Monthly Archives: August 2018

Book Update – More Milestone Dates!

One of my favourite Nietzsche quotes is “I like to travel from peak to peak.” Well, that’s not exactly the quote, but that’s how I remember it. The quote actually runs: “In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak; but for that, one must have long legs.” In the last couple of weeks, it’s felt like the project has been going from peak to peak. Sure, there’s still lots of time for unexpected events to put a wrench in things (after all, this is the premise of risk theatre), but while the going’s good, I’ll take it! So, assiduous readers, here are the most recent milestones.

Final proofread complete! A good friend, Mark Grill, took on this duty. He’s edited articles that have appeared in top journals such as Science and Nature so it was a bit of a coup for me that he took this on. He’s got a comparative literature degree from the University of Chicago so much of the material would have been familiar to him. He got the manuscript on July 30 and turned it around by August 11–blazing quick. I was very happy with his work. He really has a gift for editing and proofreading. For example, there were a few foreign words in the text. One was Trauerspiel, which I had translated in quotes beside it as “mourning plays.” Of course, Trauerspiel in German is singular. Trauerspiele would be the plural. He noted and caught all sorts of little things like this. I was grateful to the point where I wrote him up a glowing recommendation, which runs like this:

Mark proofread my 70,000 word book: The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy, a complex and dense work on chance, uncertainty, and the tragic theatre in under two weeks. I accepted nearly all of his suggestions. He has the rare x-ray eyes to uncover the most direct way of expressing thoughts with words. His proofreading was absolutely thorough and invaluable. He will be able to do the same for you at a highly competitive price point. Highly recommended.

I was particularly happy with the use of ‘x-ray’. The playing of one of my favourite pianists has been called ‘an x-ray interpretation of Bach’. I always liked that line. The pianist, is, of course, the inimitable Glenn Gould.

The author blurb and book blurb are complete! A big thank you to Keith Digby and Sarah Milne for some really great suggestions that added kick to the presentation. Here’s how the book blurb reads:

WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT, BIRNAM WOOD COMES TO DUNSINANE HILL

The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy presents a profoundly original theory of drama that speaks to modern audiences living in an increasingly complex world driven by artificial intelligence, gene editing, globalization, and mutual assured destruction ideologies. Tragedy, according to risk theatre, puts us face to face with the far-reaching implications of our actions by simulating the profound impact of highly improbable events.

In this book, classicist Edwin Wong shows how tragedy imitates reality: heroes, by taking inordinate risks, trigger devastating low-probability, high-consequence outcomes. Not only does Wong reinterpret classic dramas from Aeschylus to O’Neill through the risk theatre lens, he also challenges dramatists to create tomorrow’s theatre. Because today is an age of unprecedented risks, we need compelling, high-stakes tragedies to capture the growing unease with today’s risk-takers who are hurling us into an abyss of unintended consequences.

And here’s how the author blurb reads:

Edwin Wong founded the Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy Playwright Competition with Langham Court Theatre to align tragedy with the modern fascination with uncertainty and chance. It is the world’s largest competition for the writing of tragedy. He is an award-winning classicist with a master’s degree from Brown University, where he concentrated on ancient theatre. His other research interests include epic poetry, where he has published a solution to the contradiction between Homeric fate and free will by drawing attention to the peculiar mechanics of chess endgames. He has lectured in Canada and the USA on risk theatre and welcomes opportunities to speak. He currently lives in Victoria, BC and blogs at melpomeneswork.com. The competition website can be found at risktheatre.com.

Wow, I could really get used to addressing myself in the third person! Caesar also referred to himself in the third person in his histories: The Gallic Wars and The Civil War. They’re quite fun to read, as every time you read: “And then Caesar put on his red cape to bolster the flagging morale of the troops on the right flank…” you know that, well, Caesar is giving the air of impartiality but he’s really just talking about how great he is! And the kicker is I think he really enjoys it!

The title has changed again! Now the book is called: The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected. The old title was: Tragedy is Risk Theatre: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected. The new title better expresses the idea that this is a theory of tragedy.

