Hyperstition & The New Weird II (Session 3)

So hello and welcome to the third session of Hyperstition, Fictional Worlds and Possible Futures. Today we have a guest, Michael Sisco. He'll be on in about one hour. Ben, my partner, is going to actually intro the class, run and kind of lead this seminar. Because Ben's unfortunately sick today, so we're going to get his voice. So Ben. Okay. Thanks, Tony. It's super flu-y at the moment, so if I need to repeat stuff, just let me know. So I suppose since Cisco is coming in at around 6 or so,

it might be good to talk about Marcus Gabriel's work a bit first. And then maybe just before we can talk about his work more generally so he can have some feeling for what kind of questions to ask him, if that makes sense to people. So part of the reason I wanted to... Gabriel and Cisco was partially because they have a very interesting way of constructing worlds and in a way trying to create a non-closed or very strange concept of world

by saying there is no world, essentially. Both of them do this in different ways. So Marcus Gabriel, as many of you saw from either the video or from the essay on the book, is generally associated with new realism, which is this thing that's often associated with Ferraris, who's an Italian philosopher. The idea that basically there's this kind of old skepticisms that we don't need to worry about anymore, that we can have a kind of realism that's almost a common sense realism, even though it appears quite... Of course, we get in the text,

you know, this claim that he makes, and he also made in the video lecture, the claim that he makes that, you know, unicorns exist, but the world does not. And so, you know, the claim there is that because unicorns have a definite domain, there's stories in movies about them, you can describe exactly what they are to somebody, and draw a picture of one and so on and so forth. So he claims that they exist. You know, you could say they're fictional entities, but the idea is that they have a kind of existence, they have a describable being, and they have an appropriate domain. And domain is really what he means, what's important for him when he talks about worlds.

Because clearly when he talks about worlds, he doesn't mean the actual earth. or even idea of the earth. By world, he has this kind of older conception of the biggest, most inclusive thing. So basically, he calls it the domain of all domains. So, you know, Gabriel's claims that there is no domain of all domains. There is no ultimate big thing. There's no ultimate big object in which we can claim that all things are contained. There's no, you know, cosmological bucket in which all stuff can be put.

And so what's interesting, and what I think relates to Cisco, I mean to fiction generally, but also in the way Siskel particularly creates his stories, is that Gabriel's claim is that you have to talk about and specify all the domains of various objects, and you have to have a particular definition of sense in order to explain basically where things belong. Since you can't articulate or place everything in this giant map, this giant physical object, instead you have to organize things by how they appear.

And that's how you define sense, it's just how objects appear. So in a way it seems to be a kind of... you can kind of see hopefully how it's almost a resurrection of a naive or would be a common sense view that everything is what it appears to be. And it's just a matter of organizing things into the appropriate domains and claiming that, you know, things, everything that can be sensed is real. And so you have a very different notion of reality. You have this seemingly unending map of objects and how they connect to everything else.

So I think that's interesting for Cisco's work, and the book member in particular, but his works, which I don't know if people are familiar with them. His most famous one is called The Divinity Student, which is actually all online for free if you're interested. It's quite an amazing text. Because what's interesting for Cisco is that starting in The Divinity student in particular, he often writes fiction about fiction, but not in the way, not in the kind of standard self-reflexive postmodern way of like breaking the fourth of all kinds

of things or being tongue-in-cheek about things that happen in the text. But in a divinity student, and I think he does this in member, but a bit less obviously, is he treats fiction itself as a kind of material. Like, he treats not just something he's preferred to, but actually has a life of his own. One way he described a member in an interview, which I can post as well, and some of you may have seen already, there's this interview and then in Weird Fiction Review he also did an interview

he basically says that Member is about is a book where the narrator has interest in being in his own book and it's kind of a novel about a a person who does not belong to anything. And so I think it's quite interesting to think of this in terms of Marcus Gable's work in that you have this kind of overly extravagantly described and painted world in which you have this really banal, flat character who's going to be in it. And so you have this kind of interesting you know

it's kind of interesting tension between the narrator and or you know sort of creator of the book and the person living in the book that there's this kind of totally uninterested view but it's interested not only not formally but interested in the character himself and body's interest in some way he's almost writing against itself. There's this kind of massively complex cosmological game that the main character finds himself swept up in, yet he doesn't really know why he's doing this or why he's there. He has no interest in being

a part of anything. And so he's a narrator that doesn't want to have a domain. He's just kind of an object to wish he wasn't there at all. He wishes he didn't exist, but unfortunately he does. So maybe before I ramble too much more, first of all, did people read the book? Did people read some of either, at least maybe we can start with the Marcus Gabriel. Did anybody either read part of the book or at least have anything to say about the video or the short piece that we posted? Anyone?

I'm not really sure what there is. In terms of, I saw the video, and I thought, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're correct, but also I felt like I didn't know where, kind of, the end could be taken from there or kind of what the profundity of the conclusion is really I guess I wasn't sure what the what the implications were really I would agree I don't really know no I mean it's an interesting claim

it's a claim that's kind of bombastic in the way it sounds, but, I mean, does it have any particular consequences that other people saw or not? Hmm. I guess that's the question. Yeah. Sorry. That's an answer. No, no, no. That's... Hmm. No. No, I mean, the idea that everything has a domain, that everything exists even in isolation,

I mean, it's not about its relation with the other objects within a domain or...? Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure that I got much out of Marcus Gabriel, but I only watched the video. I didn't read the book. I did post an introduction to another of his books which seems to be saying very similar things, the kind of fields of sense. I don't know whether that's anything anyone can comment on.

