Collaboration – Recall This Book

148* Albion Lawrence: Scientists Cooperate while Humanists Ruminate (EF, JP)

Back in 2021, John and Elizabeth sat down with Brandeis string and quantum theorist Albion Lawrence to discuss cooperation versus solitary study across disciplines. They sink their teeth into the question, “Why do scientists seem to do collaboration and teamwork better than other kinds of scholars and academics?”

The conversation ranges from the merits of collective biography to the influence of place and geographic location in scientific collaboration to mountaineering traditions in the sciences. As a Recallable Book, Elizabeth champions The People of Puerto Rico, an experiment in ethnography of a nation (in this case under colonial rule) from 1956, including a chapter by Robert Manners, founding chair of the Brandeis Department of Anthropology. Albion sings the praises of a collective biography of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, A Message to Our Folks. But John stays true to his Victorianist roots by praising the contrasting images of the withered humanist Casaubon and the dashing young scientist Lydgate in George Eliot’s own take on collective biography, Middlemarch.

First image taken of a black hole by a collaboration of scientists for the *Event Horizon Telescope* (EHT) project

Discussed in this episode:

Richard Rhodes Making of the Atomic Bomb

Ann Finkbeiner, The Jasons: The Secret History of Science’s Postwar Elite

James Gleick, The Information

Jon Gertner, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation

Black Hole photographs win giant prize

Adam Jaffe, “Geographic Localization of Knowledge Spillovers as Evidenced by Patent Citations“

Jamie Cohen-Cole, The Open Mind

Julian Steward et al., The People of Puerto Rico

Paul Steinbeck, Message to Our Folks

Jenny Uglow, Lunar Men

George Eliot, Middlemarch

Listen to and Read the episode here.

123* Sheila Heti speaks about awe with Sunny Yudkoff (JP)

In this fantastic recent episode from our colleagues at Novel Dialogue, Sheila Heti sits down with Sunny Yudkoff and John to discuss her incredibly varied oeuvre. She does it all: stories, novels, alphabetized diary entries as well as a series of dialogues in the New Yorker with an AI named Alice.

Drawing on her background in Jewish Studies, Sunny prompts Sheila to unpack the implicit and explicit theology of her recent Pure Color (Sheila admits she “spent a lot of time thinking about …what God’s pronouns are going to be” ) as well as the protagonist’s temporary transformation into a leaf. The three also explore how life and lifelikeness shape How Should a Person Be. Sheila explains why “auto-fiction” strikes her as a “bad category” and “a lazy way of thinking about what the author is doing formally” since “the history of literature is authors melding their imagination with their lived experience.”

If you enjoyed this Novel Dialogue crossover conversation, you might also check out earlier ones with Joshua Cohen, Charles Yu, Caryl Phillips, Jennifer Egan, Helen Garner and Orhan Pamuk.

Works by Sheila Heti mentioned in the episode

Pure Colour
How Should a Person Be?
Alphabetical Diaries
Ticknor
We Need a Horse (children’s book)
The Chairs are Where the People Go (with Misha Glouberman)

Also mentioned:
Oulipo Group
Autofiction: e.g. Ben Lerner, Rachel Cusk, Karl Ove Knausgard
Craig Seligman, Sontag and Kael
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Clarice Lispector (e.g. The Hour of the Star)
Kenneth Goldsmith Soliloquy
Willa Cather, The Professor’s House
William Steig, Sylvester and The Magic Pebble.

Listen to the episode here

Transcript

107* Electro-Library with Jared Green (EF, JP)

Way back in 2019, Elizabeth and John were already thinking about collaboration. Here they speak with Jared Green and explore The Electro-Library, a podcast he co-created.

Elizabeth, Jared and John play snippets from a recent Electro-Library episode on the decidedly non-podcasty topic of photographs, and use it as a springboard to discuss the different aesthetic experiences of radio, television, film, reading, audiobooks, and podcasts. Which are the easiest and which the hardest artworks to get lost in? Would Frankenstein’s monster be more popular as a podcaster than as a YouTuber? (The answer to that one seems most likely to be yes).

106 Musical Collaboration: Francisco del Pino (JP)

Francisco del Pino is a widely celebrated composer from Buenos Aires, and currently a Ph.D. candidate in Music Composition at Princeton University. John fell in love with his music (during his own semester there) when he heard a piece based on the poetry of Francisco’s longtime friend Victoria Cóccaro.

^{photo credit: Clara Elena Montes}

104 Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada: Journalistic Collaboration (JP)

Steve Fainaru and his brother Mark Fainaru-Wada wrote a bestselling and award-winning book (and accompanying PBS documentary series) about the NFL coverup of concussion trauma, League of Denial. This conversation inaugurates an occasional Recall this Book series on collaborative work: who does it well, what makes it succeed, why can’t grumpy isolatos like English professors get with the program?