Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption Archives - Page 14 of 78

Damon Suede’s Hot Head, Verbs, and Jane Austen

PETERMBALL Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption April 26, 2019Damon Suede, Hot Head

VERBALIZE: bring stories to life and life to stories by Damon Suede

I was lured into reading Damon Suede’s Verbalize after hearing him do interviews with Kobo Writing Life and Joanna Penn’s podcast. In both, he laid out his approach to writing by focusing in on character strategy and tactics rather than psychology and background, with a particular focus on how this dynamic plays out in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

The moment I heard him lay out the idea that Darcy’s strategy is preserving, while Lizzy Bennett seeks to provoke, I was sold on the potential of his approach. That he continued this analysis in both Verbalize–in more detail, and spreading the focus to the minor characters–was one of the delights of his book.

Naturally, after reading his non-fiction books on writing, I got curious about his fiction work and how he deployed his advice there. I picked up his first novel, Hot Head, about a pair of firefighters who develop feelings for one another and try to hide it for the sake of their friendship. It’s an incredibly robust book, both in the language and the plotting, and I devoured it in the space of the day.

Admittedly, a day where I stayed up until 2:00 AM just to finish the book and find out what happens, but that’s still a day. It’s that damn good.

But the delight, when reflecting upon Hot Head in light of Suede’s theories, was seeing the way he’d inverted the dynamic of Pride and Prejudice in order to drive the story. The protagonist, Griff, spends much of the book trying to preserve thing (his friendships, his family, his job), while his antagonist, Dante, is all about provoking reactions as he navigates the world.

Things play out very differently to Austen’s novel–partially because of the modern setting, the incredibly sexy-times within, the queer focus, and the different tactical approaches the character’s use to achieve their goals–but intriguing to look at the way Suede utilises the same dynamic in order to drive the narrative.

The two books don’t look like they’d have anything in common, but the bones are definitely there. I’m already planning a re-read with an eye to the secondary characters, seeing if there’s any correlations there (I’m putting my money on Dante’s sister borrowing from Suede’s reading of Mary Bennett).

If you’re a fan of romance novels, check out Hot Head–it’s incredibly good. If you’re an aspiring writer, pick up a copy of Verbalize and read it back-to-back with Suede’s novel–you not only get a great read, but a practice-led example of the already-illuminating approach he’s advocating for in his writing books.

Notes from Recent Reading: Ruined by Design, Mike Monteiro

PETERMBALL Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption April 23, 2019

Just prior to my dad going into hospital last month, I wrote an entire blog post about choosing who gets to monetise your attention as an artist working in the early 21st century.

If you got something out of that post, I recommend that you set aside an afternoon to read Mike Monteiro’s Ruined By Design: How Designers Ruined the World, and What We Can Do To Fix it. Specifically, the list on page 115, where he runs through the ways in which various online institutions make their money, culminating with a a statement that is both incredibly glib and still nails a particular discomfort I’d been feeling for a few years in social media:

“Twitter makes money by getting you to fight with Nazis.”
Mike Monteiro, Destroyed By Design

Of course, given that it occurs 115 pages in, Monteiro’s built a lot of scaffolding around that statement. He’s talked about the ways in which engagement is monetised and how various platforms have sought to maximise it, the problems with having user interfaces designed by teams of white blokes, and the way in which seemingly innocuous design choices get corrupted by the arrival of venture capitalists (which, frankly, is interesting to me because it explains the underpinning problems Patreon has had in recent years).

He’s vented his spleen about twitter and CEO Jack Dorsey (who used to operate out of an office next to Monteiro’s Mule Creative) multiple times, and goes on to illustrate his point by drawing an analogy between depression and Twitter, which feels similarly accurate.

Let’s talk about depression.
Like about twenty percent of the world, I have to deal with it. (I’m lucky enough to have access to care when I need it.) One of my warning signs is when I can’t tell the difference between a big problem and a small problem. My brain stops prioritizing. Every problem comes at me as exactly the same size. This is depression taking away a major coping mechanism. That’s exactly how we’ve designed Twitter. Every outrage is the exact same size, whether it was a US president declaring war on a foreign nation or a movie we remember fondly from our childhood being recast with (gasp!) women in the lead roles or an eighteen-year-old who made a stupid decision on what to wear to the prom. On Twitter, those problems become exactly the same size. They receive the same amount of outrage. They’re presented identically. They’re just as big as one another. Twitter works like a giant depressed brain. It can’t tell right from wrong, and it can’t tell big from small. It needs help.
The thing is, my brain works that way because it’s broken, so I get it treatment. Twitter works that way by design. Twitter is working exactly like Twitter’s leadership team wants it to be working. The constant outrage, the hatred, the anxiety, the harassment — it’s all by design. It’s engagement, and engagement brings them money and raises their stock price. They have no interest in changing it. If they wanted to do so, they would’ve taken real steps to change it.
Monteiro, Mike. Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It (p. 123).

Monteiro is witty, angry, and smart…but he’s also incredibly passionate about his chosen topic. His book is aimed at fellow designers, advocating for both an ethical code on par with those taken by doctors, but the journey to get there is entertaining, provoking, and disturbingly informative.

I find myself wishing a similar book existed on the writing front.

RUINED BY DESIGN: US | UK | AUS

Venetia & Other Recommendations

PETERMBALL Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption March 29, 2019

Print copy of Georgette Heyer's Venetia on top of a closed Moleskin and an opened notebook filled with writing.

Right. Friday. Back at work this morning, teaching a two-hour tutorial on Georgette Heyer’s Venetia and writing craft.

It’s interesting teaching the same books two years in a row, because I can see the impact current craft interests have on the way I read. For instance, reading John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story over the last year kept me looking for the ways Venetia’s subplots serve as echoes of the central conflict, and gave me a new appreciation for the way she’s surrounded by people who are perceived but not really seen by others.

Similarly, after reading Damon Suede’s Verbalize while sitting by Dad’s hospital bed, I kept paying attention to transitive verbs and the way they build the narrative (If you’ve not heard Suede talking Pride and Prejudice on a podcast, google his name and track down one of his interviews with Joanna Penn or Kobo Writing Life about the book).

And because I’ve been immersed in Kenneth Quinn’s How Literature Works for a good stretch, I’ve been thinking about the ways that my own experiences as a reader keep bringing these things into the field of significant associations that impact on the way I’m reading. How each new book affects what’s read next, how opportunities to think give me the space to approach a text with a different mindset that may change the meanings perceived.

All four books are worth a read, although the Quinn is difficult to track down these days courtesy of being out of print.