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The Complete Upmanship
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349 pages, Paperback
First published October 19, 1970
6 people are currently reading
310 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Potter
144 books18 followersStephen Meredith Potter was a British author and broadcaster. He popularised the term 'Gamemanship'.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
March 24, 2011
Ha! I am nearly always reading this book -- any given year, any given time. Sometimes I read long stretches, sometimes I randomly open it and read a paragraph, a line, or a few words -- sometimes just look at one of Lt-Col. Frank Wilson's drawings and read its caption. Each time, it cracks me up. Stephen Potter was a terrific, skilled, subtle, inventive, unique writer. I’d love to have written these books.
I think it’s best to savor it a bit at a time, especially if you have a friend who finds it as funny as you do – then you can collaborate on opportunities to adapt Potter’s gambits to your own situation. If you have anyone annoying in your life, this book can make you smile about that and consider funny ways to deal with that person.
Another goodreads reviewer remarked that it's just 1940's satire. I guess you might say that if you appreciate Potter’s intent but don’t share his sense of humor. It’s actually from the 40's and 50’s, very British, and the humor is as dry as can be. However, it’s perfectly timely – especially if you’re tired of all the posturing and baloney of TV, youtube, co-workers, neighbors, the person you play tennis with, your fellow board members, mega-media music, and particularly when you catch yourself being as big a blowhard as all those others. (I hate when that happens.)
This book is a compilation of his previous books, so, as someone said in one of the other two reviews, it’s not intended that you read it straight through. That wouldn’t be the most fun way to enjoy it.
If you’re looking to buy a copy, good luck. Mostly they go for about $90, although here in the goodreads “buy” section I see there are copies available in the $50 range.
I think it’s best to savor it a bit at a time, especially if you have a friend who finds it as funny as you do – then you can collaborate on opportunities to adapt Potter’s gambits to your own situation. If you have anyone annoying in your life, this book can make you smile about that and consider funny ways to deal with that person.
Another goodreads reviewer remarked that it's just 1940's satire. I guess you might say that if you appreciate Potter’s intent but don’t share his sense of humor. It’s actually from the 40's and 50’s, very British, and the humor is as dry as can be. However, it’s perfectly timely – especially if you’re tired of all the posturing and baloney of TV, youtube, co-workers, neighbors, the person you play tennis with, your fellow board members, mega-media music, and particularly when you catch yourself being as big a blowhard as all those others. (I hate when that happens.)
This book is a compilation of his previous books, so, as someone said in one of the other two reviews, it’s not intended that you read it straight through. That wouldn’t be the most fun way to enjoy it.
If you’re looking to buy a copy, good luck. Mostly they go for about $90, although here in the goodreads “buy” section I see there are copies available in the $50 range.
March 20, 2016
What can we learn from an academic and humorist who was writing around 70 years ago?
I've started to read and write about things that are not directly concerned with education in general, and education technology in particular, but which in my view have a bearing on it. That's how I came to consider writing about the work of Stephen Potter.
Background
Potter was a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Oxford, England, and also wrote and took part in radio programmes. However, he is best known for the "upmanship" books.
The first of these was Gamesmanship, or the art of winning games without actually cheating. Then came Lifemanship, the application of the principles of gamesmanship to everyday life. Graduates of the (fictitious) Lifemanship course were known as "lifemen". Next came One Upmanship, and then Supermanship, which was about how to stay on top.
The basic principle of one upmanship was that if you're not one up, you're one down. Put like that it all sounds horribly negative, but in fact Potter was gently poking fun at snobbery and academia.
I think there are five areas in which Potter's observations are worth bearing in mind today. I've seen examples of every one of these in the field of ed tech research and practice, and I expect you have too.
Dangling statistics
---------------------------
You've no doubt heard of dangling modifiers, which are words that are detached from the word or phrase they are meant to be attached to (or not attached to anything at all), as may be seen in the following sentence:
"Looking into the distance, the bridge seemed to be safe enough."
It sounds like the bridge was looking into the distance, rather than the person speaking. Thus the word "looking" is the dangling modifier.
Well, one of the things Potter highlighted was what I have decided to name "dangling statistics" – stats that seem to have no bearing on anything at all, ie no context, and no purpose.
For example, in the introduction to Lifemanship, there is a footnote which reads:
"According to Hulton Research, the number of lifemen who drink tea but never buy fireworks is 79… The figure for those who are interested in soap substitutes and have not yet been to Portugal is, however, 385."
