3-D Thinking

Simultaneity

ABOUT 3-D THINKING

IS multidimensional fiction too far ahead of the crowd?

Possibly– as our brains have been wired from Day One into linear, two-dimensional thinking. The most lauded novelists– William Faulkner to Don Delillo– simply give us more of it: longer and longer sentences and paragraphs as the reader burrows ever further into the narrative. The text. Which has its appeal, no doubt, but shouldn’t be the only standard of value for literary products like the short story and novel.

One of the reasons perhaps why Aben Kandel and James Gould Cozzens are kept out of the canon is because their best novels– City For Conquest and Guard Of Honor respectively– are, at their core, multidimensional in design and effect. They throw entire worlds at once at the reader. Many of our best-trained literary experts and commentators can’t handle it.

NEW WIRING

The foundation of multidimensional fiction is 3-D Thinking. The ability to perceive and understand all sides of an issue, simultaneously.

Think of driving a car and seeing, directly and peripherally, everything happening around you. That person on a bike, on your right. Another person further ahead crossing the street. A speeding car passing you on your left, moving into your blind spot. Another coming up fast in your rear view mirror.

Unfortunately, most people driving on our streets have tunnel vision. Stand on a street corner and watch them. They stare straight ahead, oblivious to anything going on except that which is directly in front of them.

Or they’re staring at their smartphone.

3-D Thinking, by definition, also means increased compassion for other humans and their struggles, wherever they’re placed in society’s hierarchies. Not always easy to accomplish!

IS rewiring your brain worth the effort?

THAT’S the question. One I attempt to answer with my new novella, The Loud Boys, now available in ebook format at Amazon here, and at Kobo, here. (Print version coming soon.)

-Karl Wenclas

3-D Thinking: An Intro

HERE are two credible books about the music business. Both books examine that business as it existed in the 1980s. Most of the focus, for both, is on rock music in Southern California. Yet there are only two slight points of contact between them. Were it not for those two points, one would think the authors lived in alternate universes.

The reason for this is that, even though the books cover the same subject, they come at that subject from different directions, and target different levels of the industry at that place and time. Fredric Dannen’s perspective is strictly top-down, examining the operations of monopolistic record company giants like CBS Records and Warner Brothers. Jim Ruland’s viewpoint is from the bottom, depicting the struggles of punk rock bands and the actions of grassroots startup enterprisers attempting to build businesses via promoting new bands and fresh music.

To truly understand rock music at that time and place, the observer needs both perspectives. Like seeing a mountain from more than one side– or viewing the dark side of the moon as well as what’s facing us. The three-dimensional viewpoint.

One view is not more valid than the other. That Fredric Dannen covers the more financially successful end of the music business doesn’t mean that end is more worth study, or historically important, or that music and its well-hyped acts more meaningful. If anything, the indy music scene Jim Ruland depicts in his book was more innovative and influential– at least as far as rock music is concerned– than the status quo acts promoted by the money-grabbing “Hit Men.” The indy music scene embodied by SST Records led to the rise of grunge in the 1990s– of bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, and so many others.

Which causes us to question literary history, canons and such. Are academics giving us the full picture of literature over the course of decades– or not in fact only an acceptable sliver of everything happening?

The idea of narrow viewpoints should cause us to question all histories. Not throwing out standard (or revisionist) narratives, but supplementing them, to give the fullest possible picture of ideas and events.

-KW