The New York Sophist

Here’s my most recent version of a talk I wrote about three years ago and have altered over time. This was the talk I gave at Cornell University on September 11, 2017. I thought it would be somewhat interesting to put a few of the recordings here for comparison. 

I play pretty loose with a lot of concepts that other professionals might find to be not so great. I think the purpose of this talk is to get people interested in rhetoric as simultaneously a thing to study, a method for the study of other things that are mostly made of words, and a thing of historical interest that has shaped our view of communication and rhetoric today.

Here’s the last one, from 2015 to see how different the approach is:

And another iteration, this one from February right after – I changed it a bit between the break. 

The changes are based on feedback from the students as well as talking to the hosts to make sure I’m presenting something that makes sense for helping the students understand “the rhetorical” enough to be able to study it for a term. This is an institution that has no rhetoricians and no rhetoric program  – although I do think they have rhetoricians in composition. 

What most of my flights look like

Of all the things you could read in the world, why the London Review of Books? And why is it particularly important for those who practice debating? 

1. Global Historical Context

There is not one writer for this publication that is not an expert in the context and history of whatever book they are reviewing or essay they are writing. They are not an expert in the fantasy-themed expertise of the debater, but in a broader sense – they can tell an incredibly comprehensive, incredibly rich story based on the information that helps you wrap your head around something as complex as Korean history or Medieval practices of art or archaeology. This is a model of how to assemble information into a form that someone can easily digest in a very limited amount of time. The books are reviewed within the context of history and other opinions, so you get a very complete story of the person, time period, or the issue that the book is about.

2. High Quality Argumentation

It’s crucial to understand these are not just summaries of books but very complex arguments about the value of the book in consideration, bringing all available means of measurement to the table that will help you see if it is any good. Aside from that, the long form journalism and the essays that regularly run show you how to develop an argument, support it, and predict some responses and questions from an audience that is both intelligent, public, and inaccessible. This is the hardest form of argumentation in the world to make work and the correspondents do it beautifully issue after issue.

3. What Journalism Should Be

This publication is master storytelling by the best journalists in the world who have total control of your attention by offering the perfect blend of their positionality, the scene, the players, and the story. The recent piece on Mosul was a heartbreaking story of what has been lost there, both personally and internationally. The writer was able to accomplish this by pulling back to give us the global view as a moment within personal stories of individuals trying to stay alive in a city under siege. These stories are hard to read but captivating. I am always moved by the reporting in the LRB in ways that traditional newspapers cannot begin to touch. I think that this style should appear more frequently in debates. I’m afraid it won’t – it requires more work than the debate world is willing to give to putting arguments together. 

4. The Don’t Know Factor

I believe that if you regularly read the London Review of Books you significantly reduce the chance that you’ll be hit by the “don’t know” factor at a competition. So incredibly frequently a reviewer will drop some point of analysis, or some evidence or reference to another system of thought or thinker in their piece it becomes invaluable to read them all. I’ve received a number of good authors, books, and ideas from asides in the reviews alone. The emphasis on contextualizing the new book within the larger conversation is responsible for this I think. So many things are connected in so many ways that it’s hard to just try to brainstorm on your own about how things are put together. These writers can help with that, and if you pay careful attention you’ll find that you’ll know more things to say on a number of topics as well. And that’s what you want when you are debating. 

5. Value

The subscription is only $50 for the year, that’s all the print issues. They are great, easy to carry, light, like a newspaper. But that’s not the best part. You also get access to the archive which is searchable. So if you would like to read everything that the LRB has written about health care or Israel or Russia, you can do so. This is an amazing resource for prep and something that I think you’ll turn to year in and year out for perspective, model arguments, and supporting ideas for the big claims that you want to run, that are fun, and that get the attention of the judges. 

6. International Perspective

Not written by neoliberal professional journalists nor by Americans who want to get wealthy as showboating journalists or fake public intellectuals, the LRB occupies a rare spot in the newsstand. It’s a British point of view, I would say, but not in an exclusive way. For the debater it’s great because it shows you what the go-to examples to support an idea would be for a British audience. This can broaden your range on making up arguments and being convincing. Further, they review books about things that American and other neo-liberal news sources avoid – older stories. You get a good perspective of arguments about the modern economy from a discussion of the colonization and exploitation of India, or a few examples of military planning and national identity conflicts from a book about the Boer War. This is an amazing nexus of ideas that only serves to enrich your ability to make connections, put things in a larger historical context, and apply a number of examples when the audience needs it. 

I leave most of mine on planes so now you know where to go find free ones. Good hunting!