These sort of statistics are not only pointless but meaningless too: what do we actually learn from it, and how could we possibly benefit from knowing it?
But the interesting thing about it is that it looks like it should be important and relevant. After all, the research has been carried out by a body with the august-sounding name of Hulton Research (see below under "OK names"), and the numbers quoted are very precise – not, "around 80" but "79"; not "nearly 400" but "385". This gives the (spurious?) impression of accuracy.
In our field, that of ed tech, I come across dodgy-sounding statistics all the time, especially in speeches by politicians.
Rather than go into great depth here, I refer you to my article The world according to Potter: Part 1 – Going metric.
Inventing terminology
Many of Potter's terms lend a spurious academic air to his writing. For example, there is Doctorship, Lectureship, Chairmanship, Carmanship, Lowbrowmanship, Highbrowmanship and even Hands-across-the-sea-manship. There's another example of impressive-sounding but invented terminology below.
OK Names
----------------
This is the use of names that sound impressive. In one of his footnotes, Potter advertises a booklet called "Places where it is OK for things to first come to you at".
In a note on OK words, he states:
"We hope to publish, monthly, a list of words which may be brought into the conversation and used with effect because no one quite understands what they mean, albeit these words have been in use for a sufficiently long time, at any rate by Highbrowmen, say ten years, for your audience to have seen them once or twice and already felt uneasy about them."
In yet another section, Potter discusses OK names:
"Just as there are OK words in conversationship, so there are OK people to mention…"
In How to Lie With Statistics, Darrell Huff mentions Potter and his OK names:
"It may take at least a second to find out who-says-so. The who may be hidden by what Stephen Potter, the Lifemanship man, would probably call the "OK name". Anything smacking of the medical profession is an OK name. Scientific Laboratories have OK names."
If you think about it, "Hulton Research" is a prime example of an OK name.
In his book Doctoring Data, Dr Malcolm Kendrick states that:
"… in the vast majority of cases, around 80%, the evidence used was the lowest level… otherwise known as "expert committee reports, opinions and/or clinical experience of respected authorities. This would otherwise be known as medicine based on anecdote by important professors. Or, as one wag has put it, this is 'eminence-based medicine'."
Stating the opposite of what you actually mean
----------------------------------------------------------------------
A good example of this was the Supporting People initiative some years ago in the UK. This concerned funding for services like sheltered accommodation for vulnerable people. As soon as I heard the name of the new initiative I thought "They're going to cut the funding", and I was right.
It's the same sort of naming strategy that companies employ when firing people, eg enhancing their future career opportunities.
Potter deftly combined this stating of the opposite with an invented term: the petrification of the implied opposite.
Inspection
--------------
If you're overly concerned with a visit from Ofsted (the schools' inspectorate in England), you might take a leaf from Potter's section on "Counter-inspection play", in Supermanship. He recommends rehearsing a special inspector lesson:
But of course no good inspectorman would arrive the day he was expected. In later, more experienced days, I used to ring up Inspectors and say 'I think you'll enjoy the discussion tonight'. Amazingly, it worked. Tipped-off class would respond brilliantly to rehearsed inspector-lecture.
I feel that at this point I should declare the usual disclaimer!
Conclusion
-----------------
The "upmanship" books may have been intended as a huge joke, but what made them so powerful and so timeless is the fact that most of the things he describes have more than a grain of truth in them.
This article is an expanded version of one that appeared in Digital Education, the free ezine. Go to the Digital Education Newsletter page at www.ictineducation.org/newsletter for more information.
I've started to read and write about things that are not directly concerned with education in general, and education technology in particular, but which in my view have a bearing on it. That's how I came to consider writing about the work of Stephen Potter.
Background
Potter was a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Oxford, England, and also wrote and took part in radio programmes. However, he is best known for the "upmanship" books.
The first of these was Gamesmanship, or the art of winning games without actually cheating. Then came Lifemanship, the application of the principles of gamesmanship to everyday life. Graduates of the (fictitious) Lifemanship course were known as "lifemen". Next came One Upmanship, and then Supermanship, which was about how to stay on top.
The basic principle of one upmanship was that if you're not one up, you're one down. Put like that it all sounds horribly negative, but in fact Potter was gently poking fun at snobbery and academia.
I think there are five areas in which Potter's observations are worth bearing in mind today. I've seen examples of every one of these in the field of ed tech research and practice, and I expect you have too.
