I can see why my wife Z loves this book. It’s well written and rich with themes of individuality and motherhood, of womanhood and misogyny, of friendship and romance, of pride and shame, of love and cruelty. For most the time I spent reading this book I thought it a hodgepodge of tales until the final chapters when Miller brought the story to a sustained climax and completed Circe’s character arc elegantly and to great catharsis. Reading this work of Miller’s you appreciate her well earned knowledge not just of Ancient Greek mythology but also of the Heraclean efforts women of all ages have undertaken to remain whole and true despite the forces that threaten to tear them apart. This is as much a book about Titans and Olympians as it is about the difficulties of being a person of integrity. Integrity not in the abstract terms of flaw and virtue but in the bloody, scarring, fleshbinding terms of human experience.

At the beginning of Chapter Ten of Madeline Miller’s

, the protagonist arrives in Crete, the island that her domineering sister rules oppressively. Upon docking at the bustling city port, Circe is told to make her way up to the palace immediately. She narrates:

With that last image, the author culminates her depiction of this new context. She manages to do a lot with a sentence of modest size:

Though she says little about the physical appearance of the staircase, she conjures a vivid image of it by stirring our imagination about the history and nature of the kingdom that it serves. It is a kingdom whose subjects have long toiled in relentless heat to shuttle riches up from the docks to the throne. It’s an evocative image delivered concisely.

But I have one problem with it – the execution. I think the phrasing needed more iteration. The last bit in particular – endless hurrying feet – is a somewhat clunky, disappointing resolution.

It was hard to pinpoint what bothered me about it. At first I thought it was the word endless. I figured I’d replace it with ceaseless. But by the time I’d found a phrasing I preferred, it didn’t matter much which of those two words was used.

One thing that bothers me is the mushy -ing form of hurry. Another is the awkward way endless and hurrying get in each other’s way modifying feet. My instinct is to break up this awkward trio and to pick a form of hurry that’s more pleasing to say and hear, like hurried or hurry itself.

Here’s a rephrasing that conserves Miller’s idea and that I think improves the sentence that contains it:

This rephrasing has a few subtle effects. By adding up and down it gives suitable motion to the image, highlighting the endless hurry of the kingdom’s subjects. And by flipping the order of elements – history first, then present – it refocuses the sentence ultimately on the present, where the action is happening. But if there is a major improvement I think it is a rhythmic one. Reading the two versions one after the other shows how different they are in that respect:

The phrasing of were worn smooth and endless hurrying feet stunt the flow of the original sentence. And perhaps this was an intentional choice by Miller. In the end, it’s a matter of taste and aesthetic affinity. But I prefer the regular rhythmic flow of my sentence (which I believe is in Trochaic meter).

Using Scansion notation, where a stressed syllable is marked with / and an unstressed one with x:

The rhythm of were worn smooth is ambiguous to me. Regardless, the sentence doesn’t flow with the same pattern throughout. On the other hand, this one does:

As I progress into the novel, I notice more sentences with opportunity for rhythmic tweaking.

Here’s one that gathers pace, then slows over a speedbump, then speeds back up immediately.

Swapping in its own right with itself smooths over the hitch while maintaining the meaning, although it introduces a bit of rhyminess (with as well) that makes me hesitate. Too sing-songy?

Moving on. Here’s a sentence missing a beat.

It’s clear to me that adding of improves the sentence. But why? Is it because it rounds out the parallelism in of their youth and of their age? I don’t think so. Here’s another sentence from the book that also avoids repeating the preposition but sounds perfect:

Inserting an in before flesh to mimic in wood would be a blunder.

The sentence strides gracefully to its finish and at the last moment we shove a hurdle in its path.

So, it’s clear the problem was one of cadence, not of symmetry. Returning to our edit:

Compressing I have to I’ve is an optional tweak to help the sentence start off on a steady beat. But it comes at the cost of slightly undercutting the graveness in the speaker’s tone. For that reason, it also makes sense to preserve the more formal I have in favor of the more casual I’ve.

By contrast, in the following sentence, replacing he had with he’d is an easier decision because it mirrors the opening He’d as well as tightening the rhythm:

It’s hard to nail down what it is about in either army that flows better than in both armies. Maybe because it’s easier to say? Consonants leading into vowels leading into consonants? Or maybe it’s the additional syllable again leveling out the rhythm.

In the revised sentence, there remains a rhythmic wrinkle in archer, which flips the order of beats for two syllables. Strong (/) then weak (x) rather than weak followed by strong. It’s not obvious that this is a problem. Arguably, because the best archer is the climax of the sentence, the place where the parts coalesce into meaning, it makes sense there to slow the reader down.

(Editing my previous sentence, I changed makes sense to slow the reader down there to makes sense there to slow the reader down, hoisting up there to give the phrase a more interesting shape and sound without corrupting its meaning. There’s a threeshot pah pah pah rhythm to makes sense there that then unwinds nicely in the three iambs that follow it.)

Ultimately, rhythm is not a good unto itself, but a technical tool at the writer’s disposal. It all depends on the effect the writer aims to create and how rhythm might contribute to it. The point is not to apply it indiscriminately, but to wield it judisciously. No better way than developing close acquaintance with it. Hence the exercise.

From where I am sitting on my balcony I can see the TV out of the corner of my eye and it’s very difficult to ignore it. I keep turning my head away to think of what to write next, but then when I turn back to resume typing on my computer, the flashes of color and light from the TV make it very difficult for me to focus. I just went inside and turned it off, but still my mind keeps diverting attention to the now black rectangle in my peripheral vision. Let me draw the curtains.

Sometimes when I want to be alone I come out and sit here. It’s a lovely little space detached from the living room. However, if Z is sitting at her desk on the other side of the glass where I can see her and if my need to be alone in that moment is particularly potent, I draw the curtains. Her presence remains exactly as it was and I remain aware of it, but it doesn’t intrude on my attention in the same way.

In his book

, Matthew B. Crawford points out that this involuntary aspect of attention makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary standpoint. New information demands attendance. Is it a predator? Prey? Or just a gust of wind? Regardless we must pay attention to it so we can make sense of it and integrate it into our mental model of the current environment.

Crawford appropriates the term ecology – the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings – to describe this fundamental relationship between our attention, our life, and our environment. He describes, for example, the “ecology of attention” in airport lounges where the news stream endlessly on TVs oriented in various directions. Even if the talking heads are muted, the infinite sideways scroll of symbols at the bottom of the screen will hijack the attention of travelers who would rather rest idly.

(Crawford astutely points out that the advertisements shown on these TVs exist to continue the transfer of wealth from these common travelers to the ones in the VIP lounges, who rest comfortably without having their attention exploited by their surroundings without their consent. I find these socioeconomic analyses of technology much more relevant and important than the technophobic ones. The same goes for Artificial Intelligence. I don’t worry that AI will take over the world, I worry that those who already rule the world will use AI to accelerate and automate processes of wealth extraction.)

I think the evolutionary perspective can also help explain why time in nature feels so right. This is the primordial ecology of our attention, the environment in which our brains adapted for us to live and thrive. And yet I don’t think we need to draw purist or atavistic conclusions against technology from this observation. Feelings of connection and coherence arise in us not only from time in nature, but also from time using artificial tools and inhabiting constructed environments.

The humble coffee shop for example is a place where many of us go to read, write, think, converse, and do other things that require our focus. The intricate weave of activity and mixture of sounds create a conducive ambience for our attention. How is it that such a busy, public space is so popular for quiet, private activity? This is only counterintuitive if we think distraction is the only unneutral effect our environment has on our ability to focus. From experience we know that it can be easier to focus in spite of extraneous sensory information rather than in absence of it. Perhaps because our cognitive capacities evolved in settings where total absence of sensory input was rare, our minds focus more easily against a backdrop of mundane information. Certain kinds of technologies are essential here and even computer screens are welcome, but not TVs because they would be too disruptive. A good ecology of attention not only prevents distractions, but encourages focus.

I’ve moved into my apartment now, into the warmth. Out in the balcony my fingers were getting too cold. Above my head the clock ticks and farther away traffic brushes by in irregular strokes. The faint wail of an ambulance emerges suddenly and then fades quickly. Occasionally in the hallway outside our apartment a door opens and then shuts a moment later. Our little dog scurries about the living room looking for amusement. My wife Z works intently at her desk a few feet away in silence apart from intermittent bursts of typing and muted clicks of her mouse. Attention to my writing flows easily despite all these things, except when my gaze drifts over to what is happening on her computer screen. So I adjust my sitting position to make it vanish.

The shower is so fertile a place for contemplation and creative thinking for so many of us that we have the name shower thoughts for the novel ideas that we produce while we’re there. It’s one of the most ordinary of activities, but it is exceptional as an “ecology of attention.” Like many other routine activities, it occupies you for a small window of time every day. But, unlike other routine tasks like driving, it frees you from having to respond to external information. Unlike household tasks, it renders you in uncontested privacy. All these things are also true for baths, but do they provoke thoughts in the same way? Showers, unlike baths, do not allow you to stay idle nor do they let you entertain yourself with a book or a TV show.

I suspect this last bit is crucial. Keeping your mind busy on a menial task seems to have extraordinary powers for unlocking a certain kind of thinking. There is a reason for the psychoanalytical practice of hypnosis, represented in pop culture in the form of a dangling pocket watch. There is a reason, similarly, for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy. It’s not magic. There are mysterious ways of programming our attention and psychological capacities through interactions with our external environment.

The premise and the set are both interesting, but for so long I’m just waiting for something to happen. I want to feel like a mystery is unfolding before me, that the answer to each of my questions raises another even more fervently in need of addressing. But instead I feel like the writers are withholding information, stalling for time. My intrigue wanes into restlessness.

The pace jolts into high gear at the end of season one, when the writers finally show their cards. All this time they have been sitting on highgrade, plotpromising bombshells. And as the season finale approaches, it’s finally time to drop them. Yes, what a thrill. But I don’t feel so much shocked and swayed as I do manipulated. Is this any way to tell a story? Create a sudden climax and end it right there, with not even the beginnings of resolution? Why didn’t the writers introduce the same ideas earlier in the season and develop them throughout? We all know the answer already. In the end, Severance is more asset than art. It is, above all, a strategic allocation for growing Apple’s share of the streaming market. And how do you keep people watching? You end on a cliffhanger.

As a viewer, I feel my interest being managed and manipulated rather than being cultivated. I don’t feel like a thrilling story is being recounted for my entertainment, I feel like I’m being sold a product. Please keep watching, we promise something interesting is coming soon. I’m sure there are people involved in making Severance that want to make genuinely good TV but the overall effort seems to me more like hedging than striving. It’s ironic when you consider that Lumon’s closest analogue in the real world might in fact be Apple. There is the cultlike adulation of a heroic founder, the snaking corporate campus enshrouded in dark glass, the obnoxious secrecy, and so on, but the most meaningful similarity is the basic one. They are gigantic tech corporations held aloft by myths of technotopian supremacy and driven by an everincreasing hunger for growth and expansion. (Also, Lumon sounds like Lemon.)

The basics of telling a good story is like playing chess. You can’t rely on sneak attacks or smuggled secrets. The pieces and the tensions between them are all in plain view, brought into position one step a time. The tensions build until there comes a natural point when the deadlock breaks and the inevitable drama ensues. Consequences ripple and trigger further action. There is no need to contrive plot. It flows out of confrontation between agents in the story. If nothing happens its because the people moving the pieces don’t know what they are doing. Or they’re holding back.

The writers of Severance might well know how to write a good story. But I think the problem is that the real chess is being played by Apple, who is mobilizing their pieces – Severance, Ted Lasso, and so on – to corner a share of the market. Their ultimate goal is not to make compelling television, but to compel us to keep watching.