What most of my flights look like

Of all the things you could read in the world, why the London Review of Books? And why is it particularly important for those who practice debating? 

1. Global Historical Context

There is not one writer for this publication that is not an expert in the context and history of whatever book they are reviewing or essay they are writing. They are not an expert in the fantasy-themed expertise of the debater, but in a broader sense – they can tell an incredibly comprehensive, incredibly rich story based on the information that helps you wrap your head around something as complex as Korean history or Medieval practices of art or archaeology. This is a model of how to assemble information into a form that someone can easily digest in a very limited amount of time. The books are reviewed within the context of history and other opinions, so you get a very complete story of the person, time period, or the issue that the book is about.

2. High Quality Argumentation

It’s crucial to understand these are not just summaries of books but very complex arguments about the value of the book in consideration, bringing all available means of measurement to the table that will help you see if it is any good. Aside from that, the long form journalism and the essays that regularly run show you how to develop an argument, support it, and predict some responses and questions from an audience that is both intelligent, public, and inaccessible. This is the hardest form of argumentation in the world to make work and the correspondents do it beautifully issue after issue.

3. What Journalism Should Be

This publication is master storytelling by the best journalists in the world who have total control of your attention by offering the perfect blend of their positionality, the scene, the players, and the story. The recent piece on Mosul was a heartbreaking story of what has been lost there, both personally and internationally. The writer was able to accomplish this by pulling back to give us the global view as a moment within personal stories of individuals trying to stay alive in a city under siege. These stories are hard to read but captivating. I am always moved by the reporting in the LRB in ways that traditional newspapers cannot begin to touch. I think that this style should appear more frequently in debates. I’m afraid it won’t – it requires more work than the debate world is willing to give to putting arguments together. 

4. The Don’t Know Factor

I believe that if you regularly read the London Review of Books you significantly reduce the chance that you’ll be hit by the “don’t know” factor at a competition. So incredibly frequently a reviewer will drop some point of analysis, or some evidence or reference to another system of thought or thinker in their piece it becomes invaluable to read them all. I’ve received a number of good authors, books, and ideas from asides in the reviews alone. The emphasis on contextualizing the new book within the larger conversation is responsible for this I think. So many things are connected in so many ways that it’s hard to just try to brainstorm on your own about how things are put together. These writers can help with that, and if you pay careful attention you’ll find that you’ll know more things to say on a number of topics as well. And that’s what you want when you are debating. 

5. Value

The subscription is only $50 for the year, that’s all the print issues. They are great, easy to carry, light, like a newspaper. But that’s not the best part. You also get access to the archive which is searchable. So if you would like to read everything that the LRB has written about health care or Israel or Russia, you can do so. This is an amazing resource for prep and something that I think you’ll turn to year in and year out for perspective, model arguments, and supporting ideas for the big claims that you want to run, that are fun, and that get the attention of the judges. 

6. International Perspective

Not written by neoliberal professional journalists nor by Americans who want to get wealthy as showboating journalists or fake public intellectuals, the LRB occupies a rare spot in the newsstand. It’s a British point of view, I would say, but not in an exclusive way. For the debater it’s great because it shows you what the go-to examples to support an idea would be for a British audience. This can broaden your range on making up arguments and being convincing. Further, they review books about things that American and other neo-liberal news sources avoid – older stories. You get a good perspective of arguments about the modern economy from a discussion of the colonization and exploitation of India, or a few examples of military planning and national identity conflicts from a book about the Boer War. This is an amazing nexus of ideas that only serves to enrich your ability to make connections, put things in a larger historical context, and apply a number of examples when the audience needs it. 

I leave most of mine on planes so now you know where to go find free ones. Good hunting!

Travelling West is always a good time. Long, but good. Started the day in Laguardia Airport which is creeping its way toward civilization one blocked lane at a time. At least there was a source for drinking water in this terminal. Made it to Denver then out to Helena without any incident, except I think I ate a low quality burrito and should have just had half of it.

For the past few years I have tried to consume an inordinate amount of my subscription reading on flights as I travel here and there. It works out great. I write a ton of notes that I forget about until the next flight when I open my notebook back up. Seat sizes and space between seats has made the use of a laptop, or even an ipad with a keyboard attachment, impossible. I think there were 13 inches between me and the seat in front of me – maybe that’s too generous of an estimate. I did pretty well reading however and will take a bit of a break from that until the flight back. 

The bag can hold quite a bit. Here’s the photo to compare to the one on Monday when I return home. I have my planner, my notebook, a copy of the latest issues of Poetry, American Scholar, Hegehog Review, and of course, several issues of the London Review of Books. 

Also visible: Phone charger, Kindle HD 8, and a copy of a book I’m reading. 

I finished the book for the Book Culture reading group but was unable to attend the discussion due to illness. Makes me pretty upset, but what can I really do about it. Better to feel well here today and not have made myself more ill by trying to go to a thing the night before travelling across the country. Also, I don’t want to get others sick, or make a bad impression as a plague carrier or something to the first meeting of a cool book group that I’ve found. I hope to be able to go next month. 

It’s nice to be out here as I don’t have to panic that this entry is late, I still have an hour on Montana time. I hope it posts that way, but if not, know that I stayed up late after being sick and travelling to share a few thoughts. Tomorrow evening starts the workshop/competition and I am trying out several new teaching ideas that I hope to film. The ideas are new, the lecture/discussion format is not. Time for some video rendering to set to cook overnight and to sleep the sleep of someone who has been up since 7AM New York Time. Whew.

I wait for the Cornell shuttle at the NY Public Library on a really amazing September day. Bryant park is not that crowded, mostly tourists taking photos with the fountain, with the food stands, with one another, with anything really. I like this so I take some pictures too. I wish I took more pictures in general. Trying to do more of that, so I took my camera with me to Ithaca. Here’s the library from where I was waiting. 

This trip is really like time travel. Here I am at the library, the final spot for really doing the hard work on my dissertation, which I started long after Sam, my friend at Cornell, pushed me into graduate school at Syracuse University. Seems funny that I wait at a finishing point to travel back upstate, to the place where the ideas were just bubbling, nowhere close to firming up to be served. 

Why do I do this lecture every year? It’s something I really look forward to doing every term. I get to see an old dear friend. I get to have some great food. I get to walk around in upstate NY. I get to walk around on the set where my past was performed. 

There would have been no way to predict where I am now in life and professionally from those days in the early 2000s when I was soaking in the incredible alien-ness of upstate New York. Everything was from far away, and it was where I lived. The air, the smells, the trees, all very different. The snow intimidated me as I had not seen it yet, and imagined it powers that only fear can grant to something. So coming here to wait for the bus that will take me back to where this whole life began in 2001 is a pretty cool thing to think about. 

I also took some great pictures of a bug, we call this a “katydid” in Texas but I have no idea what the actual name of the bug is. If you know, feel free to put it in the comments. He landed on this small turtle sculpture on one of the flagpoles and hung out for a while. It made me think about this part of this book I assigned to my public speaking students called The World is Made of Stories by David Loy where he talks about the “turtles all the way down” moment in East meets West philosophy and epistemology. This guy had no idea he was on the back of a turtle or probably even what a turtle is. It’s one of the best pictures I think I’ve ever taken and I really like it, and I like the bug too. 

Moving backwards – this guy went back to the tree which was a good idea. But moving backwards is rarely thought of as a good idea. The NY Public Library represents a conclusion for me, the end of an era and the beginning of a new life. Going back to where the new life was planted allows me time to reflect on everything and gives me the chance to think about how good and bad things are in balance. It’s a good meditation. 

Add to the situation that I am travelling back to upstate New York to lecture on the foundations of rhetoric, the discipline that had been calling me so long through various vicissitudes over the years which I now serve in all of my work. Returning upstate to talk about the scholarship that I spend most days and nights pondering is like bringing home some of the things I’ve found along the way. It’s a bit of a stretch, but I often think of the scholars who lugged all those heavy books through Nepal and the dangerous mountains to Tibet to translate. This physical moving of knowledge through the world is something we rarely think about. I was able to send a book to a student tonight via email in less than 20 seconds of labor. Information is now truly light in a dimension that Marshall McLuhan didn’t know, but predicted.

With information moving so quickly, what’s the value of slowing it down to human body speed, both physically and vocally? Why not record something, or appear on Skype, or email something to them? Why not link one of the many videos of this lecture that exist on my YouTube page? I think there’s a value in having the distant guest speaker appear and teach the course, bringing the information to them from afar. This conveys a type of value and a type of . . . I don’t know, pleasure? Some sort of enjoyment for the effort that flavors the teaching differently. It is why online courses lack something we can’t name since all the parts are clearly there. There’s something about the body, the body moving through space, going back in space and therefore going back in time, wondering about a life long over but somehow is still very much being lived, even if it’s not thought about directly every day. 

The bus arrives, and I get on – we move away from the city to Upstate New York, to the past that could never assume or predict that I would live where I live and do what I do.