So the same kind of... I mean the same kind of ontology, is that right? Yeah, as far as I know, I've only read sections of the book. I haven't read the whole thing. But from what I understand, basically, Fields of Sense is the more technical, philosophical version of this book, of why the world does not exist. Why the world does not exist is basically the sort of popular, from this kind of Rizekian attempt to do this kind of Puck philosophy as far as I understand yeah I mean I guess I mean everyone talks about unicorns in this sort of context as well don't they I mean it's always a unicorn

yeah I mean Quine and even yeah even back to Quine and yeah Russell also talked about unicorns So I mean essentially then it's about, I mean there's no sort of single container, but there There is a sort of dynamism, there's a sort of constant addition, growth, some sort of movement to the, you know, I mean there might not be a domain of all domains, but there's

a kind of a flux of some kind. Yeah, I mean, there's... I think the way it says the book is it's partially a way of trying to face the infinite, of trying to, you know, say philosophy is about, you know, having to engage with everything without having to discuss all objects. But... you know and this is something that's come up with OLO and also the other forms of new realism is what does it mean to say that philosophy just becomes the describer of all things especially in relation

to something like why wouldn't we let fiction or poetry do that or you know fiction, poetry, history and the natural sciences and everything else combined does a pretty good job of describing things. So it's a bit weird in a way that, I mean, it's almost a self-effacing maneuver in the sense, I think, this that, you know, philosophy kind of attacks itself in saying that, you know, the one thing it can't say is that there are these massive structures. And then so it can make these grand claims, but there are no grand claims, and then you kind of fall back to this, you know, common sense or not common sense,

but sort of redone common sense following the unavoidability of the infinite or something like this. There's actually quite an interesting article. I don't know if anybody came across them. They were researching the Gabriel stuff, but there's a guy who claims that Gabriel, like, like, played for... Used his... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the Romanian.

It's quite... It's pretty interesting. but I want to post it for people who haven't read it. I mean, I guess this one's kind of difficult because we have the TED Talk to go off of and a little bit of other things, and the book that you mentioned is well there. but the book that this book that we're told that we signed has came out a little bit later than we had hoped and I think it's even later in the UK because it's the US it's still I think the US it's

it like just hit the publishers the distribution so I don't know how long we'll be able to potentially go on this but we could just go off of the sense of ideas or I mean I don't want to preempt Ben but we can begin to talk about I guess member in this context I'm just jumping in a little bit of silence no yeah I never know how long to let yeah it's very difficult to understand For me, I never know either. I think I'm always too early.

Yeah, but I think I always let it go too long, so that's good. Well, I mean, have people read Cisco? Either did they read... Sorry, I didn't catch that. Next line. Oh, have people read Cisco before? Not before, no. No, my book is actually the first time I first book covered by him as well. Okay, and I mean, next we can just start, like what do people think about it in terms of, we can talk about this concept of the world, the world of making, but we can just talk about the book more generally. but I'm curious because

some people just find it's utterly enigmatic they just can't even get and I actually wrote a review of it and really hated myself for trying to write a review of it because it was so painful because it just seems utterly bizarre your review is the world the world is leaking, right? That's yours. Yeah. I'm remembering correctly. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. I was just thinking that,

I mean, it's a... it then the pairing other readings I think is it is is useful you know if if you're asking you know what kind of totality is a world or what kinda you know is is is there a totality that that is is a well done and the Cisco novel is is is an interesting I'm encounter in and in trying to get to that kind of question. What kind of range of experiences are there? I found it a very difficult kind of novel

to sit down with for any length of time. I think that was kind of quite interesting about it. I mean, we had, what was it, two or three weeks in the end to read it, which was quite three. Yeah, so that was quite helpful because it was not something I could do any sort of sustained reading with. I think that was one of the things I wanted to say. But it is something that I felt you could kind of dip into. I tried to read it in a sort of straightforward way, but I did wonder in the end whether that was kind of necessary.

And in fact, I think it would have been even helpful to me if I'd read the glossary or cosmology or however you might describe the section right at the back. Yeah. Yeah, I also found it really tough to get through. And I haven't finished it. I'm like, but I will finish it. I'm about 40% of the way through, I'd say. But I definitely also experienced kind of the,

I couldn't sit, I know realistically that it would only take me, you know, whatever, four hours to read the rest of it, but I know also that I can't sit down and read that for four hours. And part of it is that you're reading it and events follow each other, and individually they make sense, and individually, you know, much of it makes sense. But it's very challenging to read it and be gaining no kind of coherent bigger picture, which, like, of course is, you know, perfect for this. But it's challenging to come up against that consistently throughout it. But actually the last thing that I read is kind of the most, the clearest crossover with Gabriel.

I think in terms of I can take it for granted that I'm always missing something and if these comments aren't real then how do I know about them? An obvious answer isn't correct simply because it's obvious. So that's the moment where I'm not. It's good and incredibly bizarre. I was trying to describe it as enjoyable but it's certainly good I'm sorry Ben

your mute was going in and out so I couldn't get it on I need to to the book. Any other general comments? I think I had the same, just find it very difficult to read more than 30, 50 pages at a time. I feel like that's pushing it also. what was just incredibly exhausting. But also, I think in a way that's overly obvious

when he's switching from one to the other, I think there's these moments when suddenly he realizes, oh, it's more like science fiction, or oh, it's more crime drama, where it's like a thriller, or suddenly it's more absurdist, an absurdist text or something. And I think it's really effective, especially when a novel is funny. Which I think when it's funny, it's really funny, actually. But so much of it, its funniness, is about how unexpected that is. like one of the ones in the review I did one of the parts I talked about is when he's

the main character is running from surveillance and he's walking down the street and then he just notices that there's somebody left salad on this curb with no bowl of rep I don't know kind of salad with no around it. This is like weird coherency that doesn't seem together for any particular reason. But I wonder if that's something people will be curious. It's something I'm curious about how he writes.

And if other people had this thought as well. especially when a book has a glossary at the back I think there's an immediate assumption that there was a lot of planning in exactly how the structure of the novel was made but at times it just seems to defy all attempt at structure it's just like there's a set of elements that includes them all but in terms of what happens like if somebody asked you what happens in the book what would you say? It's a game I don't know what to say

I wouldn't know what to say after pretty much it's a game, it's a dream it's like a yeah I don't know elements of the paranoid Kafka character it's like a salad with no bowl around it individual elements that make no sense of their own all mixed together and spilling out on the engines that's a good description I think the reason I mentioned the glossary earlier is that I think in a sense there are

There's so many mystical machines, let's say, littered, distributed throughout the novel, that seem to be part of this sort of game system. It's like a kind of influencing machine of some kind of way. It's like the idea of the heirloom or something. There's throughout the novel different sorts of technical communities that kind of look

after different elements of these machine parts. So I think because you're encountering these, this kind of strangeness is one of the only things that has any consistency. So to then find this description as a glossary, I think, was quite revelatory in a way. I think so. I think right in the beginning, actually, when he's in the first section, he's kind of talking. It seems like it's Cisco talking directly to you when he's talking about the character,

when he's saying that what I do is not important, my name is not that important. I think he's discussing the experiment of the novel in the beginning, that it's like a practice. You're using machine language. he's saying that he's I mean he's all experiment as a practice to take him away from humanity to get the inhumaneness of things arm so I mean it seems like he's like the first the first part he's trying to set up set you up with with the experimental night with the experimental nature so it like

it seems to be like medical commentary but I guess to talk about what the whole book means as a whole would be impossible because there seems to be no goal or no less like meaning to it yeah I mean that combines the fact that it seems like it has one right It almost seems, because it does some kind of craziness, but there's always just enough structure that it lures you into thinking that there's a point. And I guess that's the main effect. There's some purpose to playing the game, you think.

But it's very much like, but is there? And I think that's so very difficult to do. I think it's very difficult to pull off that feeling to think it's not just you know when you read I feel like there's a minimal gap between you know reading something like Burroughs where you're just like okay there's crazy shit happening all the time and then reading something that has a very clear structure and I think I was trying to find this space in between almost kind of you know where there's a driving plot like a fantasy in a sense and this kind of weird sense. And somehow both have once and I find that very impressive. And I really

agree. In relation to that, I mean, like, I like this. I really like, I pulled out this quote that, I don't know, it's like 47. Again, at the beginning it says, like, aiming at something is a mistake. There should be no preconceived idea of this or that. But is this possible to achieve or to maintain? It depends on whether or not, quote, the goal I have preconceived idea of, end quote, is still being, is still a preconceived goal that would make conceiving itself the problem. I don't know. So there is a game, right? There is a game. So games usually have goals. You reach a goal,

you win the game. However, there is no end to the game. There is no goal to the game. But just in formulating this or setting up the framework, there's preconceived structure to it. And I guess that's what it's like just barely keeps drawing me in, at least when I'm reading the book, as I'm trying to think in terms of this. I think it if the gun is also reading this book I fail at the game or well ok ok

ok I think you posted that you posted your review for us to read, but do you want to just kind of maybe since we have a little bit of time, about 10 minutes, do you want to kind of maybe just overview some of the major points, or do we want to just talk about or do we want to talk about sort of how the format will go when we move to the Cisco sort of thing? We'll make a talk about that because first, everyone asks a couple of questions for him, at least one or two.

Yeah, has anybody prepared questions? You, mostly. I lost you just at the end there. I'm sorry. Yeah, I have a couple questions related to whatever you've got on trackers. You know, fantasy. I think your network's really bad right now.

I don't know if it's just me. Is it just me? Is anybody else hearing Ben? Derek? I can't have a thing. So just in case this does happen, I guess, Ben, can you formulate your questions so I can reiterate them if you're breaking up during the interview? You said you had a few questions. I heard that. And then I lost you. which maybe it's really sick with what he lost his voice and not such a little

I read to do you have anything you would like to to ask her mommy we get I really had to set it up with Michael is that he come on he's gonna do what you going to call my own and use the hangouts are but we can basically were he's open to talking about whatever we might want to talk about it only remember so be nice if we can talk to him about the novel but if you are talking about running style I do I talk to about our specific theme but I was just wondering so we can just have some structure we have questions prepared or we just have to go off discussion based and would be nice to know from you guys thank you

I'm yeah I'm interested in when I'm I guess when that glossary starts to become something that he feels the need to include in the novel. Okay. It's a kind of... It's Roland, I guess, is the kind of system of the world, the world building. Okay. It's not much, but it's a start. Yes. I think it's a good question as well. It's one that I would like to know as well. Ben, are you there now? Can you hear me?

I can hear you, yes. Okay. So you were saying that you had questions prepared? A couple. I mean, pretty generic ones, I think. and a lot of them pulling from the one review I think it's Postscripts or Darkness this one okay he talks about structured fantasy, like Tolkien, and how he kind of starts with that and could disappear

over time. And one of the things he makes some interesting claims, the person interviewing him is a Deleuzian, and Sisko himself is interested in Deleuz. And he kind of pushes him on Deleuz for the game to say something, but he doesn't quite say anything right about it. The thing he says is, he talks about ideas, he says ideas are already, he'll look at the Yeah. And I kind of like, and so I kind of want to ask him about, you know, I think that something super strange for him and what is often categorized as fantasy, even though it doesn't have the elements. Art is of the creatures of fantasy, but it has some of the elements.

and so he also he also describes his work as de-genred fiction where he says there's elements but no tensions that's interesting I didn't I didn't see it as a de-gendered novel I mean it seems quite kind of heteronormative Normative. Oh, D-Genre. Sorry. D-Genre. Right. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so I'm going to jump over and call Michael Sisko, and then I'll bring you guys in when we get there. Thank you for being here with us.

We really appreciate it. We read Member, and we're racking our brains trying to discuss it for the past hour now. It's a really great novel. It's an undertaking. It's like nothing that I've read. Well, that was the idea. Yeah. So, I think we're going to try to make sense of it in some questions and see if we can get some interest out of it. Just to give you a little bit of background information is we're doing a seminar right now on possible worlds theory and discussing different obstacles of fictional worlds as well.

You're aware of this. So, I mean, your book was one of our first choices and it's been very, yeah, it's been an interesting go at it. So we've been spending about, we had about a month to read it and discuss it. So Ben's back with us. Now Ben, you can jump into the question right now because I basically entered in. Okay. Yeah, so the connection is weird here. I understand. So one thing I want to know is how in terms of writing method in regards to member is basically how you kind of negotiate relationship between structure and the

objects to actually appear in the world because in the interview you did oh go ahead go ahead in the interview you did the post was always already aleatory and so I was kind of I'm sorry, it's a little... The interview that he's talking about... Can you repeat that? I'm sorry, I missed it. Yeah, it's the interview with the PSD Darkness interview that you did? Yes. Yes. So you see Ben talking about the concept of the aleatory that you're talking about. And Ben, go ahead. Yeah, just how do you... The aleatory. Yes. Yeah, the aleatory ideas in relationship...

seems to have a very definite structure and these particular entities and yet it seems to be almost a sort of fantastical chaos also and it's like how does that how does that how do you do that with your method basically well what happens is you in my case it doesn't feel alive to me I know some writers who will map things out very particularly so that everything is determined and you have a very clear outline of the entire narrative. For me, it seems like if I had done that already, I would simply want to give people the outline. It doesn't seem like there's any point in developing it if it's already essentially all set.

What I'm interested in, I guess, and I think I understand your question, it seems like there's a great deal of randomness in the book, and yet at the same time it does have a distinct structure. there's no one way I had of going about that but basically what I would do is sort of allow the structure to emerge as I thought about the book and not while writing it per se but while kind of preparing it determining what content basically I wanted I think you said that the book had certain emphases and that's sort of a good way of thinking of it. The book would have sort of movements or pivot points

but that what happened from point to point was something that I kind of, I wanted to have unfold in a way that felt not excessively determined by me so that it was something that was allowed to, mainly the way you do that is by bringing your focus in very, very closely on details and by looking at sort of the moment-to-moment experience of an event and pulling back at what it seems to be taking. I know this is rather vague, but, you know, I knew more or less where the story was going. I knew sort of what stations it had to pass through. and it was just a question of getting from one place to another

in a way that, or really dreaming my way from one place to another. So yeah, it was a kind of hand-in-hand procedure, kind of aleatory, kind of mostly aleatory, but within certain parameters. Okay, great, thanks. Does anybody else want to ask something? I guess I could, it's a sort of follow-up, follows up I think, or follows on. My question, I guess in talking about pivot points, for me in reading the novel, some of the pivot

points were around some of the kind of strange machines, strange objects that are distributed throughout the novel. And I'm interested in how you, or how and when you kind of, you decide to pull those together into the glossary at the end of the novel because that gives a very definite sort of structure to the way you see the kind of system of the world working. Yes yes I well I always wanted to write it

ever since Watershed Down or something like that I forget which I'd always wanted to write a book with a glossary at the end or maybe it was Dune, I forget which, but in some ways I want it to be a kind of parodic or a glossary which in some ways not bickers with, but it wouldn't necessarily be all that useful. I guess what I wanted were reference points that were only kind of useful in understanding things, because it just seems like more like a real glossary would be. As far as the strange machinery and all these ideas, the concepts things like Chorn Sandantra, the high rationals, the operationals, the artifact, and the various

other things, they sort of came along. I would recognize them as something that would have broader systemic importance, but they weren't all there when I started writing. They came to me, in some cases I would go back from the point at which they appeared initially to make sure they were more fully integrated or set up by what came before. But the main idea of the glossary was really a separate way to discuss, to sort of clarify certain things about certain points, like what Chorn Tendantra is or is not. But another thing about a glossary

is that it kind of... I don't know if I succeeded in this or not, but the idea was that it would raise more questions than it answered, or it would just sort of be rather elliptical answers to certain questions. I didn't want a completely formless book. Otherwise, I would have done an automatic novel or something like that. I feel like that kind of writing works in short bursts better than it does in longer treatises. Like Burroughs' cut-up novels. The cut-up works do limit the content because of the choices of the text that are used to be cut-up.

and also there's another further selection process. You don't simply cut things up and throw them in the book. You take what seems significant to you. So there's definitely a lot of conscious involvement in forming cut-ups. The end result is still something that I think loses me after a while. So I wanted something that would give me much of the kind of aleatory affect of an automatic book or a cut-up book, but one that wouldn't be quite as frustrating. Well, I wanted rigor. That's the thing. I wanted some degree of rigor which requires a certain amount of development, which requires a certain amount of structure. I wanted this kind of logic

underlying what was going on. Kind of a game logic, not a serious logic, but a logic. The trick, the whole trick, was that the narrator has no idea what this logic is and is only intermittently interested in it, actually. One of the premises of the book was to write a novel with a really bad narrator, or really not a bad narrator, but a bad protagonist. Like, he doesn't do what he's supposed to do. He keeps missing opportunity. He doesn't stay within the rules of whatever logic he's in. He's always sort of wanting to edge out. So one thing I did, for example, is that the high rationals are always saying, this is, this is. And Banks is always saying, is this, is this?

And so the idea was to have them painting things down and drawing lines, and him kind of wandering over the lines or questioning the lines or blurring the lines. And the dynamic there was the most important thing. It was more important to me than having a... It's more like... I'll shut up now. That's the answer. Oh, thank you. Does anyone else want to jump in? We have two more students that have questions prepared that I want before I can jump in if they want to ask. Catherine or someone?

Yeah, I think my question, I feel like you covered it to some extent in response to Ben in terms of the aleatorry element of writing. I guess it's kind of an odd question and I wonder if you've pretty much covered in terms of how much you want to know and do you do you I suppose ever wish that you could know less about about it well yes yes I always I think yeah I always want to know

I don't want I never want to know too well what it is I'm doing I don't, I mean I mean what does it mean to know what you're doing if you know what you're doing does that mean I'm not saying it means this but does it mean that perhaps you're just following a routine or a pattern or a program something set in advance instead of improvising but if you're going to improvise on the other hand you can't just, well I suppose if you're playing something really free, it can be really free, but a lot of times the most, like the moments in improvisation, to use a musical metaphor that I like best, involve maybe spontaneous melodies or

playing off of a theme. I mean, I wouldn't throw that out completely. So there's, it seems like it's sort of going overboard to have no structure. It seems like, in a sense no structure just becomes another cliche after a while like you get out you get used to it like oh yeah just no structure sure and it's familiar again and so if your goal is to think then you always have to um go where you now wouldn't expect it or look for some kind of surprise i suppose the main thing for me is that i'd be surprised by what the book turns out to be so very often I'll set out with an idea the thing is I don't really need to worry about whether or not

there's a structure because I'll forget it anyway or I'll deviate from it or wander off from it anyway so in a way I don't have to worry about knocking it down because it just falls over on its own behalf the key is really not to panic about that and try to force the book back into channels and just say no I wanted to go there so we just go with it so the yeah wanting to know less or not enough or sort of part of what thanks is sort of all about is kind of thinking you know and then being wrong. So in a sense, you know, I would want to, you know, plow like a complete idiot forward as if I knew exactly what I was doing but then capture the moment where it fails

because that's like a form of realism, I guess. It shows you something that really happens because the challenge is to write lucidly about confusion and, you know, how do you explore a world if you've already built it all in advance and you know every part of it, then you're not exploring it, you're just kind of explaining it a second time. So the only, so it's better, I mean, if the second time is different from the first time, well, that's when it starts to get interesting, or if it's a different world from a different point of view. and so on. So it's not trying to, periodically I suppose I would look at the book and say, okay, what do I really know

as the writer of this book about what I'm doing here? And what if I'm wrong? And those are sometimes, sometimes that's a waste of time and sometimes that's a question that actually can show me a more interesting way to go forward, a way that's more exciting than the ways that I that seem to be demanding, you know, where you end up at a logical, what appears to be an either-or situation, and you say, well, I could go this way or that. Neither one seems to lead anywhere, especially promising. But if you look at it another way, oh, then something opens up. Maybe I can go both ways at once and just get it all wrong. Fine. Good. So I'm not interested in being wrong per se, but I'm interested in drawing attention to what seems to be right or wrong about a book

or what makes a protagonist a good one or not a good one. That's more or less my answer. Thank you very much. That was wonderful. You're welcome. I think we have another question from our student base, maybe. uh yeah i was just gonna ask about um this word in glossary that i'm definitely gonna mispronounce uh i think it's pronounced nemosis or something um it basically says the term can refer to an actualized fictional character whose self-fichnosis is a kind of magic

and I just wondered if you could talk a bit more about that I couldn't even find the word in the book I'm sorry I had trouble understanding that one in the glossary there's a word yeah Mimosimus person yeah and the question was just talk a bit more about it I didn't really I found like the definition interesting but that's all ah ok right well the nemesems

they crop up sometimes in other works that I do it's a word I've used kind of indiscriminately in other places many meanings as it says here the term can refer to an actualized fictional character whose self-hygnosis is a kind of magic. Yeah, you read that. Okay. So I'm stupid and I can't hear very well. Yes, and so if we think of self-hygnosis, the kind of, yeah. So this was, I mean, this was an example of a kind of provisional definition. I like characters who kind of know their characters. They don't know, oh, I'm a character in a novel by Michael Sisko

and it's called such and such and it was published by so and so. But they do kind of sense the presence of a reader perhaps of a plot or a shape or something around them. And they might very well resent it. that someone's trying to get, you know, Fanks kind of knows he's in a book somehow or in a plot or in something. It's a game. It's a novel, whatever it is. And it wants him to go over here or do this sort of thing or engage in the plot. He's sort of debating if he wants to do that or not. What is this book doing telling me what to do? I'll do what I want to do. Maybe I'll go have a, it is interesting, but maybe I don't want to go over there.

I'll get around to it if I feel like it. But at the same time, the character is kind of... So this is also the way the character does itself. And I want characters who aren't versions of people. I want writers who just... Sorry, I want characters. Characters who are themselves. But that means that in some way, they need to push back against me or against their circumstances a bit sometimes. I don't know, that may be purely something that I just get out of it as a writer. I hope that the reader enjoys it too. But for me, the resistance of a character, to my attempt to encapsulate or describe that character,

seems to me very important, at least with some characters. Some characters are stock characters and they just pop up and say their lines and leave. or they're indifferent to the role that they're asked to play in the book. These are characters who come on stage from some nebulous elsewhere and kind of dream themselves into my book and then wake up in the middle of it and say, how the hell did I get here? What am I doing here? What's going on? Do I want to stick around for this? That might get tiresome after a while for a reader. I hope it doesn't, but it's a way of trying to get at characters who have behavior, who feel, who aren't sort of made real by decking them out with things like authentic terms

of phrase or a plausible backstory or something like that, but then have a kind of living presence for the reader, no matter how outlandish or even deliberately transparent they are. you know yeah I'm a character but so what I mean here I am I'm real so yeah in a way it was more about making the characters real by something they do in their way of being conscious of themselves or trying to you know discover some kind of self-conscious but never do that yeah I'm glad

we had this little chat I'm sure this has clarified things for you yeah I think I'm just I think I'm just baffling you one more yeah are you regretting it now? are you regretting this conversation? no I think it makes sense I'm definitely like in terms of that character in member he definitely seems to be pushing back against the kind of story yeah so I don't want to keep you too long Michael because we did agree to 30 minutes and it's 30 minutes now I guess

I kind of wanted to maybe ask one one question that you might not have an answer for. That's fine. I'm going to just talk briefly about Logic of Sense in Duluth. Sure. In one of the series, he's talking, I'm quoting from him, he says, the ideal game is not one that is perfect, but one that produces the incorporal. These are the surface effects or the incorporal sense that he's talking about. And I'm just wondering if this idea of the simulation of sense

that you're talking in the interview when they're asking you, the same interview that Ben was talking about, if this sort of had any influence on your practical approaching the book, like the understanding of nonsense and sense, or is this just a coincidence that it's very much involved in your critical work but there's a separation when you approach the novels? No, I was drawn to DeVos in part because I just discovered him like anybody else and I just started checking him out. but one of the reasons I stayed with him was because, for example,

what he says about nonsense is so wonderful, and it was something that I responded very strongly to. So I feel like I did have a prior disposition to, that was built into my temperament or my own particular confusion or what have you, that made Deleuze a more attractive thinker to me than other thinkers. But yeah, I mean, definitely there was a... Deleuze's thought and his work both alone and with Guattari, they both... They influenced me, influenced any one thing I've done, but certainly their influence, I think,

is very clear to me and member. I wasn't writing it to illustrate their ideas or anything like that, but their ideas influence mine or draw me in a certain direction. So, yeah, the idea that you simulate sense, I mean, that is definitely a Deleuzean idea. You're right that I was more or less applying in this story in a kind of simulation of sense that nonsense is not just gobbledygook, but a kind of simulacrum, use his term of sense. And then if you can have a simulacrum of sense, then that tends to unmoor sense

so that we now recognize that sense continues to exist so that there is a game and it travels. and it becomes a kind of what I was thinking would be interesting to play sort of a game with catch up so you're constantly, the sense is always catching up you're always trying to catch the sense up to what's happened so in a way this was sort of the life of the story not exactly in the sense of accumulating clues but in the sense of exploring and interviewing people talking to various persons about the game that it was a kind

I mean I didn't want to write an allegory or anything to I didn't want to write something that was just the same ideas dressed up in funny outfits I wanted it to be a text that had its own reason for life but I didn't need to worry about including Deleuzean ideas in any kind of deliberate way because they're just kind of spontaneous ideas I now think with. But yeah, that, um, the, Deleuze's idea too of, you know, that you, um, you renew things, like to speak very broadly, just, you know, if you're thinking about literature, you know, you renew it by breaking it. You renew, you renew language by

breaking it. You renew literature by breaking it. Because otherwise it dies. It becomes just sterile and fixed. And so the goal was to write something. So if you say to me, I've never read anything like this before, this greatly encourages and cheers me on because that's exactly what I was hoping was. Not to go on and on about it, but DeLuis does talk about how he says don't experiment, more so composition, I think. So the book, that's sort of what I'm talking about when I talk about

in fact, I think this is your first question. How you relate the aleatory and the form or structure. It's like an experiment. An experiment will have structure, but you don't know how it's going to turn out. And then the next experiment will sort of try to replicate it or will go on to something else or so forth or build on the results. And yet there is a kind of rigor or through line. You know, so if you think of a writer like Raymond Housel, right, Locus Solus, or what's the other one? Reminiscences of Africa? I'm not I have impressions of that you know

Roussel would write in this formulaic way but as a way of sort of fixed variations so that you have you have your structure and then you have fractures or or points of departure lines of, like to use the Deleuzean phrase lines of light that would come off of it. And so, well, I didn't sit down and say to myself, oh, I'll write a Deleuzean novel and we'll have this recipe. It was more like those, but I still knew that I wanted to write something that reflected my own sort of personal attraction to those feelings and those ideas. Because, you know, I'd like to get at the part of my own self that was drawn to what it was about me that was drawn to that philosophy.

kind of a rambling answer, but I hope it was in some way it had something to do with the question. I really just wanted you to speak a little bit to that, maybe also for my own personal pleasure, because I studied those as well, but I also like the fact that we came back to the first question, I think that was pretty good. And I think we've been kind of tarrying on this idea of structure and logic and meaning. I would think, I think, you know, I don't want to take up too much more of your time, so I want to thank you for being here in our seminar, and thank you for giving some amazing

answers to our questions. We'll return and try to work these things out more. But looking forward to the next works. Do you have anything you're working on that you want to lead us to that we should be looking for? Well, yeah. I mean, actually, this November, I have a new novel coming out. The press is called Lazy Fascist, but don't get the wrong idea. There's nothing to do with fascism. I don't know why they call themselves that. But the novel will be called, the name of the novel is Animal Money.

And it will be coming out in November of this year. So I also just wanted to encourage you, please, to, I'm curious to see if you arrive at further thoughts about the book. Please feel free to email me those thoughts if you want to continue that conversation. and I want to thank you all for your interest in the book and I'm very flattered to have an opportunity to address you all thank you very much he's so funny he is I didn't expect him to be so funny I don't know why I guess I should have that was nice also so I guess what I want to say is we have a little

under an hour to go and I was going to present I was gonna say we could take a we could keep on take a break if you are you are going to break up and will sex maybe wants to get some liquids I'll continue to go we can just more right there I can do our door ordered voting doesn't doesn't matter I have a later for you guys and it is for me so that's why for me it's just dinner time. So we're going to roll through it? Short break? Short break? We got one. Yeah, I said short. I think I need to switch rooms also, so short break would be good. Great. Short break, so let's be back here in 10 minutes, okay? Okay.

All right, thanks. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. We can just, I will wait for Ben to get back and then we can start.

So thanks for the patience. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Oh, yeah. Hi Ben, you around? Yeah, I'm here. Oh, you have a nice reverb. Nice isn't terrible.

You have the whole path to it, man. Hmm? You have the whole path to it, right? right? Yeah. And there's 60 people in the house at the moment, so it's a bit tricky finding places. Well, what's going on there? Well, it's Summer University the whole month. Oh, yeah, okay. So today's the transition from dance to text. Okay. Did anybody like the... Was anybody there for the interview? No, No, I'm too drunk. Oh, really. So are we back, everybody?

Usually Derek has his camera at his back. Oh, yeah, he's back. I think... Sorry, Derek, I might have brought you on too early because I haven't gotten confirmation before. I mean, yeah, I thought that interview was really interesting, was really nice. I asked Michael if there's a possibility that we could edit it up and publish it on the NNN blog. So I'd have to also get all of your permission as well if you guys are okay with that.

Is that okay with you, Derek? So. So, we'll see what he says. Okay. Alright, we have it back. So we have about 30 minutes. Yes, Catherine, good. Great. We have about 30 minutes, I guess, that we could continue to try to knock at this novel this novel and try to see what you can get out of it. We didn't get to all of the questions or talk, but... I'm trying to see if there's anything that we can maybe... I like the Spinoza quote as well. And Derek, you say, I guess we could ask why a character, uh, feels as Spinoza would say

this. Why would you, what were you thinking of this? Is this because you think he wouldn't say this? Oh, I don't know. It was this sort of facetious comment. It has that winking eye. Yeah, it does. Sorry. Are there any sections of the book that people liked that people didn't really like, didn't get? I would propose that we could...

I mean, I'm pretty much... I'm pretty... at a loss of what else we can... I thought one of the things that I thought was interesting from the interview was the way he was talking about game logic. I can't remember the sort of sect that imposes laws or this is, he was saying rather than is this, the character is asking is this, that the kind of lawgivers and I thought the

in some of the earlier sessions we we've been yeah there's this this idea that sort of laws are somehow universal I am even in even in Lewis's kind of separate possible worlds the idea that you can a physical laws are seen to be somehow universal and cross otherwise self-contained worlds. I wonder about the kind of laws that he's describing in this sense, but I guess it's a sort of question that you can only ask the author.

That kind of game logic, the way that the laws of physics seem to be kind of mutable, let's say. Yeah, as possible worlds come into alignment in a sense. That seems to be the sun that's between worlds as they're aligning, very kind of science fictional in a 2001 kind of sense. I can't actually hear anyone else at all at the moment.

Can you not hear me? Hello? No? Hold on. Can you hear me now? Yeah. Okay, I'm sorry. I have this headphone in and it's obviously not working. I was saying that you were formulating that on the fly, so let's try to condense that back into... Yes, no. So you were saying in Lewis's possible worlds, how you have the physical laws, and the physical laws are sort of like, what, they're always, I don't know, they're always like maintained.

And then if we relate it to the first one, the Melasu, right, this is not an extra fiction world. I'm adding this. this is an addendum to your thing, but this is not an extra fiction world, right, because of the physical laws, but it is sort of like kind of plays with this because the physical laws are in a way able to be played with and manipulated and modulated. But then you were talking, and then so then when you were trying to close the question, right, you were you were I think you were talking about what we were discussing last session when we were talking about possible worlds and how possible worlds don't overlap, but these ones kind of like they touch one another? Is that what this is? Do they overlap?

And then okay, so I followed you there and then I've lost you on sort of like what the question is. If there is a question. I don't think that's a question. Okay, I'm going to reiterate to see if there was one because I thought I might have lost it. I think that But that's a good way to take us through these three, and it's a good way to start thinking about these sessions. If there is a question, it probably goes back to Marcus Gabriel. I guess there's only really one set of, let's say, one set of physical laws in that kind

of... I don't know, Ben, is there one set of physical laws in Marcus Gabriel's ontological system? I would think so, but he also kind of, he downplays physics in a sense. He says physics doesn't understand this kind of deeper logical structure in a way, which he thinks is kind of, again, it's kind of what we get through sense. He thinks it's more direct. Right. So, yeah, I guess there is one. there is one, only one set of physical laws, but they're less certain.

I would say they're always limited because they're only in the domain of science where you think philosophy can jump between domains in a way that physics can't. Okay. Yeah, so it's not a particularly helpful view of physics, I don't think. it's about as helpful as my question. I mean, there's an interview that I don't know if any of you have read with 3am and Gabriel and they ask him kind of a similar question and they say and they're asking like with sticking to like physicalism and materialism they ask are you arguing that supernaturalism and theology should be part of the realist landscape

this is a tangential question but he gets to some of these where you're trying to get at. And he says, A major problem when it comes to taking a stance on the issues related to the family of terms physicalism, materialism, naturalism, and their possible opposites is that those terms are not clearly defined, or rather that there are a vast plurality of views that count as physicalistic or naturalistic. so he kind of gives like a breakdown I can it's a quite a long response but he gives a breakdown of like the history of a hundred years of the changing of materialism and physicalism breaking down into a certain amount of points which I think will be very confusing if I try to read it but he starts with like the

first points is strictly metaphysical idea of the unity of reality of the world the second point the view that there should be a privileged form of knowledge carving the world at its joints third point the identification of reality in its entirety or the world with nature and then these are the three points of materialism he says throughout history and then he says that physicalism adds for the privileged form of knowledge is a futuristic physics and materialism commits to some version of whatever is energetic. So then he says that what his definitions are is he says that naturalism is these first three points that I mentioned,

physicalism is the first four, and materialism is one, two, three, and five. So they all have at base these first three. I don't know. It's quite a long, but it's a 3M magazine interview on this new book, actually. And that is just trying to summarize what is quite a long response to this question. There's the, yes, Ben is... Ben's family.

He actually quotes David Lewis in the interview as well, on the question of ontology. Yeah, yeah, I see. I'm my home you can be seen as a contributing to metaphysics of course is going to do this one to and three things yeah so I guess this is something to be read perhaps and maybe you know

part of the answers are in this interview Sure. Does anybody else have anything on the interview? Ben, is there any... When you were trying to talk... When you originally brought up when you mentioned the Luz thing and you never got to your question, I was wondering what your sort of... I would imagine there's some sort of challenge to this.

I'm not sure. but did you what did you have a question directly to these these three questions in the interview and in the loser is it was it more focused on the following question on fantasy you're muted if you're trying to talk must not biggest there I'm

order and took too much medicine outside and in yeah posted a good person's to park we have that we really and it's not all it's pretty quite intense and you know we can pick up on it Like, as we have been throughout the sessions, we can keep trying to pick up on these ideas, and we can leave these as is for now. You know, I just want, like, trying to see if, Ben, if you had anything further you wanted to say about the interview, or if there was any commentary

you wanted to add to it. I mean, I quite liked his responses, especially all the things he said about structure in relationship to the aleatory and experimental relationship to his method. I mean, I feel like it's very much in a sort of productive relationship to a lot of contemporary discussions of what realism means. in terms of and even like when someone when Reza Negrestani talks about how artists should relate to their materials the idea that you kind of let the material push you around

to some extent and I feel like he had quite a nice take on that this idea of trying to I think he said lucidly lucidly portray what was it like nonsense or lucidly portray chaos or something. It seemed like it was like taking it so far to where you're reasonable or rational. Oh, the challenge is to write lucidly about confusion. Thank you. Yeah, that was it, yeah. Which I think is really nice. and yeah I mean

and that how you avoid like you were saying with something like a cut up novel it just becomes you know it becomes caprice you know it just becomes pure you know like the myth it just becomes the selections of text as opposed to some structure which actually can do more work in terms of presenting confusion if you loosely present confusion it's structured in such a sense it's still recognizable as a presentation of confusion as opposed to just being in confusion which I think is a hard distinction to draw but

I mean I kind of like the other thing I found interesting is that in his earlier books especially in the divinity student he actually said that he makes himself a god or he makes himself the god of the world and then kind of creates these architectures and things to sort of test the characters whereas in you kind of have almost opposite in this remember you have like you said an idiot kind of just plowing forward and knowing that they're in a book or something like a book, but maybe they don't behave the way they're bad at what they do, sort of a bad subject. And I think there's something to that.

I think there's something about being a bad character that allows you to present confusion in a nice way. Because there's confusion in terms of things being, and their content is weird. but there's also confusion of refusing to follow the script and it raises all a different kind of chaos or a different kind of confusion Right and I think that segues like very nicely into Catherine's other quote that she's paraphrasing, how do you explore a world that you've already planned in advance which is like Cisco's approach to you know How would you do this?

I would say that I have, I guess in a less theoretical sense, like experiential sense, I have experienced something very similar to this because I have narcolepsy so when I have like these narcoleptic attacks I have these experiences where I'm in dream world but also in reality at the same time because I'm going in and out and I actually cannot like I cannot I there's a confusion between what's what's really happening and what's not because the a lot of times my setting and scenario is the same except for when I'm and bring more to live the more right

so it's kind of like a narcoleptic experience for a car i think yes and the back so I just want to update it's a scotator approve the interview so I will spend the time on our every hour quick putting that together and I'll send it to you guys probably on the classroom to disapprove and add and maybe if you guys want to edit your questions a little bit and I might want to do this as like an audio as well

so if we do and you don't like the way that you propose the question you want to re-propose the question we could we could re-record the audio if you're asking the question and I'm to them so just a little aside I just want to make sure everybody feels comfortable before we release that. Cool. Let's go. Anybody else have any comments, questions, things to say? It's slowing down a little bit, I think, so. Yeah. I would say that let's... Alright, so unless somebody jumps in and interrupts me, the next session we're going to do, we should decide whether or not, because we did do a three-week period, we should decide whether we want to move the schedule, we take the two weeks, or we want to just do it with a week break.

you guys are open in your schedules and you can do I'll we can either do I'm proposing next Monday the 31st or Monday the 7th Monday the 7th would give you two weeks to read are obviously and I would only give us one week I mean and we also like to past to follow So we have Afrofuturist, PATH, and we have the Philip K. Dick. Three Sigma. So I guess we can collectively decide on a day that everybody works for. For me, I'm open.

OK, we have one vote for two weeks. Ben, can you do September 7? Yeah, I do. It may be on the phone. OK. Derek, are you okay with September 7th? It is fine, yeah. I'm happy either way, but yeah. Okay. Catherine? Okay, so our final session will be September 7th. We'll make a note of that. We can go in either direction. We can go in three sigma direction, or we can go after a futurist Ashun and Mark Derry interview, you and we can even bring in Delaney, whatever works you might want to bring in.

We will have one guest confirmed right now. I know we had one that our original guest had to cancel because of our movements, but we, the organizer Jason Adams, has been doing a lot of research in Argentine Futurism and Argentine Cosmos and Afrofuturism and all these things would like to come on and have the discussion so I'd like to spend at least some of the session on the Afrofuturist stuff so if we could at least read the Derry interview and read as much of the Eshin text as we can and the three stigmata one I think we're trying potentially to bring in some of the tuning speculation people but we haven't

confirm that quite yet. So, yeah, I would say let's try to I would say at least in the upper future section, read Gary's interview and get through as much as you can. I think the Philip K. Dick book is quite short. I mean, compared to the 600 page monster we just read, I think, will be and it's much less confusing. Yeah, so we'll meet the 7th. I'll get you guys the interview as soon as we can. Ben and I will probably work on it over the week. Sorry, Ben, I'm committing you to that.

That's fine. Just trying to sound more together. I'm still alive. It's fine. Okay, so if there's nothing left, then of course we'll continue everything. Oh, Derek? I saw you come up on the screen, so I thought you were trying to say something. Sorry. All right. So yeah, I guess from there we'll just meet the seventh and continue everything on the classroom with any questions. If we have any updates on the guests, we'll let you know. And thanks for being here. Thanks for putting questions. And until next week. See you next week. See you.