Font has been chosen! Going with Berling, the same font that Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and the Markets was set to. Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb was the book that set me off on this journey. It was at the Providence, RI Borders Bookstore (in the Providence Place Mall) that I first saw this book in the winter of 2006. I was working on my thesis and hey, what better thing to do to procrastinate than to go to the bookstore and look at other books! Well, this book was sitting in the economics section and it stood out as sort of a ‘renegade’ title: Taleb was part of Wall Street, but he also railed against the tools Wall Street was using to measure risk. Remember, these were the days right before the Great Recession. His title would prove to be quite prescient in light of the train wreck right around the corner. Well, it was after encountering this book that it first occurred to me that tragedy dramatizes well-thought out plans that go awry in quite unexpected ways. In other words, tragedy could be conceived of as a theatre of risk. It dramatizes and simulates risk on the stage. It was too late, of course, to rewrite my thesis. But it was then that I knew I had to start from scratch. Again (I’ve been trying to come up with a theory of tragedy since 2000; this is attempt 3). So, it is a little tribute to Taleb that my book will also be set in the typeface of his first book. Fitting.

The proofread text has been sent to Friesen Press where the Microsoft Word document will be transferred into Adobe InDesign, LaTeX, or some other typesetting system (not sure which software Friesen uses). From there, I have one revision round, or one chance to catch any final errors that are still in the text or arise when the Word document is typeset. Once I approve that, they’ll start generating the index. Friesen’s is saying first printing January 2019 (six month process). But really, this date should be able to be pushed back to November or December. I mean, it doesn’t seem like there’s that much left. Let’s say the typesetting and revision round takes us to end of September (that’s a month and a half). The index takes a month. This takes us to the end of October. The cover design can be done concurrently with indexing. So, the package will be ready to go to the printers by the end of October. From there, the lead time for a small run would be what…one month? That sets us in December. Of course, December is a peculiar month, full of holidays and time off. We shall see.

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong, and I’m doing Melpomene’s work.

Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance – Goldin and Kutarna

2016, St. Martin’s Press, 304 pages

Back Blurb

Two award-winning Oxford scholars redefine the present day as a new Renaissance–a rare moment of flourishing genius and risk that promises to reshape all our lives. Da Vinci, Columbus, Copernicus, Luther, Gutenberg. These names recall an era in which an unprecedented rush of discovery and disruption broke through long-standing barriers and broke down equally long-standing powers. This rush entangled the whole world politically, economically and intellectually, and reshaped society. Now, the same forces that converged 500 years ago to spark genius and upend social order–great leaps in science, trade, migration, technology, education and health–are once again present, only stronger and more widespread.

In Age of Discovery, Ian Goldin and Chris Kutarna show how we can draw courage and wisdom from the last Renaissance in order to fashion our own golden age out of this New Renaissance. Whether we’re seized by Gutenberg or Zuckerberg; the discovery of the Americas or the rise of China; copperplate or silicon etching; the Bonfire of the Vanities or the rise of ISIS; the spread of syphilis or the Ebola pandemic–a Renaissance moment dares humanity to give its best just when the stakes are highest.

Age of Discovery navigates the crises of our time and helps us all define a legacy that the world will still remember half a millennium from now.

Author Blurbs

Ian Goldin is a Professor of Globalization and Director of the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford. He was Vice President of the World Bank, Chief Executive of the Development Bank of Southern Africa and an adviser to President Nelson Mandela.

Chris Kutarna is a Fellow at the Oxford Martin School and an expert on international politics and economics. He was a strategy consultant at the Boston Consulting Group and continues to advise senior executives in Asia, North America and Europe.

The New Renaissance

The first thing that caught my eye wasn’t the Goldin and Kutarna’s exciting thesis that we live in a New Renaissance, but rather, that a book from two Oxford academics would eschew the Oxford comma. This I noticed in the author blurb (see author blurb on Kutarana above): “He was a strategy consultant at the Boston Consulting Group and continues to advise senior executives in Asia, North America and Europe.” Notice no Oxford comma between “North America and Europe.” But if you look at the text inside the book, sometimes the hallowed Oxford comma is there, and sometimes not!–for example, page 129 reads:

Entrepreneurs have made a synthetic version with processes borrowed from the semiconductor industry, and as they tweak it, “gecko tape” will find uses in defense (all-terrain robots), manufacturing (replacing many screws, rivets and glues), and even athletics (fumble-free gloves for American football players).

In this passage, notice no Oxford comma between “rivets and glues” but an Oxford comma is there between “defense, and even athletics.” And then there is also a new device of what I guess can be called the “Oxford semicolon” to separate a list of items. This from page 166:

Chapter Two touched on how the same infrastructure, networks and investments that connect us also make it easier to coordinate crime and violence; disseminate hate; train up would-up hackers, fraudsters and bombers; and trade every illicit good from drugs to fake IDs to child slaves.

So there is a semicolon separating “bombers; and trade every illicit good.” But now compare this passage with the book blurb (printed in its entirety above):

Whether we’re seized by Gutenberg or Zuckerberg; the discovery of the Americas or the rise of China; copperplate or silicon etching; the Bonfire of the Vanities or the rise of ISIS; the spread of syphilis or the Ebola pandemic–a Renaissance moment dares humanity to give its best just when the stakes are highest.

Notice no “Oxford semicolon” separating “syphilis or the Ebola pandemic.” And then, going back to the Oxford comma, notice in the quote from page 166 (above) that there is no Oxford comma between “networks and investments.”

So it appears that the writer of the author blurbs and the book blurb (who doesn’t use the Oxford comma and the so-called “Oxford semicolon”) must be different than the book writers, who do use the Oxford comma and the so-called “Oxford semicolon.” But then again, inside the text of the book itself, sometimes you find the Oxford comma and sometimes you don’t. Is this because the book has two writers, Goldin and Kutarna? That’s one possibility. But the problem with that hypothesis is that even in the same passage (for example the passage quoted from page 129) it’s inconsistent. This inconsistency I found rather interesting and almost added to the pleasure of reading the book.

Great Quotes!

Chapter 9 kicks off with a great quote that’s traditionally attributed to Michelangelo:

If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.

Hard to resist a chuckle on reading that. I don’t know enough about Michelangelo to conjecture whether he would have said that, but I do know that painting the ceiling of the Sistine chapel was a debilitating exercise for him. I’d like to believe he said that, as it shows that he had a sense of humour.

For everyone wondering whether we live in an age of unprecedented manufactured risks, here’s a powerful quote from page 4:

Scientists alive today outnumber all scientists who ever lived up to 1980.

Scientists push the envelope. And when they push the envelope, sometimes unintended consequences result. So, it stands that, if there’s more scientists alive today poking the bear than there ever have been in human history, something is going to happen. And that ‘something’ is likely going to be something unexpected.

The Unexpected

Now, my favourite topic: the unexpected. Goldin and Kutarna have written a great book comparing our age to the Renaissance. For example, the Renaissance had Gutenberg. We have the internet. The Renaissance had Columbus sailing to the New World. We have globalization. I like that. Of course, I also wonder whether Goldin and Kutarna could have made a similar argument for any thirty or fifty year period since, say, 1800. It seems that the pace of human development has really picked up steam since the Industrial Revolution.

But, getting back to the unexpected. Goldin and Kutarna identify possible dangers to our modern-day Renaissance: bioterror epidemics, the rise of ISIS and other fringe movements, inequality, and climate change, to name a few. But really, what age in the past has been brought down or cut short by what it had seen coming? Look, for example, at the Great Depression. In the Roaring Twenties, the last thing the prognosticators were predicting was a Great Depression. The stock market, to the pundits of the time (including famed Yale economist Irving) “had reached a permanent high plateau.” Almost immediately after Irving said that, the stock market collapsed. The dangers that we can see coming we will work around. I call that human ingenuity. It is what we don’t know that will hurt us. Or, in other words, unexpected events.

I’ll leave you with that thought. Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong and I’m doing Melpomene’s work.

The Kingfisher, or the Defining Moment

A few months ago, I moved from downtown Victoria to View Royal. It’s about twenty minutes from downtown. The new place is a condo unit on the Esquimalt Harbour, high bank waterfront. It’s set back about 50′ from the water’s edge and 30′ up. There’s a trail along the harbour complete with tsunami warning signs of a walker being swept out into sea. I call this place the “global warming villa” because, soon, instead of high bank, it’s going to be low bank waterfront. But there’s some time. The City of Victoria is projecting water levels to rise just over a centimetre each year. So at 1.5 cm/year, it’s going to be six centuries before it’s low bank waterfront. I don’t know if I’ll be around that long. But, while I’m around, it’s interesting to watch all the natural patterns that happen around here.

The most interesting thing about this place is watching nature’s cycles. The Esquimalt Harbour, towards the end, is a big mud flat. And, since the global warming villa is right at the end of the harbour, you really notice the tides. At full flood, the water comes, well, within 50′ of the building. At it’s ebb, it goes out a hundred feet and all that’s left of the harbour is a ten foot stream. As you can gather, the water’s not very deep. In fact, there’s an island maybe a thousand feet out: Cole Island. When this area used to be an artillery fortress (Fort Rodd Hill is close by), the munitions would be stored on Cole Island. The local residents say that the water’s shallow enough that they’ve seen intrepid individuals walk out there. Past Cole Island the water gets much deeper. So the first of nature’s cycles you see is the ebb and flow of the tides: at any given time, you never know if you’ll see the sparkling sheen on the water or the brown flats of mud.

Now there’s also the action of the tide coming in and out itself. Sometimes the tide comes in and its hungry. If the wind’s blowing, you can get up to 6″ waves. It actually looks quite aggressive. And then there’s the wildlife. In March, when I was first out here, it was the herons. What a patient bird! The water’s shallow enough that they can walk around. And then they wait. For a long time. For fish perhaps? They’re an awkward flier, which also makes them an interesting specimen for observation. Big wing span. Not very gracious. But their patience has won me over. It’s August now, and they’ve all left, which has bummed me out. Maybe they’ll be back next year? There’s eagles, hawks, turkey vultures, and a bevy of other animals. I see raccoons venturing out into the mud flats by day, which is strange: aren’t they supposed to be nocturnal? And the swans, I am told, when their haunts around Royal Roads University (a couple of kilometres away) become overcrowded, will come up my way. But of all the creatures, nothing has captured my imagination like the herons. Until now.

The other day, I saw this bird dart out of the trees. A smallish bird, maybe a bit bigger than my fist. It hovered for about five seconds maybe twenty-five or thirty feet above the water. It didn’t hover stationary like a hummingbird, but it hovered in these five seconds within a one cubic foot space. As it zigged and zagged within this cube, you could tell from the beating of its wings that it was going all out. And then it dove headfirst, vertically into the water where it plucked out something out. And then it beelined back into the trees. What a sight, especially the precipitous vertical dive! It turns out that this fascinating little bird is a kingfisher.

It strikes me that when this kingfisher hovers and dives headlong, it fulfils its purpose. The moment must be perfect as it strives with every nerve and every muscle to plunge into the bullseye on the water’s surface. This is its defining moment where all of its powers are concentrated on one aim and goal. This is its apotheosis, if such a thing can be said. And then an interesting and important question occurred to me: what is our equivalent of the kingfisher’s moment?

What is our defining moment? Is it a feeling like the one the Pixies describe in their cover of Head On?

As soon as I get my head around you

I come around catching sparks off you

I get an electric shock from you

This secondhand living just won’t do

And the way I feel tonight

I could die and I wouldn’t mind

And there’s something going on inside

Makes you want to feel

Makes you want to try

Makes you want to blow the stars from the sky.

Have you ever felt like blowing the stars out of the sky? That’s a great great line. Even better is the supporting line: “I could die and I wouldn’t mind.” Is this what the kingfisher feels?

Or is the kingfisher’s moment lecturing before a great crowd? They’ve come to hear you, what you have to say. Their attention’s rapt and you are nervous. But as you start talking, you can feel your initial smallness grow into a larger room filling presence. That’s a sort of triumph.

Or is the kingfisher’s moment like the moment when the master sleuth Hercule Poirot exposes the murderer?

Or is the kingfisher’s moment the same as when a prize-fighter drops an adversary onto the hard canvas?

But it seems there’s one big difference between ourselves and the kingfisher. For us to define ourselves, for us to reach that culminating moment where all of our powers are concentrated on one aim, we have to pay the price. In “Death on the Nile,” Poirot sums it up well as he converses with Jacqueline on a listless evening aboard the steamer:

Jacqueline: Ah, well, one must follow one’s star.

Poirot: Love is not everything.

Jacqueline: Oh, but it is. It is. You must know that Monsieur Poirot. Surely you understand?

Poirot: It is terrible, Mademoiselle, all that I have missed in life.

But is the opposite not true of the kingfisher?–to make the dive involves no sacrifice. Rather, not to make the dive incurs a sacrifice, as perhaps a meal is lost. That’s the difference between us and the kingfisher, and thereby hangs a tale.