A Review of Laurence Scott (2015): Ways of Being in a Digital World?
Monday, 28 Mar 2016, 15:58
Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Steve Bamlett, Monday, 28 Mar 2016, 21:20
Review of Scott, L. (2015) The Four-Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital world
London, William Heinemann
This ought to have been a book I wanted to read but I wasn’t
helped by the publisher’s categorisation: Philosophy \ Technology.
In fact it appears to be nearer to what ‘older people’ like
myself used to call Generalist Literary / Language Criticism – the kind of book
that once, and perhaps still given that Scott may not have chosen this category
himself, was only permissible to authors considerably advanced in academic
seniority or age or probably both.
Scott is none of the above but that is not to the detriment
of the book. However, it was important, at least for me, to realise that so
that I looked for no great or sustainable argument for the idea of a ‘4-dimensional
human being’. This is less a category of ‘ways of being’ than an extended ‘conceit’
as that term might be recognised by Spenser, Raleigh or Shakespeare. The drift
of the book is the fate of the being whose reflection or ways of knowing themselves
are bound to the wheel of rich, textured or nuanced language.
And this description could have been applied to T.S. Eliot
but it is not inappropriate here, even the latter would have understood that
you can respond to Postman Pat or the terrible and ailing Gothic monstrosity of
a movie, The Cabin in the Woods just
as meaningfully as you respond to the Iliad (p. 51 – a page facing reflections
on Top Gear) or Proust (pp 100f.). Scott, Like Olivia Laing (whose latest book
on loneliness shows how far towards excellence this kind of writing can go)
he takes from Sebald a mix of travel narrative, autobiography and cultural
criticism a structure that feels like that of a novel.
Hence, we follow the overlaps between self, friends, lovers
and books (sometimes these categories are blurred) with great enthusiasm,
taking the rough of the sense of an over-inflated self that seems to ingest the
whole world with the quiet ability to become aware of self, body and
disembodied desire failing to see the things that link them together.
Let’s take the beautiful reading, implied in the prose
itself and how that prose works in its richly reflexive way, that, like Damon
Galgut’s Forster novel, traces the co-dependency Of Forster’s master work, The
Passage to India, to the autobiographical release of a suppressed wish that is
The same writer’s, Maurice (p. 194ff.). Based on an already published piece of ‘straight’
(definitely not the right word but I feel a comradeship in orientation allows
me to use the word playfully) literary criticism.
Here’s one example – not the best in the book but I like it:
A crisis occurs when Maurice realises
that, if life drapes a genteel cloth over the budgies cage, it also offers
another sort of obscurity. In this good darkness you aren’t drowsy but alert –
cat’s eyes flashing – and through it you can move unchecked.’
I love the ‘cat’s
eyes’ – not just a metaphor for a night predator’s alertness (the world of male
‘meat’ focused sexuality explored by Laing (2016)), but a shadow, obscurely
enough of a moment, ‘on the road’, looking for opportunity. In contrast with
the first sentences which capture the modernist ‘prim’ you find (as well as
great writing) in Eliot’s ‘Prufrock’, Cavafy or Forster’s Edwardian fantasies in
Italy, you get a moment ‘On the Road’ more like Kerouac or Ginsberg.
Of course, one ‘over-reads’. That is what the book invites
by its continual shifts of cultural focus and investigative discourse. The
overlap between Galliano, intoxicated (and very toxic) in a chic Parisian café blends
momently with the panoply of shots which have forever complicated our response
to the ways we saw a figure like Gadaffi. This has the same allusiveness in
historically tuned imaginations as does the blend of a discotheque pick-up of
uncertain meaning and historic significance, even autobiographically, with that
now much neglected but continuing great writer, even after her death, Iris
Murdoch (p. 234), which features one of her most neglected novels (these days).
From Twitter, I can see that this book can be, and will be,
enjoyed in so many ways. I hope you enjoy it as MUCH as I did.
A Review of Laurence Scott (2015): Ways of Being in a Digital World?
Review of Scott, L. (2015) The Four-Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital world London, William Heinemann
This ought to have been a book I wanted to read but I wasn’t helped by the publisher’s categorisation: Philosophy \ Technology.
In fact it appears to be nearer to what ‘older people’ like myself used to call Generalist Literary / Language Criticism – the kind of book that once, and perhaps still given that Scott may not have chosen this category himself, was only permissible to authors considerably advanced in academic seniority or age or probably both.
Scott is none of the above but that is not to the detriment of the book. However, it was important, at least for me, to realise that so that I looked for no great or sustainable argument for the idea of a ‘4-dimensional human being’. This is less a category of ‘ways of being’ than an extended ‘conceit’ as that term might be recognised by Spenser, Raleigh or Shakespeare. The drift of the book is the fate of the being whose reflection or ways of knowing themselves are bound to the wheel of rich, textured or nuanced language.
And this description could have been applied to T.S. Eliot but it is not inappropriate here, even the latter would have understood that you can respond to Postman Pat or the terrible and ailing Gothic monstrosity of a movie, The Cabin in the Woods just as meaningfully as you respond to the Iliad (p. 51 – a page facing reflections on Top Gear) or Proust (pp 100f.). Scott, Like Olivia Laing (whose latest book on loneliness shows how far towards excellence this kind of writing can go) he takes from Sebald a mix of travel narrative, autobiography and cultural criticism a structure that feels like that of a novel.
Hence, we follow the overlaps between self, friends, lovers and books (sometimes these categories are blurred) with great enthusiasm, taking the rough of the sense of an over-inflated self that seems to ingest the whole world with the quiet ability to become aware of self, body and disembodied desire failing to see the things that link them together.
Let’s take the beautiful reading, implied in the prose itself and how that prose works in its richly reflexive way, that, like Damon Galgut’s Forster novel, traces the co-dependency Of Forster’s master work, The Passage to India, to the autobiographical release of a suppressed wish that is The same writer’s, Maurice (p. 194ff.). Based on an already published piece of ‘straight’ (definitely not the right word but I feel a comradeship in orientation allows me to use the word playfully) literary criticism.
Here’s one example – not the best in the book but I like it:
A crisis occurs when Maurice realises that, if life drapes a genteel cloth over the budgies cage, it also offers another sort of obscurity. In this good darkness you aren’t drowsy but alert – cat’s eyes flashing – and through it you can move unchecked.’
I love the ‘cat’s eyes’ – not just a metaphor for a night predator’s alertness (the world of male ‘meat’ focused sexuality explored by Laing (2016)), but a shadow, obscurely enough of a moment, ‘on the road’, looking for opportunity. In contrast with the first sentences which capture the modernist ‘prim’ you find (as well as great writing) in Eliot’s ‘Prufrock’, Cavafy or Forster’s Edwardian fantasies in Italy, you get a moment ‘On the Road’ more like Kerouac or Ginsberg.
Of course, one ‘over-reads’. That is what the book invites by its continual shifts of cultural focus and investigative discourse. The overlap between Galliano, intoxicated (and very toxic) in a chic Parisian café blends momently with the panoply of shots which have forever complicated our response to the ways we saw a figure like Gadaffi. This has the same allusiveness in historically tuned imaginations as does the blend of a discotheque pick-up of uncertain meaning and historic significance, even autobiographically, with that now much neglected but continuing great writer, even after her death, Iris Murdoch (p. 234), which features one of her most neglected novels (these days).
From Twitter, I can see that this book can be, and will be, enjoyed in so many ways. I hope you enjoy it as MUCH as I did.
All the best
Steve