Dangling statistics
---------------------------
You've no doubt heard of dangling modifiers, which are words that are detached from the word or phrase they are meant to be attached to (or not attached to anything at all), as may be seen in the following sentence:
"Looking into the distance, the bridge seemed to be safe enough."
It sounds like the bridge was looking into the distance, rather than the person speaking. Thus the word "looking" is the dangling modifier.
Well, one of the things Potter highlighted was what I have decided to name "dangling statistics" – stats that seem to have no bearing on anything at all, ie no context, and no purpose.
For example, in the introduction to Lifemanship, there is a footnote which reads:
"According to Hulton Research, the number of lifemen who drink tea but never buy fireworks is 79… The figure for those who are interested in soap substitutes and have not yet been to Portugal is, however, 385."
These sort of statistics are not only pointless but meaningless too: what do we actually learn from it, and how could we possibly benefit from knowing it?
But the interesting thing about it is that it looks like it should be important and relevant. After all, the research has been carried out by a body with the august-sounding name of Hulton Research (see below under "OK names"), and the numbers quoted are very precise – not, "around 80" but "79"; not "nearly 400" but "385". This gives the (spurious?) impression of accuracy.
In our field, that of ed tech, I come across dodgy-sounding statistics all the time, especially in speeches by politicians.
Rather than go into great depth here, I refer you to my article The world according to Potter: Part 1 – Going metric.
Inventing terminology
Many of Potter's terms lend a spurious academic air to his writing. For example, there is Doctorship, Lectureship, Chairmanship, Carmanship, Lowbrowmanship, Highbrowmanship and even Hands-across-the-sea-manship. There's another example of impressive-sounding but invented terminology below.
OK Names
----------------
This is the use of names that sound impressive. In one of his footnotes, Potter advertises a booklet called "Places where it is OK for things to first come to you at".
In a note on OK words, he states:
"We hope to publish, monthly, a list of words which may be brought into the conversation and used with effect because no one quite understands what they mean, albeit these words have been in use for a sufficiently long time, at any rate by Highbrowmen, say ten years, for your audience to have seen them once or twice and already felt uneasy about them."
In yet another section, Potter discusses OK names:
"Just as there are OK words in conversationship, so there are OK people to mention…"
In How to Lie With Statistics, Darrell Huff mentions Potter and his OK names:
"It may take at least a second to find out who-says-so. The who may be hidden by what Stephen Potter, the Lifemanship man, would probably call the "OK name". Anything smacking of the medical profession is an OK name. Scientific Laboratories have OK names."
If you think about it, "Hulton Research" is a prime example of an OK name.
In his book Doctoring Data, Dr Malcolm Kendrick states that:
"… in the vast majority of cases, around 80%, the evidence used was the lowest level… otherwise known as "expert committee reports, opinions and/or clinical experience of respected authorities. This would otherwise be known as medicine based on anecdote by important professors. Or, as one wag has put it, this is 'eminence-based medicine'."
Stating the opposite of what you actually mean
----------------------------------------------------------------------
A good example of this was the Supporting People initiative some years ago in the UK. This concerned funding for services like sheltered accommodation for vulnerable people. As soon as I heard the name of the new initiative I thought "They're going to cut the funding", and I was right.
It's the same sort of naming strategy that companies employ when firing people, eg enhancing their future career opportunities.
Potter deftly combined this stating of the opposite with an invented term: the petrification of the implied opposite.
Inspection
--------------
If you're overly concerned with a visit from Ofsted (the schools' inspectorate in England), you might take a leaf from Potter's section on "Counter-inspection play", in Supermanship. He recommends rehearsing a special inspector lesson:
But of course no good inspectorman would arrive the day he was expected. In later, more experienced days, I used to ring up Inspectors and say 'I think you'll enjoy the discussion tonight'. Amazingly, it worked. Tipped-off class would respond brilliantly to rehearsed inspector-lecture.
I feel that at this point I should declare the usual disclaimer!
Conclusion
-----------------
The "upmanship" books may have been intended as a huge joke, but what made them so powerful and so timeless is the fact that most of the things he describes have more than a grain of truth in them.
This article is an expanded version of one that appeared in Digital Education, the free ezine. Go to the Digital Education Newsletter page at www.ictineducation.org/newsletter for more information.
