is pretty much the most influential book I've ever read. Anyway, there's an online version here: http://www.oikos.org/knotpageen.htm
what's it about?
It's a book that uses ambiguous pronouns in vague ways in order to describe the complicated relationships people have with each other.
Quote from: LMNO on December 23, 2009, 08:48:11 PM
It's a book that uses ambiguous pronouns in vague ways in order to describe the complicated relationships people have with each other.
Pretty much, yeah. It provides an abstract account of how people get into the mental and social tangles that they do.
The friend who showed it to me told me that he found it in a library, read the first chapter, then went out and bought it.
Like, first two verses:
"They are playing a game.
They are playing at not playing a game.
If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me.
I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.
They are not having fun.
I can't have fun if they don't.
If I get them to have fun, then I can have fun with them.
Getting them to have fun, is not fun. It is hard work.
I might get fun out of finding out why they're not.
I'm not supposed to get fun out of working out why they're not.
But there is even some fun in pretending to them I'm not having fun finding out why they're not."
And then it goes up from there. Laing hisself was like, some hugely skilled psychiatrist who wrote it towards the end of his career, after an entire lifetime of observing person after person after person get into the same basic tangles. The last few verses switch to being about nirvana, and are executed impeccably.
Thing is, after you get the basic idea, you realize it can be explained in much simpler terms, and then the forced ambiguity becomes annoying. To me.
Yeah, my interest in it waned towards the middle, and picked up again towards the end. The "if it's not me, it's me" section went clear over my head (although I'll avoid passing judgement as to whether this is because it's inane, or because I don't understand it).
He makes sense up to about the 3rd or 4th statement, and then seems to get a bit convoluted. I'm going to revisit this when I'm sharper, but the premise of analyzing patterns of interaction is very interesting.