makes you feel better, and as the phenomenon of internet trolling has shown, the distance that the internet provides does allow for a higher degree of cruelty than would be possible in a face-to-face encounter. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing of course. Sometimes that sort of directness is the only thing to make you realise that what you have submitted is actually pretty shit.
Another tension is around the reasons people spend their time on these forums. On the one hand they are an invaluable tool in the service of a writer wishing to improve their style, both by having their work critted and by critting that of others. On the other it is perfectly clear that being on the forum is a guilty pleasure for most- something they do when they should be working. They become big online societies like any other, with their humour, their letting off steam, their politics and their feuds. All fascinating to absorb yourself in and a great way to put off writing.
But for me the biggest contradiction is around the issue of 'voice.' For those not in the writing and/or reading world (though why on earth you would read this if you weren't...) voice is the indefinable but essential quality of an author's writing that sets them apart and makes them unique. Without a distinctive and powerful voice, one is told on these forums, no agent will consider your work.
And yet these online communities have also worked to instil a conformity in writing style that I am sure is orders of magnitude greater than any that existed before. At the moment the received wisdom is that sparseness and leanness is what you want. Cut down the adverbs and adjectives. Pleonasms are beyond the pale (and if you had to look up 'pleonasms' then don't worry, so did I. It means a formulation involving redundant words, like 'burning fire.')
It goes beyond this though. Wherever you look on these forums you will get the same sort of (excellent) advice: don't have your character 'walk quickly' out of the room if they can 'stride' or 'storm' or even 'hurry' out. Each of these contains the sense of 'walk quickly' but does so in a single word, and conveys something more too. And while you're at it, don't bother to have them 'stride purposefully' because the idea of purposefulness is inherent in the verb stride. You can't stride hesitantly. The same people will go over whole passages for you and point out entire sentences that are redundant or could be subsumed in a single phrase, or even word. Pretty soon you end up being able to do it yourself.
Now I have nothing against this sort of advice at all. It is excellent and the internet permits it to spread with the speed and efficacy of an air-born virus. The thing is, how is the ubiquity of a similar set of pieces of advice consistent with the development of a unique 'voice'?
Well to return to a theme I have explored in a number of posts (imagery for instance, or symbols) I think the key is in the image we use to describe what we mean here: the image of a human voice, telling a story. I think our species is hard-wired to respond to the sound of a voice telling a story. For millenia before literacy was widespread it was how we engaged with fiction and I think it has become a process akin to telepathy. I know that sounds far-fetched, but it is instructive for instance actually to listen to children telling each other stories. The spoken words transcribed are often close to meaningless yet everyone present gets the story completely. In the same way, when I used to read a book to a class (up to A level, even) I would begin to see students round the room dropping their texts and simply listening. And for the first time the story would really make sense to them.
Because if you listen to a piece of writing being read to you by someone who really gets it then, unbeknownst to you, all sorts of things beyond the words themselves somehow get communicated too, bypassing your conscious mind perhaps, but no less powerful for all that. The challenge for a writer of course is to imbue the words themselves with that same magic, so that the reader's internal voice can give them the same cues that you no doubt would if you were reading the text aloud to them.
And that is where the real value of these online forums lies. You see when you read your own writing then the voice you hear it read in is your own, and you get it (or hopefully you do. If you don't then stick it in the bin NOW). And if your friends or family read your work then they will hear it in your voice too, and will unconsciously imbue it with the meaning they know you see in it. But if another contributor to an online forum reads it, then they have no extraneous 'voice' of yours to read it in, so the words have to stand absolutely by themselves. And if they don't, then those same contributors will not hesitate to tell you.
And it can be a salutary lesson to learn. Except of course I should cut out the 'to learn' bit, because that's redundant, isn't it?
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