April 29, 2017
an ill-timed work trip kept me from going to the library last weekend, and I ran out of books, so raided my own bookshelf. fortunately, this funny [to me] one is always good for a re-read. great drawings to accompany satirical advice based on author and colleagues' "research" into little gambits one can deploy to win without being too good at sports, to one-up people at the holidays, to get the better of the conversation at a party, and so on.
random sample passage (p. 105) from Lifemanship on how to counter an expert in conversation, in this case a military expert, with "plonking" ["if you have nothing to say, or, rather something extremely stupid and obvious, say it, but in a plonking tone of voice -- i.e., roundly, but hollowly and dogmatically"]...........
"Military expert (beginning to get into his stride, and talking now really well): There is, of course, no precise common denominator between the type of mind which, in military science, thinks tactically, and the man who is just an ordinary pugnacious devil with a bit of battlefield instinct about him.
Yourself (quietly plonking): Yes....'Where equal mind and contest equal go'
This is correct quotation plonking (a) because it is not a genuine quotation and (b) because it is meaningless. The Military Expert must either pass it over, smile vaguely, say 'yes', or in the last resort 'I don't quite get.....'. In any case, it stops flow, and suggests that whatever he is saying, you got there first."
random sample passage (p. 105) from Lifemanship on how to counter an expert in conversation, in this case a military expert, with "plonking" ["if you have nothing to say, or, rather something extremely stupid and obvious, say it, but in a plonking tone of voice -- i.e., roundly, but hollowly and dogmatically"]...........
"Military expert (beginning to get into his stride, and talking now really well): There is, of course, no precise common denominator between the type of mind which, in military science, thinks tactically, and the man who is just an ordinary pugnacious devil with a bit of battlefield instinct about him.
Yourself (quietly plonking): Yes....'Where equal mind and contest equal go'
This is correct quotation plonking (a) because it is not a genuine quotation and (b) because it is meaningless. The Military Expert must either pass it over, smile vaguely, say 'yes', or in the last resort 'I don't quite get.....'. In any case, it stops flow, and suggests that whatever he is saying, you got there first."
April 8, 2011
A wry treatment of the subtle ways that friends and rivals deflate each other's egos in the course of daily life. This book may be available in its three various parts, or as in this edition, the entire trilogy in one volume.
July 10, 2010
Not a book to read straight through, as many types of upmanship resemble each other closely, but snerk-worthy on several passes. I recommend "Winemanship" and "Weekendmanship."
January 16, 2023
The Upmanship books were published in the late 40s and 50s, but seem older. The world they describe, in which work duties never seem to encroach on tennis and golf time, is resolutely for bachelors, the implication being that married domesticity forces retirement from these contests of polite competition; the same environment as Bertie Wooster's drones, and perhaps even Jerome's Three Men In A Boat. At its core is the idea that when engaging in games, or life, one should not be openly competitive, nor meekly submissive, but to good humouredly win minor victories against more skilful, or more confident, foes. Alongside the advice on tactics is a running story of the School of Lifemanship, in insalubrious Station Road, Yeovil, a gentle satire of the pretensions of colleges and their founders, and the whole might be read as a parody of self-help books. Although the social landscape has changed, the humour survives - although we may not have awkward meetings with doctor and bank manager, we still experience that strange contest of wills when seated for the dentist and barber, when it is unclear who is in charge. The books formed the basis of the film School for Scoundrels, which includes numerous nods to Potter and Yeovil as well as Ian Carmichael and Terry-Thomas in good form. Not included in this volume is Anti-woo, which adapts the principles of lifemanship to the topic of relationships, which is very much the weakest of the series, but did include the conversational gambit to avoid difficult topics called EGANDS (explanation of the geological association of the North Downs and the South).
February 16, 2017
Delightful. It took a little while for me to get into the swing of it, but about ten pages in something just clicked, and from then on it was just rollicking fun. There are lots of little asides, which I love, little bits tucked into footnotes...just really well-done.
This was a birthday present from Dan (after we'd seen the movie version, starring my beloved Ian Carmichael), and it was spot-on.
This was a birthday present from Dan (after we'd seen the movie version, starring my beloved Ian Carmichael), and it was spot-on.
November 26, 2016
Gamesmanship, the art of doing anything but cheating to win, is an essential read. Dab middle 20th century English upper middle class satire, enjoyable enough for the vocabulary lesson if not the drollery. Second volume, Lifemanship, is more of the same spirit, applied off the game court. The rest of the collection is only for absolute fans.
March 3, 2008
This was probably the edition I read... although I think I read it earlier than '78
January 24, 2010
It's a pretty weird book. Some of the gambits would be good to try, but it's mostly 1940s satire.
January 26, 2012
Incredibly funny, and oh so true.
December 15, 2012
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/11590697
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/11590697
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews