High Trauma Bottom (ft. Will Self)

Our Struggle

WE'RE BACK! In the Our Struggle Pod season 3 premiere, L&D are joined by the author, critic, panelist, flaneur, enfant terrible and Ratatouille character inspiration, the giant (confirmed 6'5") of British letters, Mr Will Self. In this barn burner of an episode, Will talked to us about why he has no time for his fellow towering autofictionist Karl Ove Knausgaard (Will has recently come out with a memoir, titled, perversely, Will, rather than Self). But we also talked about a litany of other, related things: Henry James' mangled penis, namely; as well as trauma, and silent film, and social media, and a youthful frisson with Morrissey. We think you're going to like this one, listener!

cheat sheet:

14:56 - We begin discussing Will's recent Harper's cover essay Against Trauma, which argues that trauma is not an anthropological constant but rather a thoroughly modern phenomenon with a vintage as recent as the industrial revolution. Trauma is something we experience when our "technological bubble" bursts, as in a railway crash, or a pandemic in the first world. How might this argument help explain why Lauren feels so fucking traumatized by her phone (but not the time she was attacked on the subway) and Drew anxiety spirals whenever a girl doesn't text him back? And what has liberal humanism to do with all of this?

43:00 - Lauren and Drew seek feebly to defend Karl Ove against Will's penetrating intellect and girthy (ENORMOUS) vocabulary. "There's something monstrous about him, the lack of poetry," Will intones, and L&D struggle to disagree. Does the popularity of Knausgaard reflect the triumph, in the social media age, of Content over Style? Will makes a compelling case.

1:12:43 - We get in to some interesting points about narrativity and the self raised in Will's essay about memoir and autofiction (published here in the Guardian, although the uncut version he sent us, and which we quote from is a bit different FYI). Will, after Strawson, dismisses the contemporary shibboleth that the "self is a perpetually rewritten story," and yet his Harper's essay seems to rest on the premise that trauma is what results from narrative collapse. In response to this critique Will makes an interesting distinction between narrative and "strong narrative," the latter of which sees telling one's story as a sort of moral duty...

Thank you so much to Will for coming on the show!

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HOUSEKEEPING

STRUGGLE MUGS WENT INTO PRODUCTION LAST WEEK! If you want us to send you one as soon as they're ready, considering ordering one (or two) at our store here. I kept the price at 20 dollars because it turned out my production costs were lower than i thought and I felt bad that shipping is so much.

UK listeners: Hang tight! It seems we have found a bookstore across the pond to distribute for us. Watch this space...

As always you can get in touch with us: [e-mail]; [e-mail]

Until next time --