stevenberlinjohnson.com: A Theoretical Education

A month or two ago, the Times Book Review asked me to write a short essay on my experience majoring in Semiotics at Brown, prompted in part by Jeffrey Eugenides' new book, The Marriage Plot, which features a number of scenes in Brown Semiotics classrooms in its opening pages.

I have very fond memories of that period of my life, and I tried to explain in the essay all the subtle things I got from that part of my education. But I also wanted to document the bizarre effect it had on my prose style. As it happens, I continue to have almost every single paper I wrote in college still sitting around on my hard drive in MS Word format, and so I was able to go back and retrieve some of those terrifying artifacts for the essay. I ultimately decided on this gem:

The predicament of any tropological analysis of narrative always lies in its own effaced and circuitous recourse to a metaphoric mode of apprehending its object; the rigidity and insistence of its taxonomies and the facility with which it relegates each vagabond utterance to a strict regimen of possible enunciative formations testifies to a constitutive faith that its own interpretive meta-language will approximate or comply with the linguistic form it examines.

Got that? That was me, at 19. I sure hope I didn't talk like that at parties.

When I was reading through the piece in the print paper this Sunday, I had the thought that it would be fun to time-travel back to 1988, and tell the 19-year-old version of myself that the very sentence I was writing will be excerpted in the New York Times Book Review twenty-three years from now. The only catch: the quote will be mocked. By me.

A little while back, my old friend Alex Ross and I were trading war stories about our college prose styles, and we dreamed up a competition that we were calling Worst College Essays 1989, where we'd encourage everyone to submit their own most egregious offenses from their college years, and at the end we'd declare a winner/loser. Alex has posted his own juvenilia over at the New Yorker site. (To be honest, I think his quote still has a certain poetry to it that mine lacks, but you can be the judge.) If anyone else has an equally mortifying quote from their college years that they'd like to get off their chest, the comment threads await you below.

The Basics

I'm a father of three boys, husband of one wife, and author of eight books, and co-founder of three web sites. We spend most of the year in Marin County, California though I'm on the road a lot giving talks. (You can see the full story here.) Personal correspondence should go to sbeej68 at gmail dot com. If you're interested in having me speak at an event, drop a line to Wesley Neff at the Leigh Bureau (WesN at Leighbureau dot com.)

My Books

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
An exploration of environments that lead to breakthrough innovation, in science, technology, business, and the arts. I conceived it as the closing book in a trilogy on innovative thinking, after Ghost Map and Invention. But in a way, it completes an investigation that runs through all the books. Sold more copies in hardcover than anything else I've written.
The Invention of Air
The story of the British radical chemist Joseph Priestley, who ended up having a Zelig-like role in the American Revolution. My version of a founding fathers book, and a reminder that most of the Enlightenment was driven by open source ideals.
The Ghost Map
The latest: the story of a terrifying outbreak of cholera in 1854 London 1854 that ended up changing the world. An idea book wrapped around a page-turner. I like to think of it as a sequel to Emergence if Emergence had been a disease thriller. You can see a trailer for the book here.
Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter
The title says it all. This one sparked a slightly insane international conversation about the state of pop culture -- and particularly games. There were more than a few dissenters, but the response was more positive than I had expected. And it got me on The Daily Show, which made it all worthwhile.
Mind Wide Open : Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life
My first best-seller, and the only book I've written in which I appear as a recurring character, subjecting myself to a battery of humiliating brain scans. The last chapter on Freud and the neuroscientific model of the mind is one of my personal favorites.
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
The story of bottom-up intelligence, from slime mold to Slashdot. Probably the most critically well-received all my books, and the one that has influenced the most eclectic mix of fields: political campaigns, web business models, urban planning, the war on terror.
Interface Culture : How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate
My first. The book I wrote instead of finishing my dissertation. Still in print almost a decade later, and still relevant, I think. But I haven't read it in a while, so who knows what's in there!

Comments

Oh, "each vagabond utterance" is pretty poetic. The rest...

(Work in 'viaduct', 'Palomar', and 'slipstream' and there may be a Van Morrison song.)

Posted by: Robt. W. | October 19, 2011 at 09:12 AM

Thank you for this. I, too, was an underage semiotician using Lacan and The Auteur Theory under Peter Wollen and the like to parse Art History and Film at Vassar in the early 90's I recently attempted to read by Senior Thesis on Jenny Holzer and it was verbally impenetrable. Now I'm a mother and writer (blogger. argh...) who attempts to
find/make meaning in everyday life through the lyrics of pop songs.

Posted by: Eileen Z. Wolter | October 20, 2011 at 07:34 AM

BTW, slightly off topic, but I sometimes find oddly interesting parallels between a lot of post-Derrida writing and Sir Humphrey Appleby's speeches in the BBC Yes Minister series. If only Nigel Hawthorne were still alive to recite your passage Steven!

Posted by: Eric L | October 20, 2011 at 09:27 AM

I'm just starting a PhD in the humanities, and was endlessly entertained by this post. Thank you!

Posted by: Alex | October 26, 2011 at 09:08 AM

Dr Simpson's analysis indicates that the relationship between dinosaurs and mammals was actually that of a diner to his lunch.

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There are other, more sensible ways to eliminate odors, the first of which is to clean up whatever's causing.

Posted by: kurumsal seo | December 22, 2011 at 05:20 AM

Just shows how versatile people are, and unless you put them out of their comfort zone or their usual routine, you'll never really see their full potential.

Posted by: estetik cerrahi | December 22, 2011 at 05:23 AM

Wow, at that age you showed off your skills, you're talented

Posted by: Philadelphia House | January 25, 2012 at 07:54 AM

Theoretical education is very useful now a days. There are many schools and colleges believe in this concept. I am partially agree with them. I like this interesting post.

Posted by: קידום אתרי אינטרנט | February 07, 2012 at 05:58 AM

How old are you now? I am surprised that someone so young has written so many books. Congratulations, you're a role model.

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Posted by: Generic labs | April 17, 2012 at 10:21 PM

Thanks for the information. You are so young, but very talented.

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