Composition of Philosophy. July 15.

I’m glad so many people wrote or tweeted to say they liked yesterday’s long installment.

Today’s post is not so long, because I won’ be starting the actual writing until tomorrow. Today was the second day in a row of administrative commitments, and on top of that I ended up with only a few hours of sleep.

Tomorrow morning I have to go down to the U.S. Embassy and waste the usual 90 minutes in line before I can apply for my new passport. Once I’m downtown, I may as well do a few other things that need to be done there, which means half the day will surely be lost. So, I’ll make it easy on myself tomorrow and write only that 330-word introduction referred to last night.

It’s already outlined. I think I started outlining it while in Serbia. What usually happens is that I’ll be sitting in a café or walking, and three or four ideas will occur to me. They are immediately written down in a black notebook I’ve taken to carrying along on trips. Sometimes I’ll look at those notes again, and it will make me think of other ideas that will fit well with those.

On the flight back from England, I looked back at those thought and boiled them all down to 5 steps.

In the next draft of the outline, it was increased to 6 steps.

Those steps turned out to be in a not-so-efficient order, so I regrouped them in a final outline of 6 steps (same points as the preceding list, just differently ordered).

One question for this introduction was whether to include one of those “lists of objects” that a few sourpusses claim to disdain, but many dozens seem to love. I’ve decided to play to the dozens who love them. The reason I use these lists of objects is because they do genuine philosophical work, putting the reader in a frame of mind that is rather different from that of mainstream continental thought, where individual entities play little role. There will come a day when these lists may be tedious and unnecessary, but in my estimation we are not yet there.

Latour is not the only other person to use this technique. Many authors do it. In Prince of Networks I cited a very long list from Richard Rhodes of all the different kinds of objects that were destroyed in a flash in Hiroshima. In this sense it’s not an original technique at all, but a fairly widespread one used by any author who wants to remind us of a plurality of things otherwise muffled by some unifying, flattening force (whether it be being, consciousness, or the atomic bomb, depending on the author’s subject matter).

But look at the sorts of lists that each such author compiles, and you will find a very different tone in each case. Latour especially likes to mix technological and natural objects on his lists, perhaps to help cement his case that most objects are hybrids not assignable to one sphere or the other. (And in fact there are no objects that belong to one sphere or the other, since these two spheres do not exist; that’s his wider point.)

I do a bit of the natural/technological mixing myself, but also especially like to combine real and mythological entities, as well as astronomical objects in order to prevent the human world from taking too much space on center stage. I also create such lists with the mixed intonation of romanticism and drollery that characterizes my attitude toward life as a whole.

If you went to a Don Ho concert while he was still alive, you knew he was going to sing “Tiny Bubbles”; in fact, he did it twice, at the beginning and end of each concert. When Michael Jordan went in for a dunk, you knew he was going to stick his tongue out all the way. Lovecraft had recognizable flourishes, such as “the wild hills west of Arkham” and his recurring lists of the same horrifyingly forbidden books. There’s nothing wrong with repetitive personal trademarks, as long as they aren’t affectations. The best way to avoid affectation is simply to do what honestly seems to you to work the best, and over time you’ll find yourself locked in a few repeated stylistic gestures. And maybe they will strike a chord with readers. You can abandon them as soon as they cease functioning effectively. But judge that for yourself; don’t listen to those who critique for the sake of critiquing. Do listen to critics if they really seem sincere.

But enough of that topic, since we’re only talking about one or two sentences. I won’t give all six steps of the outline, but it goes roughly like this:

*general overview of the theme

*historical precedents for the theme, and why they leave me unsatisfied

*a small surprise best left till tomorrow (and I did say ‘small;’ don’t expect to be blown away– it’s just an introduction, after all)

One other point about introductions, which I’ve made before… It is extremely important that the introduction include only your current actual thoughts about the project. It is far too easy, when beginning a writing project, to go into “author mode” and put on a persona that is completely artificial and unconvincing. The best way to avoid that is simply to record, in the introduction, those thoughts that truly come to mind most powerfully when you think about the project.

In other words, the six points on my outline are not what I think one should say about the project, but what I actually would say if someone walked up to me right now and asked what the book will be about.

Also, the introduction is a low-pressure exercise, especially if short, since you can always throw it out later or right a new one. It’s just a warmup, not nearly as important as the first chapter.

As of now, I still plan to write Chapters 1-5 on five consecutive days, Friday through Tuesday. But things happen, and maybe it will take a bit longer than that.

Tomorrow’s Composition of Philosophy post will concern the actual writing of the introduction. If I feel like it, I may post each of the drafts on this blog (the chapters themselves will be too long for posting in full on this site).